My life with dogs

It occurs to me that the posts on this blog are pretty serious. So let's talk about something more fun. Dogs have always been a big part of my life. At this point, I enjoy my time with my dogs probably more than I do with most people. I won't go into why. If you're a dog person, you know, and if you're not, you'll never know, so what's the point?

I don't actually remember my first dog. My mother tells me that a mongrel stray came around when I was a baby and attached himself to me for awhile. He'd guard my baby carriage, and when the old ladies tried to pinch my cheeks or chuckle my chin, he'd pull back his teeth in a junkyard dog snarl. Mom says he didn't hang around for long. They didn't even name him, but called him Dawg.

When I was about 4 or 5, I had a cocker spaniel named Ginger. I named her after a story book I had, and loved her to distraction. She disappeared one day, and Mom told me that Dad and her gave her to a farmer, as she wasn't happy living with us in town. I thought she seemed happy enough, and I was very sad, but what could I do but accept it? It wasn't until I was in my 30s that Mom finally told me that they just took Ginger out on a country road and dumped her. What a terrible thing.

We had one other dog for a while, but it was a dog my folks were fostering for some people while they were away for some reason. I didn't understand why Sally had to leave, but leave she did, and I didn't have another dog for some time.

The summer I was 7, my folks invited my Dad's Aunt and Uncle Marshall and Marie Kimes for dinner. While we were eating, they asked me some polite questions as adults are prone to do. One of them asked what grade I was in, did I like school, and then, "Do you have a dog?" When I said no, Marshall told my dad he should be ashamed of himself. "A boy needs a dog." Dad said he didn't want a dog around.

One week later, I was at the neighborhood store with my mom when the neighbor kids came running up to me all excited saying, "Terry, Terry, some people came to your house and brought you a dog!" I went running home and found that the Kimes had brought me a cocker/pekingese cross puppy. They just insisted that Dad let me have him. I named him Pal Hunter.

That was the start of years of one of the most unique dogs you ever saw. He was incredibly smart, and living in a time when people just let their dogs run free, he was pretty much unmanageable. But he was still a great dog. He was affectionate toward all members of our fairly large extended family, but most attached to me and my grandpa. Grandpa called him "Pie" because he said, when kids would call him, "Here Pal, here Pal," repeatedly, it would deteriorate into "Hep Pie, hep Pie." Pal used to go up the street about four blocks just before the time when Grandpa came home from work, and wait for him. In just a few minutes, here would come Grandpa's red Jeep pickup, and he'd pull over, let Pal in, and drive him the rest of the way home. He never went there on Grandpa's days off, and even when Grandpa tried to fool him, he didn't fall for it.

A favorite game was when we were playing any kind of ball game, Pal would wait for his chance and steal the ball. Then the game was really on. We'd all chase Pal and try to catch him to get the ball back. He'd tease us and play with us and keep the ball sometimes for hours until we were all exhausted. We never caught him. We got the ball back when he tired of the chase, and not a moment before.


He followed me to the movies and snuck in. He followed me to the city swimming pool and snuck in. When my sister Linda started first grade (no kindergarten in those days) he followed her, went in her classroom and sniffed all around it, then never went back. Until . . . about 8 years later, when my brother Doug started first grade, he did the same thing.

Pal loved to chase cars. When he died, at about age 14, he was found in a ditch beside the road without a mark on him. We always chose to believe he died chasing a car, in his glory. Pal died about a month before my daughter was born, when I was 20. Grandpa buried him beneath a cherry tree in his garden. The people who live there now removed the marker, but Pal's still there next to my mom's house, and I always say a silent hello to him when I visit.


I had pretty much the opposite feeling about dogs from my dad. It wasn't until I was around 30 that I learned the sad story of why Dad didn't like to get close to dogs. It seems that when he was a boy, he found a stray dog, took him home and sneaked food and water to him When the inevitable happened and his father caught him, Grandpa Hill told Dad to take the dog to the woods and shoot it. So poor Dad, certainly under threat of a beating, took a gun and tied a rope to the dog and led him to the woods, where he shot him. A while later, they heard a noise at the back door, and it was the puppy, only wounded, outside crying for Dad. The old man then made Dad take the dog BACK to the woods and finish the job. For the rest of his life, although we saw evidence from time to time that Dad actually liked dogs, Dad kept his emotional distance. You certainly couldn't blame him.


But rather than not wanting my kids to have a dog, I thought kids SHOULD have a dog. When my daughter Molly was about 2, one of my employees told me her daughter's dog had puppies. I brought home this little tiny chihuahua cross. We didn't have her too long, and never got past calling her Puppy, but she was a great little dog. We were pitifully ignorant about caring for dogs, and let her run loose. She, in concert with another dog, started running the neighbors' chickens, so we had to give her away.


Next, foolishly, while on vacation here in Montana (we lived in southern Idaho at the time, and were about to move to California) we took home a springer/beagle cross puppy. This was when Molly was 3. The dog was cute as hell. Molly wanted to name her Cruella DeVille, but we explained that was an inappropriate name for a dog, so instead, Molly chose a name from her Yogi Bear book and named the dog Booboo. Never was a dog named so aptly.


She was overly frisky, and didn't mind us at all, in any way. She'd barely come when called. We of course had no idea how to train a dog. We housetrained her, but that was a miracle. We hadn't had her more than a few months when one of my employees brought me a dog he'd rescued from drowning in a river. His father wouldn't let him keep her, so he brought him to me. Somehow we decided to keep her. She was a Samoyed, so of course Molly named her Whitey.



Whitey was a very good dog, whose only failing was that she hated male dogs and wanted to kill them all. Booboo, on the other hand, continued her evil ways. She would not be contained in any yard. She could jump any fence, regardless of height, and she was a short dog. She could leap up in the air, do a little pirouette, and divest our fig tree of all its fruit. On one of her adventures, she got pregnant, so we had a litter of puppies. Whitey killed one of the males.

Finally, in desperation after my wife discovered she was pregnant with our son, we gave Booboo away to a farmer in the area who wanted Booboo and all her puppies.


When our son Andy was born, Whitey adopted him. I've never seen any dog so affectionate toward a human child. She followed him around, and when he'd stick a finger in her eye, or something similar, she'd just sit there patiently. When he could talk, he called her "My Babe." When we moved back to Montana from California, we drove a large Uhaul truck. We drove cross country with me driving, Andy next to me, my mother-in-law next to him. Syd sitting on the outside passenger side with Molly in her lap and a parakeet in a cage in a box between her feet. We towed our car behind, which was completely full, and Whitey rode on the floor of the passenger side of the towed car. Just like a bunch of Okies.


Our first home back in Montana was out by the river backwash, near the woods. Whitey loved it. She'd take off first thing in the morning and be gone most of the day, coming home for dinner. Of course she got sprayed by a skunk, and we had to pull porcupine quills from her muzzle, but she loved it. Unfortunately, a year and half later we had to move and found a house in town where the landlord wouldn't allow dogs. We tried to come up with an alternate plan, but in the end had to give Whitey to a Bigfork family.

By this point, I was finally learning that we were not being good dog owners, yet I wanted very much to do it right. I loved all my dogs (except for maybe Booboo), and it crushed me to have to give them away. I didn't want to do that anymore.

TO BE CONTINUED . . . Next: The story of Rufus