Remembering our love of our pets at Advent.....
There
are as many dogs as people here. They come in the every shape and size,
from mouse-like yappers to huge, huge dogs. My favorites are Hershey, the
giant brown Newfoundland (he looks like the dog on Big Bird), and Thunder, a
big, black shaggy something whose bark says it all.
I adopted a dog awhile back from the shelter. I didn’t mean to. But
my son loves to go “look” (and he know I’m a sucker), so we came home with St.
George. Melanie was not immune to the children’s plea, and she ended up
with Moshe who is a lovable, lanky Corgie-Shepherd-Bassett.
I fell for George pretty hard. He had Jack Russell markings, but longer
hair, and bigger. He was all muscle and all terrier. At first it
was so good to hae his company and I loved our long walks. He always
wanted to be next to me and who doesn’t love that?
St. George had such a way of sniffing out the new neighbors. I felt like
a bystander in all his friendships. At about 6:30 a.m., an elderly man
was slowly working his way up Caldwell Avenue. He walked with that
stiffness that I see in my own future, and old man walk. As he drew close,
the man commented on what a good boy George seemd to be. He had the
accent of a man who had moved to the city from somewhere else; a working,
southern man. He had lived up the hill for th last 28 years.
“I woke up about 3:00,” he says, “and noticed that my bedroom floor, and all
down the stairs and out into the front yard was covered in lice.”
“Excuse me?”
“Lice. So I couldn’t get back to sleep and came out for a walk.”
“Uh…well, that makes sense,” I say. The dog was staring at him.
“And I walked down yonder there to the store, and on my way I counted 228
snakes, about 3 inches thick.” He made a circle with his rough hands.
“I guess we won’t walk to the store then.”
“I didn’t think you’d want him to get tangled with all those snakes, so I
thought I better warn you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
There was a paper towel wrapped around his neck. He started patting it
and George began to wag his tail in anticipation of the next story. “Ever
since I left Viet Nam (and now I’m thinking that Viet Nam never left him), I
had this cyst on my neck this big.” Another rough handed circle. “The
doctor said he wouldn’t touch it because it was so close to the nerves in my neck.
But last week, a brown recluse spider bit it, and now it’s gone. That
spider came from God.” That was my first encounter with a spider miracle
(unless you count Charlotte’s Web.)
Our
relationship did not last that long, and I’m sad. But there was something
they didn’t mention at the shelter. George was psycho. They use
words like territorial and “Alpha Dog”- I’d say he was the meanest little
asshole on four legs you ever met.
He gave me cues early on. He would want to be scratched, but if you stopped,
he would start to growl. If I got up from my chair, he would jump into it
and show his teeth if I looked like I was wanting it back. I took him in
a pet store, and he pulled a squeaky toy from the shelf. That seemed cute
enough- until he ripped the squeeker out in about ten seconds. (I was
going to pay for it anyway.) I started locking him in a room when anyone
came over, then he bit me. Then he bit my son. So…he doesn’t live
with us anymore.