Just for sugarcoatedlie ...

[seldnei]

sugarcoatedlie posted yesterday about the football player who was arrested for dog fighting--well done, police!--but it led her to all kinds of sad stories about dogs and she got kind of bummed. She's a dog lover, is Miss T. And while I do not want to in any way de-emphasize that dog fighting is evil (actually, doing that sort of thing with any animal is just wrong and horrible), I thought a happy dog story was in order. It's also a slightly evil dog story, but in a good way.

My Dad had a friend in our neighborhood: R. R. was elderly and had had dogs before, but he lost his pet to old age and was doing that sad kind of fading thing that can sometimes happen when people get older, live alone, and lose their pets. (This is not starting out happy--hang on.) Now, another neighbor up the road had this small dog and no longer wanted it. Dad felt that this would be the perfect dog for R. R. disagreed. He didn't want another dog; his last dog was it because there was no dog that could ever replace him. This stream of protest continued until Dad arranged for R. to meet the new dog.

Love!

So there's R. with his scrappy little mutt, and Dad with his behemoth malamute/Belgian shepherd mix. And eventually Dad's dog passes away from old age. "No more dogs!" says Dad.

Now, there's a bar up the road from where my parents live, and R. has a daily drink up there. And the bartender has a German shepherd that she can't keep anymore, as she's moving to a new place. She'd like to give him to someone she knows will take really good care of him. Next thing you know, R. is telling Dad about the dog. "No more dogs!" says Dad. "My dog was the best dog, and there can be no other dog as good as he was."

"Just meet the dog," says R. "Maybe you can think of someone who could take him."

So Dad agrees, and they go to meet the dog.

Revenge!

And that, my friends, is how Mac the Dog joined the family. He had ten really great years with my parents, and both my grandmothers adored him, and while he's gone now too, he left me with a lot of happy doggie stories. Like how he learned to flip Dad's book shut with his nose when he wanted to go out. When we stayed with my parents after grad school, Scott would take the dog out, as well, so if Dad wasn't around he'd come get Scott. And if Scott was playing his Game Boy, Mac would try and flip the Game Boy shut with his nose.

He also loved to chew on tennis balls. And every so often, if you took him into the back yard, he felt the need to RUN. So he'd run around and around the shed in the back yard--and he was a really big shepherd, so he'd run with this galloping noise. On this particular day, Scott and I were pulling up amaryllis bulbs for my mother while the dog swooped past us on his orbit around the shed. Scott, a bulb hanging from his hand by the leaves, turned to say something to me; the blur that was Mac snatched the bulb from his hand and skidded to stop. He gave the bulb an experimental chew--once, twice--then spit it out and gave us this look like, "What the hell kind of tennis ball is *that*?!"