Thursday, June 09, 2005
Mixed Bag Of Spoodies
Let's start with Faithful hound doggies this evening. Over the years, I've had a succession of great dogs, not always with the same grand qualities, but excellent ones. I had several named "Tippy" because somehow I kept winding up with hound mixes with white tips on their tails. About 11 of our neighborhood (and non-neighborhood) dogs gathered in our yard one day and a spontaneous dogfight broke out. I was maybe 8. I had the bright idea if I kicked my way into the center of the fight, I could subdue all the doggies and they'd quit. It didn't occur to me that some of the doggies, including the boxer and doberman, could rear up and be my height, or that they could bite while in that position. Fortunately, my winter coat was taking the worst of the abuse, and with loose jeans, my legs were mostly unbitten. However, the fight was growing in intensity rather than lessening, and blood was beginning to spray from some of the dogs. I don't know where Tippy had been; but he came roaring onto the porch to get some height in his jump, and he slammed the doberman down as his way of entering the fray. He then placed himself between my legs, rotating me around with shoulder pushes, and kept the dogs off me till the madness settled and they all took off. I'd seen two dogs fight before; I'd never seen a cluster like that. It was bloody and scary, and many of the dogs were limping or had chunks of fur gone and were bleeding quite a bit. I didn't realize how bad Tippy had it till I got off him. A big smear of blood was on my pants leg from several cuts in his hip; a piece of his right ear was gone. I couldn't even find it. His muzzle was bitten all over the place, his lips were bleeding. He didn't seem to care. He smeared a bloody lick up the side of my face.
Mom had been trying to sleep off a bad headache, and hadn't heard a thing. When I woke her up, she refused to take my word for it I wasn't hurt; she peeled me down to my underwear, and discovered except for some bruised areas, I hadn't been hurt at all. She cleaned me up, put fresh clothes on me, and attended to Tippy. He needed considerably more time and care, but in the end, other than scars, he was ok, too. Now, the strange part; we moved to a bigger, nicer house a few blocks down. Tippy stayed most of one night in the new house, then vanished. We hunted him down, found him at the old house. Took him home again, and again he left. When new people rented the house, he ingratiated himself with them till they took him in as their dog. Tippy wasn't on my routes to various places, so I seldom saw him. If I did, I'd stop my bike, he'd come over to be petted, seemed happy to see me. But when I left, he'd go back to "his" porch and lay down. About every 3 months, he'd come walking down the sidewalk to our house, hang out with us for a while, accept a bit of food, then he'd give doggie kisses and head home around dark.
Normally, I understand just about everything about dog behavior; but I've never seen or heard of a dog who was attached to a place like that. The day we left Oklahoma for Florida, with our own recently-acquired corgi/terrier mix, Sweetie (long story for another time), I saw him in his yard, guarding the resident's kids.
Now Sweetie was 25 pounds of fearless animal. Like I said, another time. After her came Stardust, wonder dog in her own right, Dorado, my insane golden retriever, and for the last 13 years, Sebastian, or Basher as everyone knows him. Basher's exploits will be blogged about by me for a long time, but yet again, this ain't it, not entirely. But over the years, Basher has LOVED to bark angrily at the door, letting me know evil's afoot outside, and he wants to go put a stop to it. His method of stopping evil takes many forms; he once whipped two rottweilers and chased them home. Alligators LIKE to eat dogs, but when a 3-footer let its appetite rule over its good sense, he killed it. Somehow, he knew instinctively that raccoons are dangerous to fight. He'd get them running, jump into the air, and land mouth first on the nape of their necks where he could hoist a full-grown 'coon off the ground and shake it like a rat. He's killed poisonous and non-poisonous snakes with a determined joy that's awesome to watch. Unfortunately, he's discovered how to bite a possum so that he leaves it paralyzed in the rear, then kills them at his leisure. I discourage this, but he does it anyway. He will ignore two men arguing; but a man and woman or two women, he'll wedge himself between them and bark non-stop till they stop. He won't take a backhand to the chops as a sign to stop; if anything, that makes him bark louder and more frequently.
But tonight, he was using that wonderful nose to sniff along the bottom of the door, and bark loudly at whatever was bothering him. I pulled on some short pants and we crossed paths as he headed for the side door, where the yard is fenced in; I knew, irrevocably, that Basher was feeling his age; he didn't want a face-to-face with whatever was outside, he wanted to be in the safe confines of his fence so he could bark ferociously and let whatever it was know that it was lucky he was fenced in or he'd really be kicking ass. It was all moot for now, anyway; whatever had been bothering him was long gone by the time we got outside.
He barked a few times just to be sure, peed on the mailbox post, and strutted back into the air conditioning, mission accomplished.
You're a ferociously good writer, but when you make a beautiful chocolate layer cake, you must leave room between layers for the icing! Do not sit on the cake and fuse the layers!
Or if you don't like chocolate metaphors, perhaps you'll appreciate the old proverb that "music is the space between the notes." By the same token, an internet post is the space between the grafs.
On to more important matters...
Your post reminds me of our family's dog, Velcro, who was a wuss compared to your dogs. Although a fine watchdog, Velcro was a mix of terrier and spaniel-- way too noisy and excitable. Luckily, he hadn't inherited the spaniel trait of pissing when excited, but he did like escaping our yard to roam the neighborhood, much to the consternation of neighbors. Velcro was never fixed, you see, and we have no idea how many bitches he sperminated.
Velcro had one good male dog-friend: another mixed-breed named Seagram (yup, named after the drink) who lived next door. Seagram and Velcro, in their heyday, enjoyed running up and down the fence that separated them. One time, Seagram taught Velcro a new behavior: tearing around the yard in tight circles at full speed.
This was, I gather, the canine equivalent of spinning doughnuts with a motorcycle on someone's front yard. Once Velcro internalized the behavior, the two of them would peel off and run circles-- sometimes together, sometimes taking turns. Strange, strange stuff. From overhead, it must have looked like figure-eights. Prison yard behavior.
Velcro lived to be 15. Dad and I buried him in the backyard (probably not legal), and I surprised myself by weeping for the little feller, with whom I'd never really gotten along. Velcro hadn't been a particularly friendly or cute dog, but in the end, I guess it didn't matter what the quality of our relationship was; after fifteen years, his death was a simple loss.
Velcro is survived by Mozart, who for years spent time in our downstairs laundry room as Velcro's prison bitch. The cat would walk by the spot where Velcro was chained for the night, then Velcro would leap on him, hug him from behind, and... you can guess the rest. Lots of yowled protestations.
I may have told you this, but Mozart's got one eye. Lost it in a fight when he was about a year-and-a-half old, back when he didn't know shit about the neighborhood cats and how good their kung fu was. Came home one day with a lacerated cornea; it didn't look deep, so we made the mistake of waiting two days-- bad move.
The eye was a goner. It puffed and leaked humors until Mozart looked like the Terminator, and we took him to the local cat hospital, where the vet scolded us for waiting so long. They ended up snipping both ends, removing his eye and removing his livelihood. Mozart's been a fat and happy cat ever since.
Mozart, like your Xena, is an efficient killer. He's downed birds, and since our neighborhood seems to be stocked with rabbits, he's downed a few of those, too.
One time we opened the rear sliding door, which leads to our patio, and saw a horror-movie rabbit carcass lying there on the patio floor, completely gutted from below the sternum. The rest of the rabbit was whole: the head, the chest, the hind legs-- everything was there but the entrails. It was the weirdest kill I'd seen... almost as if the cat had tried to prepare the carcass human-style for us. Too bad he didn't skin the bunny, but that might've been asking for too much.
Mozart's pretty damn old now-- about thirteen, which is old for cats. I wonder if I'll see him one last time before he dies. Last time I was in the States, I saw he was down to one fang. One fang to match his one eye, eh? Dad tells me he prefers softer foods these days, which is understandable.
He's the only cat I've truly liked. I'm not usually one for cats, but Mozart was friendly. Didn't mind being held; liked hanging around people. Always made those tribute-kills. If Mozart dies before I have a chance to see him again, I'll likely feel sad for him, too.
And the hell of it is that most Korean folks here won't understand! A pet is just a damn animal here. Well, OK, not all Koreans think that way, but most do.
Kevin
PS: How did the pets get their names? Velcro was named for the ripping sound his claws made on the carpet when he was a puppy. Mozart, a beautiful gray long-hair with white feet, was named after his musical yowling.
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