Dogs

Sorry, this ran on a bit. At lease it is mostly photos.

I grew up in the Lassie and Rin Tin Tin era, when dogs were smarter than humans. I believe that is still often the case. There have always been dogs in my life. I reckon that holds for most of you too so, I decided to share some of my favorite memories.

Queenie, a collie, was my first. The only solid memory I have of Queenie is sitting inside her doghouse at our home on the corner of  Laurel Canyon Blvd and Terra Bella St. in Pacoima. I can remember sharing Milk Bone dog biscuits with her. A good source of roughage, possibly not the best though.

In 1955 we moved to the house/shop in Calabasas ; I was eight. I don’t think Queenie was with us for the move and the first dog I remember at 23951 Craftsman Rd. was Cleo. Cleo was a female Springer Spaniel with intellect challenges. I think that might be a bit harsh. Rather, I’d say she was easily confused and would go into a barking frenzy at the slightest hint of an intruder.

This is Cleo guarding my ’50 Ford woodie,

I remember Cleo being a bit food oriented. I used to give her the last bit of my cupcake in the paper cup and she would just inhale paper and all. She drew the line at dill pickles. You could toss her a dill chip and it would bounce off her tongue like a trampoline.

My high school sweetheart, Cathy, had two beautiful Irish Setters. I have forgotten their names.

After Cleo moved on, Dad got his first white Shepard, Niki.

 

While I was away in the military Niki moved on and Dad got Heidi.

On one of my tours Our unit adopted a mutt that we found covered with the tar we used for dust control on our flight line. One crew chief took care of him and cleaned him up. He was then named “Penta Prime”, the Army’s name for the tar.

In Calabasas our neighbor was a veterinarian, Dr. Ralph R. Reese. He was the source of any dog or cat we acquired. After I got out of the Army, I asked if he had any good dogs needing a home. He hooked me up with this guy.

I named him “Ralph”. A perfect name for a dog, it even sounds like dog speak. I didn’t answer inquires as to whether he was named after Dr. Reese or my brother. “Whatever works for you”, was my reply.

Most people thought he looked like a dingo. Not me or Heidi.

Heidi would usually prevail in the race for the frisbee and Ralph would resort to other ways of getting her to relinquish it. He was often frustrated.

One day, while I was away, Ralph ventured onto the Ventura Highway and quickly met his demise.

Soon after Teri and I were married we decided to get a puppy and a kitten. We were planning to have kids and I lobbied for our kids growing up with animals. We ended up getting a yellow lab puppy and a kitten from a litter that Dr Reese had taken in when their  mother died before the litter was weaned. Teri named the kitten rags and we agreed on “Cindy” for the puppy.

We moved to Evergreen and Cindy got run over in front of our house. Not a good start to our Colorado experience.

Roger and Claire had a neighbor with two Golden Retriever litter mates, Josh and Buttercup. When they moved to Texas they left Buttercup with Roger & Claire and took Josh with them to live in Houston. Josh was miserable in Houston so they asked if we would like to have him and would we be willing to pay to fly him back to Denver. We agreed and brought him home one day when the kids were in school. Josh was as sweet as he looks here.

When they got home Josh was asleep on the living room rug. The moment they saw him they both moved right in and started mauling him with hugs and skritches (my word). He just rolled over, stretched out and asked for more. He was the perfect dog for little kids.

Josh would dig under our fence and go on a walk-about every so often. We would always find him at Roger & Claire’s place (a few miles away ) hanging out with his brother. One day , when we were all away from home, he slipped his collar during a lightning storm and ran off. We never saw him again.

Shortly thereafter we decided to get another Golden. We heard of a guy in Evergreen that had a litter so we checked it out. There were about eight puppies and Teri said she wanted to pick ours out. I thought we couldn’t go wrong, so I agreed. She picked out the one puppy that wasn’t that excited about the two strangers who were holding all his litter mates and getting licked to death. He wasn’t afraid, just not that excited. We said we’d like to leave him there until Christmas eve so we could surprise the kids on Christmas morning.

He spent Christmas eve in a cardboard box on the floor right next to me in bed as we were worried he might start making noise on his first night away from home. He did fine but I remember spending a good portion of the night with one arm hanging off the bed into the box to dispel any anxiety, his or mine.

I have searched all of my pictures but can fine none of Mel. Teri named him Mel, short for mellow, which he certainly was.

Mel rode in the cab of the U-Haul truck we drove up the Alcan. We had planned to let him ride in our 1981 Subaru on a car trailer we were pulling but it was over 100 degrees in Denver when we left for Alaska. He ended up sitting on the engine cover in the air conditioned cab for the whole trip. He slept about 22 hours a day for the six day trip.

Mel loved McGrath, even though he had some bad experiences. He got run over by a car, attacked by two sled dogs that had broken out of their yard and the ducks almost drowned him. The ducks would often hang out in a small pond and he would jump in to join them. They could paddle faster than he could swim so they would just paddle over to the other end of the pond and wait for him to swim up to them. Then they would fly. Not away, just to the other end of the pond. Mel would just do a 180 and start out after them anew. After repeating this about four times, I could see that they were just going to keep it up until he drowned from exhaustion. I waded out and finally got his attention and coaxed him back ashore.

When we moved in to Soldotna, somebody shot him in the side. It looked like .22 caliber and was not bleeding very much, so we loaded him up and went for x-rays. You could see that the bullet or (more likely) pellet broke up and was not something the vet thought had to come out.

He lived for quite a few years after all that. He had multiple tumors all over his body, which we had checked out and most were benign. One finally got the better of him and we had to put him down. It was the first time I’d ever had to put down my dog and I never want to experience that again.

That brings us to Eli and Earl. I definitely have a lot of photos of those two. They have both been life savers for me and deserve their own story, so I’ll get started on that next. Here’s a preview:

Eli really, really, really likes to fixate on the ball.

 And he loves the beach

Here’s earl in our basic training class in Smithtown, NY.

 

Till then, keep your heads down and stay cool this summer.