I've been avoiding politics of late | Main | More stories

November 20, 2004

Dog Stories

Pam has a wonderful story of a short meeting she had with Standard French Poodle. I bet most of us have memorable dog stories. Thought I'd share one of mine.

When I was 5 years old, all I wanted for Christmas was a puppy. I was thrilled when Blitzen, a 6 month old dachshund, was under the tree in his little dog bed. I know, it's supposedly not cool to give children puppies for Christmas, but I think that responsible parents can present their children with a dog on a holiday without any horror stories occurring.

Blitzen came from a lovely breeder - she showed dachshunds all over the country and insisted on personally approving the families interested in one of her dogs. This was not a puppy mill. Mom and Dad had taken my sister and I out to Brentwald Kennels in the fall. Mrs. Patrick, the owner, had a special kennel area just for puppies in training for show, or in the case of Blitzen (not a good show dog - born with a kink in his tail), puppies that were available for adoption. There were 3 or 4 puppies in each run, and she put my sister and I in a run to observe how we treated the puppies. We must have passed, since she allowed us to have Blitzen, but I didn't know about it until Christmas.

Unfortunately, my mom and dad asked a neighbor to take care of Blitzen for a few days before Christmas. This was unfortunate, because they had also recently bought a puppy, who had distemper. A couple of days after Christmas, Blitzen came down with distemper (he was not done with all his puppy shots). My mom, who was *not* an animal lover, brought him through the illness and he survived to live to 16.

Blitzen considered himself a great hunter. Our house backed up to a large wooded area and a creek (the backside of an all boys high school, Chaminade).
There were critters back in those woods. Blitzen found and delivered to us at least 10 different box turtles during his life (all alive and scared to death) and one huge snapping turtle. (I have no idea how Blitzen got him to the back patio, but he did).

Blitzen also collected beer cans. There were a few wild teenage parties back in those woods, and he would search out any beer cans and carry them proudly up to my dad. Daddy didn't mind if they were Falstaff Beer cans (that is where he worked), but if it was any other brand, Blitzen didn't get to keep them.

One year, at Easter, some friends of my parents (I'm sure mom and dad thought them very evil), brought my sister and I a pair of ducklings. Yankee and Doodle. They imprinted on Blitzen, and followed him everywhere. Amazingly, Blitzen let them live. He was a good hearted dog, and never killed any critter that I'm aware of.

In the summertime, my dad would come home from work, he and mom would have a cocktail (they called it toddy time) and then the whole family would go for a walk around the neighborhood. Mom, Dad, my sister, me, Blitzen and Yankee and Doodle. More then a few neighborhood men put their after work cocktails down the first time they saw the Healy ducks following the Healy dog and family.

Blitzen was a great dog. Dachshunds are great dogs, at least the full size ones! I'm not much of a fan of miniaturized sized dogs.

I'd love to read your dog stories, too.

Posted by Beth at November 20, 2004 11:43 AM

Comments

Posted by: s at November 20, 2004 12:11 PM

Posted by: pam at November 20, 2004 12:26 PM

Posted by: pete at November 20, 2004 2:02 PM

Posted by: BeeBee at November 20, 2004 3:03 PM

Posted by: Allan at November 21, 2004 12:00 AM

Posted by: Earth Girl at November 23, 2004 8:42 PM