I have a dog. She’s about a year older than my son. He’ll be eleven in January. The way I’ve always heard it, one dog year is more or less equal to seven human years. So that puts her somewhere in her early 80s. While I’m partial to my son, my feelings about “Doc” have been at best ambivalent. I suppose that’s why those 80 years have seemed so long.
The pup we got some eleven years ago was meant to be a replacement for another dog that got clipped by a pickup on an icy street. For a few days we didn’t have a name for her. Our first dog’s name was “Mac” after my wife’s brother. Not wanting to break tradition we thought it appropriate that we name this lab-short haired pointer after another member of the family. The logical choice was my spouse’s father, a medical practitioner in Northern Minnesota. “Surgeon” seemed pretentious, “Physician” a little better, but yelling the name out the back door sounded as if you were yelling for medical assistance. A friend said, “Why not Doc?” short, simple, and something I and a dog could understand.
Having a new puppy is a mixed bag. The first night: the yelping. We didn’t have any kids at the time, so disturbed sleep was not something we’d grown to tolerate. “Don’t go downstairs.” My wife said, “If you do, she’ll just keep at it longer.” So I didn’t. At dawn I stumbled downstairs to enthusiastic yipping, several puddles and a couple of brown deposits; fortunately the kitchen carpeting came later.
The house we lived in that that small Iowa town was about 90 years old. We got a good deal on it; a “Handyman’s’ Special”. I started tearing it apart and putting it back together. Things went pretty well. I learned some new skills, developed a sense of what was good plumbing and carpentry practice, and the outcome was generally pleasing. I also learned how to cuss- – – profusely.
I had a good Catholic upbringing. Cursing was not something I’d developed into a refined art. A well-crafted cuss word has value
One day in the midst of a major sanding operation, Doc decided to exit the house. I had sealed off the kitchen from the living room with a sheet of clear plastic and masking tape. The dog was in the living room snoozing, and a friend came to the back door. Remember those car commercials, the ones where the latest in automotive razzle- dazzle comes bursting through a large sheet of paper? That’s kind of how Doc came through the doorway.
Standing there with a fine layer of sawdust all over me, the belt sander whining at warp eight, the air blue with various words describing Doc’s ancestry, my friend smiled sheepishly and said, “I’ll come back later.”
They had a leash law in town. Mostly it seemed to be enforced when people were planting their gardens in the spring. We rarely tied up Doc. She normally stayed around home, but there were times when she’d disappear for an hour or two.
On those occasions when she would return from her rambling, she’d carry back partial loaves of bread. We never figured out where she got the stuff. She wasn’t very discriminating; one day whole wheat, another rye, a third day butterfly rolls. The neighbors accused us of having a dog that was molesting a bread truck driver.
Things came to a head one night. The Police Chief called and said he’d gotten a report of an older lady walking home from the super market with a couple bags full of groceries who had been knocked down by a Black Lab. Bread wasn’t missing,but a five pound roast was. Did I have any ideas where my dog had been at 5:30 that evening?
I thanked him and told him I’d call him back. After figuring out that the dog had been out a short time, I called my neighbor, the city attorney. No, they hadn’t seen Doc running from the vicinity of the grocery store either.
Well, I was mortified, embarrassed, and getting a little hot until I went next door to tell my neighbors the story. They smiled, listened attentively and burst into gales of laughter.
Yeah, it was funny, but not that funny! I was still worried about the old lady!! The next thing the woman of the house came up to me, put her arm around my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “You’ve been had.” Needless to say, my confidence in law enforcement and city government were greatly diminished.
Hunting has never been a strong point with me. Living in Pheasant country however, I thought I’d give it a try. After all, I had the Black Lab, right? I invested in a .20 gauge, bought a license and started scouting some abandoned rights of way. It’d been a good year for birds, so I had some hope.
I’ve always heard friends talk how they can’t keep their dogs out of an automobile. Doc was different. We had to make sure she was tied up before we started packing the car for a trip or she’d disappear. Getting her to go hunting involved a strong grip on her collar and a heave-ho into the back seat of the station wagon.
Once she got to where we were hunting, she jumped out of the car, tail wagging, ready to go. The trip, the anticipation, worked negatively on her gut. My companions accused me of spiking her “Ken L Ration” with mineral oil.
Things went well until one of my buddies scared up a big rooster. We took aim and let go with a couple rounds each. The dog was gone. No birds, a little exercise and no dog. She went to the car. This time she willingly crawled in the back seat for the trip home.
As I mentioned before, the house I worked on was a “Handy-Man’s Special.” I rebuilt much of it. One of the areas that needed some attention was the front steps. The old ones had rotted through, so I fashioned some new ones out of sturdy pine boards. They lasted two weeks. A stray rabbits worked its’ way under the porch and Doc was determined to find it. My first clue that something was amiss was a grinding, crunching sound followed by a splintering rip. I got up from some afternoon reading and walked to the front door. Standing there, looking through the screen, I saw the carefully assembled steps in pieces that would make good kindling. In addition, several lengths of cedar siding had been munched to oblivion. The training I referred to earlier in refined cussing held up well. I was out of the door, blood pressure on the rise, hurling epithets and accusations at a retreating black figure.
Doc has slowed down a lot. She’s a lot more arthritic, groans when she gets up, and outright refuses to go out if it’s below zero. I don’t blame her.
There was a time I clocked her running alongside the car at 22 miles per hour. She seems less inclined to destroy things and more disposed to protecting the home front, a much appreciated behavior.As I have grown older I have grown a little more tolerant. Things that were big deals before don’t seem so large. Doc and I have had our differences, but we patch them up and go on.