A Dog’s Life
There are a lot of reasons that I don’t have a dog. Or any other pets, for that matter. It isn’t because I don’t like them. When I was a little kid, I was terrified of dogs! The Commander and Grandroobly decided that getting a dog for me was the only way to resolve that issue. The summer I was six, a stray puppy showed up on the doorstep of a family friend and pretty soon, I had a dog.
The day that Grandroobly brought the dog home, a bunch of us cousins hung out on the old log pile next to the old cabin. These were huge logs with “seats” cut out in them and you could play all kinds of games, train being the one I remember the best. Nevertheless, the afternoon seemed to go on forever.
Finally Grandroobly drove in and got a very jumpy, wiggly, little creature out of the car. Guess what? I was still scared of dogs. I don’t know what I was thinking, maybe that I’d get over my fear instantaneously? She was very friendly and everybody else had fun playing with her. I was too scared.
It wasn’t until evening, when my new puppy was asleep in her box, that I finally felt brave enough to approach her. I fell in love and that was the end of my fear of dogs. By the next day I was playing with her and picking her up and getting licked and the whole works. And by that time, she also had a name. Tigger. I think it was Radical Betty who named her but I may be mis-remembering. Why Tigger? Because Tiggers bounce! And this puppy bounced!
Tigger had a good 13 years. She was a true cabin dog and back in the day, whenever we’d hit Birch Point Road, Grandroobly would let her out of the car and she would run like the devil all the rest of the way to the cabin. She wasn’t perfect. She didn’t like the cabin milkman and she wasn’t always crazy about our friend Kevin and I think she chewed up a pair of My Dear Uncle Harry’s shoes. Dogs are dogs.
I know there are pictures of her around but I can’t find a good one, so you’ll have to make do with Ernie and his goofy looking bone. Tigger was a golden retriever-looking dog except smaller. *Lots* of fur. Oh yeah, why don’t I have dogs (or pets) now? That’s way too long for today. And not particularly politically correct either. Seeya in the next episode.