Dog Stories

I believe it was Shakespeare who said something to the effect 'Never trust a person who doesn't love music.' In a way my wife Alice and I agree. But we were discussing the other evening what we thought was the absolute essential for us in evaluating any person. Surprisingly we came up with the same thing. 'We can't REALLY like a person who doesn't love and have a pet. Like a dog or cat.

And why? Well, even more than humans at almost any stage, a pet is the most helpless. Not only physically, but in understanding. You kick a child, and maybe they can 'rationalize' it, now or later in life. But a cat or dog; they just feel the pain, the fear and the insecurity.

Both my wife and my familes felt the same.Probably the only times in my life when I might have been taken to the local lockup involved dogs.My brother Bob (Bunny,as every one called him) and I were playing baseball 'catch' in our yard oner day when I was nine and Bunny was eleven.The man who lived in the house right behind us came yelling out of his house whipping his dog with a belt. No doubt for some misdead like peeing on the man's carpet. Looking back today---the fence is still there---I don't see how we jumped it. But we did. I had a ball bate and Bunny had himself, a super athlete and strong as any kid in our neighborhood. We ran up to the man, I, with a bat, Bun with just himself. Conversation: Bun and I: 'You hit that dog one more time and we'll knock every tooth out of your ugly face!!! The man ran into his house. The dog stayed in his yard and we never heard him yelp in pain again. Did the dog whipper call the police to have us taken 'in' for dangerous threats. No. And he soon moved away.

My second escape from the law occured about 17 years ago. I was sitting on a bench in my front yard about thirty feet from our quiet residential street. A man and his wife came down the street with their "fashionable" dog on some type of lease.Apparently, the couple were "training" the dog. It was a big dog, and everytime it walked in front of the couple, the man would jerk hard of the lease and the dog would rear back in pain.Good training, I guess. I yelled "Hey, buddy, come here." He came over , with his wife, to my bench. " Listen, buddy, pull on that chain again and I'm going to take it off your dog and put it around your neck, walk you down the street, and jerk it every five steps!!!" They left and, at least, never came down my street again. Did they call the law? No.

Real close scrapes with the law? You bet. But both threats on my part and Bun's were in the interest of helping, at least for a short time, those least capable of defending themselves.

In my next several posts, I'm going to pay tribute to Alice and my 'best' friends. Our human pets.