STORY ONE

A POODLE WITH A NOODLE

Her name was Dora, short for Twilight Adorable. As poodles go, she was good enough to have won a blue ribbon in her puppyhood days, that is before she was spade. She was a standard, mid-sized and clocked in at sixty-five pounds; but these were her doggie attributes. She did much better with her human ones. For one, she had smarts. After being in the family for just six months, we knew what she liked and didn't like, what she would tolerate and what she wouldn't.

For example, we knew that she didn't want to stay at home by herself. The first time we did so and returned, the place looked like it had been professionally ransacked. We said O.K. and locked her in a small utility room the next time, only to come back and find the door chewed through. So we took her along and went shopping. We left her in the car. That turned out to be a mistake. Oh the car looked in good shape, and Dora sat well behaved in her favorite front seat. The problem it turned out, was when I started the car and tried to depress the clutch pedal - there wasn't any.

She was all in all a very sensitive dog. Her feelings were easily hurt, but she had a way of getting even. For instance when she was judiciously scolded for chewing up an expensive new shoe, she just ambled away. We figured she was up to no good, but kind of lost track of her. A few hours later we went to the bedroom and discovered through a strong, peculiar aroma that she had wet our pillows, smack center. We were beginning to know her. Not only were we beginning to know her but so was the mailman. You see he delivered the mail through a slot in the front door and every time he did so, Dora would yank the mail out of his hands, and carry on somewhat fiercely, sometimes even tearing down the curtains from the front glass door. The mailman was direct and blunt in his opinion of Dora, for he said: "Lady, if I had a dog like that, I'd shoot it."

The milkman wasn't much more impressed. He made an absolutely fatal mistake one summer day by being nice and bringing in the milk through an open screen door instead of leaving it outside in the milkbox as usual. Before he could even set the delivery down, Dora made a beeline for him. He turned and darted through the screen door running for his truck with Dora hot on his heels. Unfortunately, he didn't make it. She had nipped him in the shank of his leg - and then came limping home. Luckily we made sure she always had her rabbi shots. Her memory was fantastic to the chagrin of one of her mentors. This was an elementary school boy, who together with some others, would daily pass our front porch. Naturally Dora was curious and generally watched all the goings-on. Well this particular boy had it in for her and he would deliberately run up on the porch, knock loudly, and in a predictable wiseguy fashion make faces at Dora and do anything he could to annoy her. Never fear - one sunny day, early afternoon, while we didn't notice, she escaped through the rear door. What caught our immediate attention that day however, was the screaming, yelling, and howling that came in rapid succession. We didn't know what was going on at first, but we soon found out as we ran out the back door. It seemed Dora had a plan in mind which she executed with perfection. She apparently had noticed when this particular boy walked home from school, he used our back yard as a cut through. The rest was simple. She merely laid in wait and voila, when guess who made his usual trek, she let him have it, no holds barred. We paid for the stitches, apologized profusely, lamented the action and promised to shoot the dog (fingers crossed) and since we didn't have any excess money, avoided a sure to have been lost lawsuit. Naturally, as previously mentioned her rabbi shots were always up to date.

Dora didn't make exceptions, in that way she was very fair and democratic. Take for instance the evening our son came home for a visit from the Service. He wore his uniform and after a brief exchange of welcome, wanted to see his dog. A bad mistake. Dora was upstairs sleeping with one of the girls. The room was dark we were told by a thoroughly stunned and somewhat taken aback young man clutching his hand. "All I did was reach out to pet her" he said in an unbelieving voice, and do you know what she did? he asked, still stupefied, She bit me, right through the hand!" We tried to assure him that it was probably nothing personal but perhaps traceable to the fact that Dora absolutely despised anything in uniform. As further proof of this, let me just mention the time I went to "Fill her up", at the good old friendly gas station. Dora, never wanting to miss a ride was with me, in the front seat of course. It was a chilly autumn day and I had the windows cracked just about three inches. The station attendant was very friendly. Before I could even say, "No don't," he had reached his hand in, palm down to pet the dog. With one clump she had him. Luckily it was a flesh wound and the station owner agreed, that it really wasn't my fault, thank-goodness.

Some folks said, Dora was a one owner dog, although she tolerated the rest of the family. She really didn't have much of a choice in the matter. In all fairness I guess she picked me somewhat mistakenly as, Master of the House, when in reality it was the lady of the house who wore the pants. Her choice however, didn't come without penalty. It meant full reliance on the care and feeding of one pet poodle named, Dora including numerous trips to the Vet, who without hesitation knocked her out prior to doing anything with her such as giving her shots, cleaning her ears, scaling her teeth, or emptying her gland. It also meant my bed was her bed and no mistake about it! One very cold below zero night, she wanted more of the down quilt than I had allotted her. She squirmed and fussed and spread herself out eagle-spread, deliberately making her weight such, that I couldn't pull an inch of the quilt away from under her. After a futile hour long struggle at two in the morning, and a frustrated snarling and low end growling on her part, indicating she wasn't about to give up, I said, "Oh the heck with it", to myself and moved over to the twin bed to sleep with the better half.

To further prove the one owner theory, we had a guest stay with us one time who was a very nice gentleman. He prided himself on the fact that was raised on a New England farm and was very familiar with all sorts of animals. He just loved dogs, and Dora would be no trouble at all. The truth couldn't have been more accurate. She was absolutely no trouble whatsoever. As a matter of fact, she ignored our guest completely. No matter how much he would try to coax her, or to talk to her, or call her to his attention, she would not respond one iota. She would not even give him the courtesy of turning her head or of looking at him. She just completely ignored him - as though he weren't there. Our guest became visibly more frustrated each day he spent with us. After a while, we too felt somewhat uncomfortable, since our guest had so prided himself on knowing and working with animals. Perhaps there was the rub - he didn't realize that Dora didn't consider herself in that category. At any rate, after fourteen days, our guest was happy to leave, and we sighed a sigh of relief and so perhaps did Dora.

There was just one other occasion, when we had family visit. They came some one thousand miles by car and were tired when they arrived late in the afternoon. We had an early dinner so that everyone could retire at a reasonable hour and catch up on their sleep. Well and good. We went upstairs leaving our family guests the downstairs guestroom. It sounded like a quiet and peaceful night, right? Wrong! Humans occasionally feel like they have to wash their hands, or relieve themselves, and so it happened that night. It was in the middle of the night, somewhere around three in the morning we were told the next day, that one of our visitors felt the urge to go. It was a strong urge and he didn't or couldn't pussyfoot around very much so he quickly went to the foot of the stairs in order to use one of the two facilities both of which, unfortunately were upstairs. That turned out to be a no, no. You see Dora was at the upstairs landing, no doubt protecting the sleeping family. When our guest started to place his foot on the first stair, he heard that low, deep guttural growl, together with a full drawn snare baring all those lovely scaled teeth, which immediately signaled an unmistakable danger, so much to the point, that he used his full male ingenuity and found an alternate place instead.

Well, so much for Dora, who incidentally, never missed getting her own cone at the Dairy Queen, and thoroughly enjoyed being the basketball mascot, replete with her nurses cap, at the local nursing school.

By this time, you, the reader, should be well asleep. If you are not however, and still tossing and turning, turn to Story Two please and I'm sure you'll not survive. Thank you.

©1990 Herbert Holzbauer

published @1996 edition S.p.N.LAUB

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