Okay. I’ll tell you about my brother’s dogs!
When my brother was a wee little lad of five or so, our household was without a dog for the first time in living memory (okay, our memory, which is all that matters when you’re seven), as my mother’s faithful dog had passed away that winter of exceptional old age. My mother had had to have her put to sleep because she was terminal and in pain and we lived in a place where there not only was no vet, the only possible vet was on another island and effectively impossible to reach in the winter - and was so upset by this she’d declared never again to own a dog. My brother, once he’d bounced back from Tuppence’s passing, sulked about this.
Spring passed and summer arrived, still dogless. My Oma (my mother’s mother) came for her yearly Two Week Vist. This is a family euphamism. She announced each year she was visiting for two weeks - I don’t think she ever stayed less than a month - and more usually six weeks. And she always mistook the date of her arrival and showed up a day early. To the point where my Dad took to checking the airport the day before she arrived, just in case.
My brother and I were in raptures over Oma’s visit - she spoiled us outrageously. My brother had secret plans of convincing her to help him convince my mom that we needed a new dog. And he had just the dog in mind! It was Fate! It was Destiny!
The dog in question was a stray. I’d seen this dog and I was not impressed. She was scrawny, skittish, malnourished, and apparently had the mange - or at least her hair tended to fall out in clumps and you could see her bare skin in a variety of places. And the smell. Dear God, the smell. She was too old to be truly a puppy, but can’t have been that old - awkward teenage dog all the way. And, did I mention the smell? That dog had an irresistable compulsion to find the raunchiest-smelling thing possible and then roll in it repeatedly. When we found her, she’d been carefully cultivating a several-weeks-dead sea lion and the runoff stream from the local dump. She made my eyes water.
But my brother was in love.
So we hid the dog in the neighbor’s run-down shack. And my Oma sneaked us food to give the dog - in her purse. All three of us put on our best “No-Mom-we-don’t-have-a-secret-dog-at-all” faces. We were totally not at all convincing. After two weeks of this, my mother finally demanded that her mother tell her what was going on. My Oma 'fessed up in broken German and plead my brother’s case with such eloquence that my mother agreed to at least look at the dog.
She was not impressed. Actually, she was sure this dog didn’t have long for the world and didn’t want to have to face loosing another dog again - especially so soon. To be honest, this dog certainly looked like the grim spectre of death was her constant companion. Filthy, mange, the evil stench of a thousand freshly opened graves. But she was the sweetest dog ever - she licked my mom’s face and that (and the truly pathetic look on my brother’s face) was that. We had a dog.
She bathed the dog (and that was an undertaking, let me tell you). She gave the dog a metric ton of decent food (as opposed to twinkies and liverwurst, which is what she’d been eating). She had her dewormed, checked by the vet (who was also fairly sure this dog had the proverbial snowball’s chance), and tried not to get attached.
We had that dog for 10 years until she finally passed away from cancer on autumn. She was the sweetest dog in history - but we never did manage to keep her away from rolling in nasty things. She turned into a beautiful dog - german shepard coloring, but long haired. Again, my mother declared not another dog, with tears in her eyes.
A few weeks after she passed, my brother was out cruising with some of his delinquent friends (this was a major form of entertainment for my brother at age 15). It was pouring buckets - and in Alaska in early November, that’s some damn cold rain. The wind was howling and it was absolutely filthy outside. His delinquent buddy’s car got a flat, and of course they didn’t have a jack. Or a lug wrench. Or a spare. My brother’s delinquent buddy won the coin toss so he got to stay in the dry car with the hazards on in case some good samaritan passed by while my brother got to schlep to the nearest house (several hundred yards) to use the phone to call my dad (who, being familiar with my brother’s delinquent friends, probably had all three missing items already in the back of his truck) for a rescue mission (and to explain why he wasn’t home by curfew). Turns out the guy living in the closest house had a Husky bitch with a litter. A big litter. 13 puppies. The guy, not being known in town for his compassion, was keeping the dog and her litter in a chicken-wire pen in the yard - which in the current conditions, was a frigid mudhole the approximate size of a telephone booth - only without the walls.
The guy was showing off the puppies - in the obvious hopes of flogging one off on my brother for 50 bucks. He was claiming they were “purebred” - even though only about half the litter had Husky markings - the rest were suspiciously lab-like.
He shouldn’t have bothered. My brother was in love again. With the runt of the litter. The guy didn’t even make him pay for her because “shit, boy, that one ain’t going to make it to morning, but you can come on back and git one of the live ones tomorrow”.
That freaking dog was so malnourished she couldn’t stand up for more than a minute at a time. She was shaking like a leaf and her eyes and nose were crusted shut. My brother hid her under his coat, waited for the ride from my dad and snuck her in the house. When he got her inside he said “But Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom, she was going to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeee.” My mother rolled her eyes, said “Where have I heard that before?”
She’s 16 and still living with my parents - having been left there when my brother went to college, and being more attached to my Dad than my brother anyway over the years.
I was proudest of our 4th in the open sport horse class–1st, 2nd, and 3rd were the top sporthorses in the region, ridden by top trainers and worth $30,000+. Then there was Ana and I, the top of the amateurs. The classes weren’t small, either, which was a nice bonus.
