The Wonder Pup – Part One

Posted on November 4, 2014

“Why do we have all… these… animals?” A real question flung out into space by parents just like us all across the face of America.

All of our children were raised with pets in the home. For the most part this was a good thing. There were those days however, when I wondered.

Over the years we have racked up quite the array of species who have called our house home. Let’s see: dogs, cats, fish, birds, a rabbit, hamsters, gerbils, mice (in a cage), guinea pigs, and turtles. Some of these have left indelible marks on us because of their love and devotion to us. Others simply lived here, ate the food, and either moved-on or passed-on. For me, however, there is one pet so infamous I am scarred for life. His name was Chet.

We purchased Chet for a reasonable price and were very excited to get this basset hound for our family. We loved the look of him from the start and all of us took to him immediately. He had the usual basset hound coloring, and a mild-mannered personality to go with it. It was a home run for us and he was the center of attention. He loved all the kids, both our kids and the rent-a-kids Marm watched in daycare. One small problem cropped up though. In his exuberance he would jump up with his front paws and knock them flat. Bassetts are low to the ground, but are hefty. When they jump up they have some girth behind them. The kids went sailing when this happened.

Chet was now an outside dog during the day. We made a comfy spot for him off the edge of our front porch and tethered him there. All seemed well. WRONG! He was a hound dog. Bassetts howl…loudly. No amount of encouraging, threatening, promising, or the like curbed his noise. He wanted off the tether and that was final! We caved and let him off. Big Mistake! Huge!

To top things off it was now autumn and the rain began to fall. We weren’t worried about him getting wet since he had the entire covered porch to lay on. Again WRONG! He chose the mud. He lay there like a pot-belly pig in heaven. He had dug out a shallow hole in the flower bed the size of his body and lay there in the rain. Dumb dog. After some encouragement from Marm, I built him a doghouse. I proudly placed it on the porch out of the weather and introduced him to it. I showed him the nice construction, dry comfy blankets inside and the roof overhead. I pushed (forced) him inside so he could get the true feeling of its warmth. Minutes later I found him in the wet muddy hole again. He never used the doghouse, ever.

This was our winter. We worked hard trying to keep him warm, dry, and feed. Curbing his howling was top of the list. We were hopeful that once spring arrived things would be easier. Again WRONG!

Spring did arrive and we let Chet roam. It was the only way to keep him quiet. One morning we awoke to a horrifying sight.  Looking out at our front yard we saw it covered with the oddest items: a coat, a boot (just one), a shoe (again just one), a potted plant, a plastic bag filled with garbage, a baseball mitt, and a random sock or two. Chet had raided the neighborhood during the night. He was a canine kleptomaniac. I looked at Marm and said. “What are we supposed to do with this stuff now? We can’t take it back, we don’t even know where he got it.”

(To be continued…)