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Saturday, June 18, 2005
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 Saturday, June 18, 2005
started 6/18/2005; 12:00:05 PM - last post 6/20/2005; 8:21:09 PM
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Doc Searls - Saturday, June 18, 2005 
6/18/2005; 4:00:05 PM (reads: 6373, responses: 3)
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Card 
Pets
| | I knew yesterday, the 17th of June, had some significance, but I couldn't remember what it was. Somebody's birthday, I thought. |
| | It was a few minutes ago (4:07am, approximately), when I was flipping yesterday to today on the blog, that I realized it was Sparky's birthday. |
| | Sparky was my dog. My father gave him to me on July 29, 1956, my 9th birthday. |
| | Of course Sparky wasn't just my dog. He belonged to the whole family, I supppose; but he was most loyal to my mother, who did more than the rest of us to feed and take care of him. My relationship with Sparky was basically: fetch. |
| | The fetching did not involve a ball or a stick. It involved Sparky. Mostly, Sparky ran away. If we didn't tie him up or trap him indoors, Sparky's main purpose in life was to run away. It was a game for him: he ran away, and I ran after him. He wasn't usually hard to find. What Sparky wanted when he ran away was sex. I didn't understand that at the time. I just knew he'd be looking for other dogs. |
| | This was the 1950s. Neutering male dogs was a rarity. Every so often my father would say something about "getting Sparky fixed," but he wouldn't explain exactly what that meant. I knew it wasn't as bad as "put to sleep," but that it wasn't good, either. |
| | Our prior dog, Kim, was a strong male mutt my father picked up at the pound, which was the basement of a guy named Kahn who lived two streets away. The first time I held Kim's leash, he dragged me on my belly the length of our back yard. I was six. |
| | When Kim ran away, he always went back to the pound. But in the summers, when we lived in the South Jersey woods, Kim had no specific destination. I got a lot of practice for chasing Sparky by chasing Kim. I just found this picture of Kim, in a wheelbarrow with myself and my sister Jan. I'm holding him by his collar from behind. This was in 1955, when I was eight. Kim was killed by a car that summer, and we buried him in a little graveyard for pets that we made in the woods behind my grandmother's house. |
| | Sparky was killed by a car on Labor Day night, 1957. He ran away that evening and didn't come back. I remember hearing brakes squealing out on the main road a couple of times and hoped it didn't mean the worst. The next morning, my father told me the bad news. He and my cousin Ron (on the left in that last picture) found Sparky dead at about midnight, and buried him right after that. I had seen Kim dead — he didn't look that bad. I could only assume that Sparky didn't fare as well. Pop and Ron wouldn't talk about it. Sparky wasn't much over a year old. |
| | One of the popular songs at that time was "Tammy," by Debbie Reynolds. For years I couldn't stand hearing it because it brought back the heartbreak of losing Sparky. |
| | Last week I sat next to Debbie Reynolds on a plane from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. That's what I thought for the first twenty minutes, anyway. The woman was a dead ringer. Turned out it wasn't Debbie, so she was spared my dead dog story. |
| | A couple years after Sparky died, my father brought home a small neutered female fox terrier that had already produced two sets of puppies and a proven history of not running away. She came with the ironic name "Sissy," and immediately defended my mother from all threats, real or imagined. On the day he brought her home, my father reached over to hug my mother and found Sissy chomped onto his arm, growling. |
| | Sissy was a great dog, but she wasn't my dog. I only had one dog after that: a small black labrador mutt I picked up my senior year in college. Her name was Pogo. We had to give her up when we moved to an apartment that didn't allow pets. She laid her head on my lap all the way over to her new owners' house. It was clear she knew what was going on. It was a sad moment, but I was sure she'd be loved by her new owner: a little boy whose father was an FBI agent. |
| | When I raised my first round of kids, in the 70s and 80s, we had a series of cats, all of which died awful and sometimes expensive deaths. |
| | Last night when I was putting my eight year old boy to bed, and we were saying our prayers, we talked about how lucky we were, compared to many people in the world, and how we should be grateful, and care about the needs of others. You know the drill. "I love our family," he said. And added, "Sometimes luck is beautiful." He's a sweet kid. |
| | Is it lucky he doesn't have pets? |
| | Maybe. The decision not to have any isn't based on experience with losing so many of them. It's a matter of convenience. Our lives are busy enough. |
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Marty Heyman - Re: Saturday, June 18, 2005
6/18/2005; 9:10:36 PM (reads: 673, responses: 0)
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I'll give you a good reference with a breeder of long-haird miniature dachshunds up in Aptos. They live 14 - 18 years and they're small enough to go in a carrier under the seat in an airplane. More importantly, they're good little lap dogs with a penchant to chase the squirrels and tell you about potential burglars. Not as good a kisser as some other breeds but very loyal.
IMHO, your son needs a memory like the one in the blog entry.
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Dean Landsman - Re: Saturday, June 18, 2005
6/19/2005; 12:21:38 PM (reads: 900, responses: 0)
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June 17th was a big day around here, too: my parents' 60th wedding anniversary.
Our family didn't have pets most of the time, although stray dogs seemed to know that food and milk (little did we know) was always available if they hung out on our porch. One pooch I named Jasper was a regular visitor, practically a family pet, until he disappeared and never came back.
There were two prevailing theories among us kids (me, my sisters, the neighbor kids) and one more salient theory held by the adults, regarding what had happened to Jasper.
The two kid theories were these:
Jasper had been dognapped by that weird geeky science
experimenting kid who only came out of his house to go
to school, and had perished in some horrid lab endeavor
including chemicals, firecrackers, and who-knows-what;
Jasper had been taken by aliens, was being used for either
evil experiments or was actually *one of the aliens* and
had returned to their martian (sic) form and was telling
them all about the generous earthlings from Avon Road .
Yeah, we all figured Jasper might have just run off, or maybe have been adopted by some other family where he got food, water, and maybe even more stuff.
The adults, sound and reasonable in their thinking, offered up the following possibilities:
Jasper had either been run over, picked up by the dog
catcher (nb: we never ever saw a dog catcher in those
parts of the outer-borough burbs of NYC), or had grown
bored of our offerings and went on to other places to
seek his doggie fortune.
What drove us kids nuts was that we'd really adored, loved and nurtured this pooch, and then one day he was gone without a trace.
In later years my family got a dog, then another one. I had a dog (she came from the NC State Experimental Farm!) of my own, who saw me through singlehood, marriage, the birth of my first child. She was, or so it seemed then and still does now, irreplaceable.
My kids and their mom have a dog, who has doggie instincts that let him know that I am a member of the family -- he never growls at me, and always warmly welcomes me to their abode. So do the kids, as opposed to their mother, who does growl and is never too very pleased to see me nor to welcome me to the aforementioned abode.
Now I have a cat. This cat acts a lot like a dog, but is a Feline, not a Canine. Cats are much easier than dogs. But nowhere near as much fun.
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Henry Joe Peterson - Re: Saturday, June 18, 2005
6/21/2005; 12:21:09 AM (reads: 709, responses: 0)
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I loved reading that, Doc.
Thanks.
HJP
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