Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul (40 page)

“We’ll have to brave it out this year,” he sighed.

By Christmas Eve, only Noel and a large male remained. “They’re being picked up later,” Mrs. Brenner explained. “I know the family taking Noel,” she continued. “She’ll be raised with tons of love.”

No one could love her as much as I do,
I thought.
No one.

“Can you come tomorrow morning? I’ll be weaning new pups the day after Christmas. Mop the floor with pine, and spread fresh bedding for the new litter. Would you be a dear and feed the kennel dogs, too? I’ll have a house full of guests. Oh, and ask your dad to stop over with you. One of the kitchen cabinet doors needs a little adjustment. He did such a beautiful job that I’ll enjoy showing it off!”

I nodded my head, barely focusing on her words. The new puppies would be cute, but there’d never be another Noel. Never. The thought of someone else raising my puppy was almost too much to bear.

Christmas morning, after church, we opened our meager gifts. Mom modeled the apron Imade her in home economics with a flair befitting a Paris gown. Dad raved about the watchband I gave him. It wasn’t even real leather, but he replaced his frayed band and admired it as if it were golden. He handed me the book
Beautiful Joe
, and I hugged them both. They had no gifts for each other. What a sad Christmas, with all of us pretending that it wasn’t.

After breakfast, Dad and I changed clothes to go to Mrs. Brenner’s. On our short walk, we chatted and waved to passing neighbors, each of us deliberately avoiding the subjects of Christmas and puppies.

Dad waved good-bye as he headed toward the Brenners’ kitchen door. I walked directly to the puppy house in the backyard. It was strangely silent, no puppy growls, tiny barks or rustling paper. It felt as sad and dreary as I did. My head gave the order to begin cleaning, but in my heart I wanted to sit down on the lonely floor and bawl.

It’s funny looking back at childhood days. Some events are fuzzy, the details sketchy and faces indistinct. But I remember returning home that Christmas afternoon so clearly; entering the kitchen with the aroma of pot roast simmering on the stove, Mom clearing her throat and calling to Dad, who suddenly appeared in the dining room doorway.

With an odd huskiness in his voice, he whispered, “Merry Christmas, Kiddo,” and smiling, he gently placed Noel, clad in a red bow, into my arms. My parents’ love for me merged with my overwhelming love for Noel and sprang from my heart, like a sparkling fountain of joy. At that moment it became, without a doubt, absolutely the most wonderful Christmas I have ever had.

Toni Fulco

Taking the Zip Out of Zippy

This adventure began when Zippy went through puberty, a biological process that a small dog goes through in less time than it takes you to throw away your Third Class mail. One minute Zippy was a cute little-boy puppy, scampering about the house playfully causing permanent damage to furniture that is not yet fully paid for, and the next minute he was: A Man. When the new, mature version of Zippy sauntered into a room, you could almost hear the great blues musician Muddy Waters in the background, growling:

I’m a MAN
(harmonica part)
Yes I AM
(harmonica part)
A FULL-GROWN man.

Of course in Zippy’s case, “full-grown” means “the size of a Hostess Sno-Ball, yet somehow less impressive.” But in his own mind, Zippy was a major stud muffin, a hunk of burnin’ love, a small-caliber but high-velocity Projectile of Passion fired from the Saturday Night Special of Sex. And his target was: Earnest.

Earnest is my female dog, but she was not the ideal choice for Zippy because all of her remotely suspicious organs had been surgically removed several years ago. Since that time she has not appeared to be even dimly aware of sex, or much of anything else. Her lone hobby, besides eating, is barking violently at nothing. Also she is quite large; when she is standing up, Zippy can run directly under her with an easy six inches of clearance. So at first I was highly amused when he started putting The Moves on her. It was like watching Tommy Tadpole hit on the
Queen Mary.

But shortly the novelty wore off and I started feeling sorry for Earnest, who spent the entire day staring glumly off into dog hyperspace while this tireless yarn-ball-sized Passion Machine kept leaping up on her, sometimes getting as high as mid-shin, and emitting these presumably seductive high-pitched yips (“What’s your sign? What’s your sign?”). So I decided it was time to have the veterinarian turn the volume knob of desire way down on the stereo system of Zippy’s manhood. If you get my drift.

The next morning Earnest was limping, so I decided to take both dogs to the vet. They bounded enthusiastically into the car, of course; dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear. When I got to the veterinarian’s office they realized they had been tricked and went into Full Reverse Thrust, but fortunately the floor material there is slippery enough to luge on. So when I last saw Zippy and Earnest that morning, they were being towed, all eight legs scrabbling in a wild, backward, futile blur into: the Back Room.

When I picked them up that night, they were a pair of hurtin’ cowpokes. Earnest, who had a growth removed, was limping badly, plus I had to put a plastic bag on her leg so she wouldn’t lick her stitches off. And Zippy, to keep him from getting at
his
stitches, was wearing a large and very comical round plastic collar that looked like a satellite dish with Zippy’s head sticking out in the middle. He had a lot of trouble getting around because his collar kept hitting things, such as the ground.

For the next week, if you came to my front door, here’s what happened: You heard the loud barking of two dogs going into Red Alert mode, but you did not see any immediate dogs. Instead, you heard a lot of bumping and clunking, which turned out to be the sound of a large dog limping frantically toward you but suffering a major traction loss on every fourth step because of a plastic bag, combined with the sound of a very small dog trying desperately to keep up but bonking his collar into furniture, doorways, etc. And then, finally, skidding around the corner, still barking, there appeared the dynamite duo: Bagfoot and Satellite Head.

During this week I was not the least bit worried about burglars because if anyone had tried to break into my house, I would have found him the next morning, lying on the floor. Dead from laughter.

Dave Barry

Marty Had a Little Lamb

It was lambing season. The neighbors’ phone call brought my dad and me rushing to their barn to help with a difficult delivery. We found a lamb whose mother had died while giving birth. The orphan was weak, cold, still shrouded with the placenta, and walking on impossibly tall and wobbly legs. I bundled him up in my coat and put him in the pickup truck for the short ride back to our small family farm in rural Idaho.

We drove through our barnyard, passing cows, pigs, chickens, dogs and cats, but Dad headed straight for the house. I didn’t know it yet, but that lamb was destined to become more than an ordinary sheep, just as I was destined to be more than an ordinary seven-year-old boy—I was about to become a mommy!

Cradling the lamb in my arms, I brought him into the kitchen. While Mom and I wiped the lamb down with dry towels, Dad stoked the furnace with coal so that the newborn would have warming heat to drive away the cold. As I petted his curly little head, the tiny creature tried sucking on my fingers. He was hungry! We slipped a nipple over a pop bottle full of warm milk and stuck it into his mouth. He latched on, and instantly his jaws pumped like a machine, sending the nourishing milk to his stomach.

As soon as he started eating, his tail started wagging furiously. Then suddenly his eyes popped open for the first time, and he looked me right in the eye. He gave me that miraculous moment-of-birth look that every mother knows. The look that says, unmistakably, “Hello Mommy! I’m yours, you’re mine, ain’t life fine!”

A young boy with tousled blond hair and thick black glasses doesn’t look much like a sheep. But this little lamb didn’t care in the least. The important thing was that he had a mom—me!

I named him Henry and, just like the nursery rhyme, everywhere that Marty went, the lamb was sure to go. The instant bond we shared that first day turned into the same deep kind of connection that develops between mother and child. We were always together. I’d feed, exercise and bathe Henry. I’d scold him sternly when he got out in the road. Imagine the amazement and delight of my classmates when I had a couple of dogs
and
a sheep run to meet me at the school bus! Every day after school, Henry and I played games together until we both fell asleep, side by side, in the tall cool grass of the pasture.

As I grew up, Henry grew older. Never once, however, did he forgot that I was his mom. Even as a full-grown ram, he nuzzled me fondly, rubbing his big woolly head against my leg whenever he saw me. Functioning as a four-legged lawn mower and wool-covered dog at the Becker farm, Henry had a happy, healthy, full life for the rest of his days.

People sometimes ask me why I became a veterinarian. The answer is: Henry. At seven years old, my love for animals was still just a spark. But it ignited into a flame at that magical moment when I became a mother to a hungry little lamb.

Marty Becker, D.V.M.

The Ice Breaker

It was the perfect setting—a beautiful log house on forty acres of land. We had a solid marriage; we even had the loyal family dog. All that was missing was kids. We had tried for many years to have children, but it just never happened. So my husband, Al, and I applied to be foster parents. We decided we should start with an older child for a number of good reasons. Since we both worked, child care might be a problem. Corby, our springer spaniel—and our only “child” thus far—might be a bit too energetic for a young child to handle. And frankly, we novices were a little nervous about taking on an infant. We sat back to wait the few months they thought it might take to get a school-age child—which was why we were floored when the agency called us within weeks, just before Christmas, and asked if we would take Kaleb, a two-and-a-half-year-old boy, for a few months. It was an emergency, and he needed a home right away.

This wasn’t what we had discussed so rationally a few weeks before. There were so many difficulties—it was such short notice, we had made holiday plans and most of all, the boy was a toddler! We went back and forth, and in the end, we just couldn’t say no.

“It’s only for a couple of months,” my husband assured me. It would all work out, we told each other, but privately I was full of doubts.

The day was set for Kaleb to arrive. The car pulled up to our house and I saw Kaleb through the car window. The reality of the situation hit me and I felt my stomach tighten.
What were we doing? This child we didn’t know anything
about was coming to live with us. Were we really ready to
take this on?
Glancing at my husband, I knew the same thoughts were going through his mind.

We went outside to greet our little guest. But before we could even reach the child, I heard a noise from behind me. Turning, I saw Corby tearing down the steps and heading straight for the little boy. In our hurry, we must not have closed the door completely. I gasped. Corby, in all her excitement, would frighten Kaleb—probably even knock him down.
Oh no,
I thought,
what a way to start our first meeting!
Kaleb will be so terrified he won’t even want to go into the
house with us. This whole thing’s just not going to work out!

Corby reached Kaleb before either of us could grab her. She bounded up to the boy and immediately began licking his face in a frenzy of joy. In response, this darling little boy threw his arms around the dog’s neck and turned toward us. His face alight with ecstasy, he cried, “Can this be my dog?”

My eyes met my husband’s and we stood there, smiling at each other. In that moment, our nervousness disappeared, and we knew everything would be just fine.

Kaleb came to stay those few months. Eight-and-a-half years later, he is still with us. Yes, we adopted Kaleb. He became our son, and Corby . . . well, she couldn’t have been happier. She turned out to be Kaleb’s dog, after all.

Diane Williamson

Kids Say The Darndest Things—
About Dogs

I believe all kids should have pets. It’s an essential part of growing up. There’s a mystic kinship between a boy and his dog, a sharing of love and trust that’s unique. A boy’s dog is a pal, a companion, a comforter when tears come, and the best listener to whispered secrets. At the price of a dog tag and a bowl of food each day, a pup’s probably the biggest bargain in any kid’s life.

Children love to talk about their pets, and with characteristic freedom, they weave many a fanciful tale of improbable goings on:

There was the girl who was befuddled about the sweet mysteries of life:

“Do you have any pets?” I asked her.

“Yes—we have a dog that just laid six puppies.”

“Do you have a pet?” I asked one youngster.

“A dog.”

“Does he have a pedigree?”

“Sure, lots of them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he bites himself all the time.”

Perhaps the answer that brought the biggest laugh from our listeners on the fateful pedigree question was this exchange: