Hello Granny,
What a pleasure to be asked to talk about my best friends. I feel like
I should be paying you!
I was never much of a dog person. as a matter of fact, never much of a
pet person. They were OK, but didn't evoke strong feelings either way.
Until I started dating a dog owner in the late '80's.
She had a nice dog who was a gimp named Freddy. She lived in an in-law
and the folks above also had a dog - a black and white Springer
Spaniel named Roxie. I was warned that she didn't like men. However,
on our first meeting, Roxie sat at my feet, gazed into my eyes and I
swear she said "Finally, someone I can talk to." I didn't know they
could do that!
We all became the best of friends and it didn't take long until I
realized I needed a dog of my own. I spent fully six months searching,
learning about breeds (where was Google Answers?) and visiting pounds.
I almost fell for an Irish Setter named Charlie, but realized he
needed a better ball player than I.
No matter what, it kept coming back to having to have a Springer, so I
set out to find which one. Read an ad in the Sunday paper and visited
a South American family that had to move and couldn't take their 5
month old Springer with them. This pup was almost too energetic and
while fun, seemed like she might be a handful. She was all over me.
I left to go think about it and got about a block away when I realized
I had been adopted and turned around and wrote a check. This dog had
me so hooked, I didn't even mind when she barfed up M&M's all over the
back seat on the way home.
Immediately, I had a problem. The dog had been named Sara, which was
my daughter's name. When I called, they both came! This wouldn't do.
Being in the prime of my Grateful Dead years, I dug out the Grateful
Dead songbook. She wasn't an Althea, wasn't a Bertha, wasn't a Queen
Jane. When I got to "Loose Lucy", that was it. She immediately seemed
to know her name.
Loose Lucy is my delight
She comes running and we (play) ball all night
Round and round and round and round
Don't take much to get me on the ground
She's my yo-yo, I'm her string
Listen to the birds on the hot wire sing
Chorus
Singing yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Singing thank you, for a real good time
"Loose Lucy"
words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
She and Roxie and Freddy soon became close friends. As a matter of
fact, as soon as she was about a year old, Freddy taught her to
Dumpster Dive. Seems the neighbors always had pizza on Tuesday nights
and there were always left-overs.
For her first birthday, I decided to throw here a party at the local
off-leash dog park. I made a cake. Not knowing what to do, I crumbled
Milk Bones, added an egg and some butter and made a crust. I filled it
with hamburger and rolled some hamburger to make the name "Lucy" in
cursive on top. Unfortunately, after baking, the name looked like Lucy
had made it herself, if you know what I mean :) But the dogs seemed to
like it anyway and didn't notice the resemblance to, uh, something
else.
When Lucy was two, we were walking at a dog park when someone came up
to us and asked if I wanted Lucy in a calendar? Taken aback, I asked
what it paid. They said $100 and I said let's go.
We went to a photo studio and they brought in a white baby grand
piano. They had me pose Lucy as if playing. I felt badly for the
piano, but we got "the" shot in maybe three takes. Shortly thereafter,
she became Miss March on a yearly funny pets calendar. The caption
read "Johann Sebastian Bark". I've uploaded the picture for your here:
www.well.com/~rebop/lucy.jpg
She will always be Miss March 1993 for me, and the calendar page never
changes on my office wall. Takes a few people back when they can't
figure out what day it is.
Indirectly, Lucy was almost the cause of my first coronary. We bought
a house in 1996, moved in with a friend and her dog Sammy. Obviously,
looking at a month or so of arranging, unpacking and getting settled,
the absolute first thing that had to be done was installing the dog
door. I hired a contractor and he worked even as the moving company
was unloading.
He cut through the house and in about a half hour came to see me. He
said "Do you know your house is made of Styrofoam?". I asked what he
meant and he showed me the cut out piece and indeed, it was mostly
Styrofoam. I thought I had just bought the world's largest and most
expensive computer monitor box!
Now, my real estate agent had suggested rather strongly we have a
"whole house inspection". I refused. This was brand new construction,
on a slab, must have had all permits and what could possibly be wrong?
Why spend the $3-500?? I had no idea the house was 2 x4's covered with
2 inches of Styrofoam, chicken wire and a half inch of stucco. I felt
duped and concerned.
I called friends, emailed, asked on public forums and found out is an
acceptable modern construction method as long as I'm not in an
earthquake zone. But I had panicked. I still have nightmares sometimes
of my realtor shaking a finger and saying "You should have had a whole
house inspection." Had it not been for Lucy, I'd probably be
blissfully ignorant about this to this day.
There are probably dozens more stories about my best friend and I. She
is not as active as she once was now at 13 1/2 and no longer wedges
between me and a date to push a lady friend off the couch....but
that's another set of stories.
By the way, do you know what the difference is between kids and dogs?
Kids grow up.
Thanks for asking me to share Granny. Do check Lucy's calendar pinup.
Fondly,
-=clouseau=- |
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