the cheese stands alone

Where They Come From

Jim over at Snooze Button Dreams has a lovely story about the neighborhood dog, a sweet creature but shy as the sun on a cloudy day. Apparently someone in pup's mysterious past was cruel enough to the poor thing that it became chronically timid.
And thus was I reminded of Pepper.

Dad brought home Pepper, a confused mix of poodle and old floor mop, to comfort Mom in the recent loss of fantastic puppy ToyToy. Pepper was a loving, gentle girl who had come from a redefined version of a broken home... everytime something went wrong, they'd tried to break that something over Pepper's curly little head. After Animal Control rescued her, she'd spent a year getting used to being around people who didn't want to kick her to Cleveland everytime they got cranky. She retained only one trait of her former abuse... if you spoke around her in any tone other than sweet and kind, she peed.
I don't mean a little piddle. A minute squirt. A quick dribble.
Pepper tried to top off the reservoir if I yelled at my brother. She pissed the Yellow River if my dad hollered about a hammer/thumb issue. She nearly drowned herself when my mom got upset at her soaps one afternoon.
Pepper became a de facto outdoor dog.
But Pepper wasn't the neighborhood dog, like Jim's Nine-eye. Pepper was the mother of the neighborhood dog.

Fred was undoubtedly the ugliest dog in the neighborhood, as far as anyone could remember. He was short and squart and yellow and had that lovely underslung lower jaw that looks so good on bulldogs and Winston Churchill. Fred, like most "shave him and walk him backwards" types, had an overactive libido. Most people didn't like to visit Fred's owners, who kept him inside, because Fred would immediately hump their leg when they entered. Not just once.
Throughout the entire visit.
Visiting Fred's owners today meant laundry day tomorrow

Pepper went into surprise heat one week, just before she was scheduled to be fixed. She acquired lots of beaux, but it was Fred who fell madly in love. One day, as Pepper pranced past Fred's house, Fred's owner noticed some unusual canine behavior. Fred would trot into the back of the house to the kitchen, and stand gazing into the living room. Then he'd run and jump up on the sofa, barking madly at the picture window, on the other side of which was Pepper, striking hoochie poses on the lawn.
You see it coming, don't you? Fred's owner didn't.
On Fred's last run from kitchen to sofa, he didn't stop. He threw himself through the picture window like a shedding bullet and landed directly on Pepper.
The coitus that ensued lasted at least three hours and took two neighbors with hoses, a boy with an old rake, and the combined advice of the crowd that gathered to create interruptus.
It was like the doggy version of Jerry Springer.

Some time later, after Fred's owners had tried and failed in their lawsuit against my parents for having a "wanton pet" (which was the main reason I wanted to become a stripper, just so I could have Wanton Pet as my stripper name.), Pepper gave us a litter of pups.
One of them was the ugliest dog on the planet, making daddy Fred look like a pedigreed stud.
The boy across the street adopted him, haphazardly cared for him, and when they moved, abandoned him. Schnooter, as he was called, happily became the one-eyed, multi-colored, long fur here short fur there, fugly neighborhood dog.
He ate like a king at everyone's back door and slept like a baby on a multitude of blanketed garage floors.
I don't know what happened to Schnooter in the end. One day he was there, rooting through a pile of fresh frog parts on the riverbank, the next he was gone. I like to think he ran off to become a circus dog, or the mascot for Jerry Springer's show.

Posted by LeeAnn at November 4, 2004 07:00 AM