O: "My childhood dog was the best dog ever, no contest."
My dog was too good to even be called a dog. Can't even compare her to anybody else in the dog category.
This is my totally awesome dog, PB, modelling an Elizabethan collar I made for her. PB and I ran an after-school daycare together from when I was 9 to when I was 12, in which we supervised 5 little kids; my brothers and three kids named Randy, Sandy, and Andy. When it was high time for someone to tell me about the birds and the bees, neither of my parents nor my older sisters had the guts, so PB barked out the whole story for me.
PB, as far as I could tell, didn't even poop, she was so amazing. -- As opposed to Andy, who was a really late learner in the toiletting department -- the only thing that I would not do, besides make any money, in running the daycare/camp, was wipe Andy's butt -- it was the single thing that was so repulsive to me my mother could not trick me into believing was my responsibility.
We also had Lucy, the dog in the background, who was just an ordinary dog. She's not looking at me in this pic because she was humoring me about the Elizabethan collar. She was ... a QUEEN!
O: PB looks similar to Crystal, my dog, she must have been a good caretaker.
Oh, yeah, she'd round those kids up and bring 'em into the paddock like nuthin.
G: My dog would've gladly rolled around in your dog's feces, for mine was a believer in canine equality,
Me: NO NO NO! Not equal, no poops ... (I grew up in a woods, with oak leaf litter all around, as pictured ... we let her out, we let her back in ...)
PB was a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, with papers showing how she's related to Queen Elizabeth.
PB was more Goku than that. She howled whenever the town's fire whistle went off, and she'd pretty much bark until you figured out what she was talking about. We fed her food in a margerine tub, and when it was empty, she would bring it into the living room where we were watching tv, turn her head sideways, and fling it up into the air until we paid attention, and weighted it down with food again. One could imagine most of what she said could have been prefaced with "hey dummay," except she was a real lady. I try to emulate her, that way.
She would like you, mainly in a kind of watching-over-you way; but if you pointed something at her in a gun-like fashion, she would go ballistic. I taught her loads of tricks in just a few afternoons, rollie-over, do-a-donut, which-hand-is-it ... My family would show her off, but let her get sloppy, and I'd have to have another session to make the tricks military-sharp again. She hung with me because I was the stray sheep, and probably bcs I was the most interesting to her.
She would fetch, but only about 4 times, saying, "this is getting repetitive." She was terrible at kickball, and would waddle around the infield with complete disregard for which trees were bases. She was pretty short, and only blocked grounders. She also didn't ride a bike, which was a big difference between us.
Our other dog, Lucy, was a beagle. We kept her on a chain in a pen, but she would still get out. She'd climb the mesh and squeeze out though a gap in the top, and either get off the chain or hang there, grabbing the wire from the outside, until we found her, or run away, and go baying across the small ridge at the back of the woods, and there wasn't any sense trying to catch her until she ran it off. Besides eating and trying to get away, she didn't do much. She was always quivering with nerves. My oldest sister took her to 4H dog training classes, but she never learned a single thing.
One of PB's pups lived up the street, and he would fetch forever, all the time. He was always trying to balance a soggy tennis ball on top of your shoe, no matter what you were doing. You'd be all gathered around a car hood, trying to figure out how to replace a head gasket, and he'd go around an put the ball on top of each person's foot, in turn, even if they were lying down. One track mind, that dog.
Yes, the ball is like the talking stick, the ball is representative of the relationship sustained; even when the ball is stopped, it is in motion. The ball is with you and with me ...
My mother only wanted me to have one friend, a dopey try-hard who got the same grades as me but had to study 3-4 hours a night to do it ... a dog is better ... I am embarrassed to say how long it took me to realize, "This is, very likely, never going to stop sucking."
I had to leave PB when I went away to university. I didn't really ever move back again. I regretted leaving her there. A month after she died, my mother called and claimed PB was driven crazy by locusts, stopped going outside, and ... blah, blah, insane b.s., blah. ... Actually, I can imagine PB barking ferociously at the locusts settled in the trees ... if you've ever experienced it ... the whole woods throbs with the constructive interference of the swarm singing. Maybe it could drive a dog dead-crazy.
