Morley wrote: ↑Wed Oct 30, 2024 4:44 pm
We had a quiet, gentlemanly, thoughtful Golden Retriever who greeted everyone with a calm enthusiasm. People would make the trip past our yard just to pet him and smuggle him dog treats. He lived a long and joyful life. We miss him every day (may he rest in peace).
After much grief when he passed, we took the leap and got another Golden. Three years in, this guy is a gigantic clown who is wild and headstrong--barking at everyone, doing pratfalls when he's reprimanded, and sulking for hours if he doesn't get his way. He's a comedian and a joy--and a huge pain in the ass. He carries every emotion that he feels an eighth of an inch beneath the surface. He scrounges the shells from the peanuts that we daily feed to our ravens, then gets sick from eating them. He has stuffed toys that he cherishes lined up on his bed, and chooses his favorite for the day to carry around and play its squeaker like it's a musical instrument. He pulls on his walks and jumps on the bed to snuggle with his nose in our necks. He's afraid of the garbage truck and knows to the minute when it's time for dinner and when we should be going to bed. I'm not sure how we would live without him.
It’s amazing how the cosmos can send us critters that are such polar opposites of what we think we need, and/or have found comfort and joy with in the past.
My last dog was a Corso/ABD mix, named Pooka after the old Jimmy Stewart movie "Harvey." She had a frump face of perpetual sorrow, and would constantly sass when she wasn’t getting what she wanted, often punctuating her sass with farts. She was 115 pounds of stand-off-ish death monster, that broke a few kennels trying to get out to eat people. She was also 115 pounds of gentle tolerance, as my son would always use her as a pillow, and a stage for playing with toys. She would pee from excitement whenever my dad would visit, and would smack herself in the face with her tail as she curled while backing up for butt scratches from my mom. She had a plethora of tricks she could perform, and was incredibly attentive to commands. When her vest or backpack was on in public, she was all business, and ready to work. Nothing existed beyond the last command she was given.
Before she passed, we got a new dog -- a pit/ABD mix, named Franklin Beans. He’s the embodiment of stupidity and weirdness. He has a blankey that he totes around, and will suckle for hours on end. Accidentally stepping on the mushy suckle portion barefoot in the night is the bane of my existence. He doesn’t listen, and is nearly untrainable. Just a sandwich of a giant noggin, a scrotum, and a little bit of dog sandwiched between the two… I think. It’s a rarity to hear his name said by me, or my son, without it followed by “bad boy.”
Dang if I don’t love the critter though. The goodest bad boy ever. The best medicine for my innards on days when I'm being haunted by a specter of myself.
Shoutout to all the pets in this thread.
