Teaser ...

Ok, so here it is.  A little taste of the book for you to sample. A little snippet of what's to come.  Are you in? 

With a little luck and some patience it will be available March 1, 2012.  Thanks for reading!!

In the Beginning

I’m a dog person.  If I have to explain it to you, you probably aren’t one.  A sketchy definition, you ask?  I prefer the company of my dogs to your cats.  I “get” dogs.  Dogs “get” me.  Cats?  I’m never really sure what they are up to.  Why are they skulking around after dark? Why am I afraid to do something that will tick off the cat for fear of feline retribution on my pillow?  What’s the deal with their tails?  Always looked like weird little furry worms to me.

            Don’t get me wrong.  I like cats.  I live with three of them.  I’ve shooed them off the counter and the table and the refrigerator and the stove more times than I could throw a stick for my Labradors.  But I’m NOT a cat person.

            Why do I prefer dogs over cats?  A dog would never sit on the desk, soaking in the heat of the computer, blocking the screen with its fluffy shedding body.  A dog wouldn’t refuse to move so that you have to push it and knock over a full 20-oz. glass of drink mix, causing you to stop what you are doing, get out the paper towels, get out the “spray stuff,” get out regular towels, and take off your socks because you stepped in the whole sticky mess.  Then after walking around on the newly washed floor in bare feet, realize that you are tracking the whole sticky mess all around the kitchen.  So, you stand there, stuck to the floor, spraying your feet with the “spray stuff” while your 13-year-old son looks at you like you’ve lost (yet another) marble. 

            No, I don’t think a dog would do that.  A dog would be less covert about things and squat on the floor or lift his leg on the only upholstered chair in your living room.  A dog would chase her tennis ball under the corner of your new leather couch and gnaw at it until she got the ball out.  That’s what a dog would do.

            As a kid, we always had a dog.  Female Black Labradors.  Never a male because they peed on the bushes and wrecked the grass.  Always a female.  Always a black one.  Which, as a parent, I have to say is one of the best dog breeds for families.  They are up for anything, including but not limited to, walks in drenching downpours or a run in a blinding Wisconsin snowstorm through your backyard neighbor’s front yard.  Yup, nothing like a Labrador.  A Lab can go on a hike on the bluffs around Devil’s Lake with you in the middle of July and still have energy left over to chase a tennis ball and swim enthusiastically for an hour and a half afterward.

            When I was a baby, my dad brought home a lab mix pup from the neighbors of a family friend.  That dog and I “grew up” together.  Tag-a-long went on every adventure my family did.  Camping, canoeing, hiking, you name it – that dog was there.  She was tolerant and patient, the perfect family pet.   She was also my dad’s best hunting partner.  She could flush pheasants and retrieve ducks like no other.  There are pictures from “the old days” of my dad and Tag and a half a dozen ring-necked pheasants laid neatly on the ground.  My dad, with a full head of brown hair, holding his shotgun in one hand and arm around the dog with the other, wearing a smile that couldn’t be bribed off.

            That dog was there for me to learn how to walk, pulling myself up on her fur. I’m sure that when my brother came along, she was a little out of sorts as this put her farther down the attention ladder.  But like all family pets, she accepted her fate and tolerated the poked eyes, the tickled feet (and ears) and the rare tail pulling.

            One of my favorite quotes about dogs is by Agnes Sligh Tumbull.  She says, “Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.”

            Time passes and children grow up.  We watch our beloved pets graying and aging, knowing what is coming but are still surprised when that day comes.

            One day, after hours of sledding on “The Hill,” we were walking home when Tag collapsed in the snow.  My dad knelt down next to her and talked softly to keep her, and my brother and me, calm.  I was about ten at the time and the thought of losing my dog was right up there with losing my grandpa.  How could she be dying?  Wasn’t she only ten years old, like me?  As a kid, you’ve had this creature with you every day of your life, as close as skin.  She was my sibling before my brother, my playmate, guardian, and my dad’s hunting pal.  How could she be dying? What would I do? Who would I love?

            My dad took her to the vet and was told that she had had a stroke.  I guess a stroke isn’t so bad.  We were able to fix her up with a baby aspirin a day and we were good to go again, mostly.  She moved slowly, a bit arthritic in her hips, but that was to be expected of a ten-year-old dog.  She still ate and drank and did all the things that a dog was supposed to do, where a dog was supposed to do it.

            Not long after that, my dad told us that he was going to “go look at some puppies.”  When it came to my dad and dogs, just looking at puppies and not bringing one home was a process easier said than done.  There was an ad in the local paper for some black Lab puppies.  A backyard breeder on the other side of town had a litter that he was looking for homes for.  Sure enough, my dad came home with this wriggling, fuzzy black ball.  His thinking was that if we had a second dog it wouldn’t be as hard on us when the time came when Tag-a-long had to cross over the Rainbow Bridge.  Based on the way she was physically, it seemed to us, that dog could have gone any day.

            But there we were, with two dogs, for two years.

            They went on every family vacation near and far.  Mostly it was canoe trips.  We spent a lot of time camping on Wisconsin River sandbars, and the dogs got front seat in the bows of the canoes.  We would paddle downriver for a couple of hours, find our “campsite” sandbar and set up our tents.  The rest of the day would be spent swimming, floating downstream and running back upstream on the sandbar to do it all over again.

            If you’ve had a Labrador for more than ten minutes, you know they love to swim almost as much as they love to eat.  On these camping trips, our two dogs would be in and out of the water all day long.  Somewhere around six o’clock, the kids would be dragged out of the water, sunburned and waterlogged.  We’d have to “change out of those wet suits and go look for driftwood” so we could have a fire to cook our dinner. 

The dogs would come with us. Sometimes helping carry the firewood.  Mostly, just to get the opportunity to go splashing back in the water.  Belle, the younger dog, had a thinner coat that dried quickly.  Tag had a thick coat that held water like a wool sweater and smelled about as bad when it was wet.   Wet dog hair sticks to everything, and everything sticks to it.

            Crawling into your tent at bedtime, damp sand clinging to your sunburned shoulders and legs, easing your way into your sleeping bag; ooh, that smarts.  The dog comes in behind you.  She’s damp, more wet than dry, smelling like fish with sand sticking to every single strand of her fur.  She shakes.  Water, sand and dog hair are everywhere.  There’s sand in your eyes, your ears and in your clothes, which are on top of a sunburned body.  There’s a lot of shuffling from inside the tent which prompts a “What are you kids doing in there?” from Mom and Dad.

            In Wisconsin, the weather can change in an instant and sometimes you wind up going to bed in a thunderstorm.  A tiny, nylon two-person tent was our shelter. The only things I had for comfort were my younger brother (who smelled), an old, damp sandy dog, who was more unnerved than I when the thunder crashed, and an old boat cushion for a pillow.  Don’t need a therapist to tell me why I’m not a big fan of thunderstorms.

            Flash-forward two years. 

            Today is the day.  Tag’s arthritis has gotten worse.  She can’t see.  She can’t hear.  Poor thing plods along because she can hardly move.  She has pressure wounds that wouldn’t heal on her “elbows” from lying on the concrete driveway.  My dad told us, as gently as possible, he’s taking her to the vet and if there’s nothing more they can do for her, he was going to have to put her to sleep.