Mr. Dog

I have a Dog, to be completely accurate I would have to say that we have a Dog that lives with us. He is a decent Dog as far as Dogs go, a little neurotic and odd but then again. What animal isn't? I was thinking the other day about the Dogs I have known in my life, the family pets, the viscous attack dogs and the just plain odd.
We had more then a few dogs attached to the family growing up, of various shapes and dispositions. I vaguely remember "Fred" a hound dog. He pooped on my moms bed one day and was never seen again. I remember "Jensen" a small yap dog that loved to roll in yuck and raid garbage cans, he died from either a diaper or chicken bones. He probably went happy either way. Then there was "Goofy", now this dog was cool. We called it Goofy because it was, it looked like a sleek little lab with a bristly fu man chu beard. Goofy was Female and mean as a hornet. Probably our fault, training it to chase neighborhood kids on bikes was not a very Christlike thing to do, but, we were young. Goofy was also a cat killer. She would sneak out at night and return in the morning looking fit and well rested. We never really knew where she was until one night we heard a noise in the backyard. It sounded like a pack of hyenas tearing apart some luckless gazelle. When the dust settled and the noises ceased out came goofy. I went to see what she had been fighting, thinking it was either a burglar or another dog. I was slightly surprised to find the torn asunder remains of a local stray cat. Matters came to a head one night after Goofy dropped a "ball" on the foot of a friend of my Dads. When he bent down to throw the "ball" he discovered a fresh cat head.
We locked Goofy up after that.
Another Dog I had the pleasure of knowing was "Hawkeye" he was my wife's dog. We tried to take him camping once. In American fork canyon. We opened the door at the campsite and he jumped out of the car and ran away. Really ran away. Straight up the freaking mountain.It took me two hours to find the stupid dog and another hour to drag it back. Wait, I forgot to mention that Hawkeye was a Rottweiler/Lab mix. Also huge. He weighed right around 130 at this point in his career. So after I dragged him down the mountain I tied him to the bumper and tried to put up our tent in the freaking dark.
There was another couple camped in a tent about 50 feet away. In the morning before the sun was up, just barely light. Caprice heard a noise, she woke me up and I got out of the tent to see what it was. Hawkeaye had chewed through the rope, he had not run away thank all the gods but he was doing something far, far worse. He had ambled over to our neighbors tent and was "marking" it. At least I thought he was just marking it until I realizes that he was taking a really long time. 130 lbs of dog with a full bladder, dumped on a tent in the early AM. I saw a light flip on in the tent and a silhouette of a women tentatively touching the rapidly spreading stain.
I ran over got Hawkeye, bundled up Caprice, threw everything into the tent and threw the tent into the car. In 2 minutes flat. We drove off in a cloud of dust as the neighbors were coming out of their tent.
Hawkeye never got to go camping again.
Which brings me to Mr.Dog AKA "Henry". We got henry from two crazy drunk ladies that actually brought an entire litter of dogs to our house for us to chose from. They carried in this huge kennel thing,set it on the ground and opened it up. 20 puppies of various nationalities and temperaments poured out. 15 of them peed, 3 threw up, 1 peed, pooped and threw up; and one ran and hid. The one that ran and hid seemed to be the obvious choice. He was for Emma, she turned 5, I got a motorcycle and she got a puppy! Have I mentioned how cool my wife is?
Anyways, for some reason known only to God and the odd, newly forming mentality of a 5 year old she named him Henry. Seriously, I fought against it tooth and paw but I was overruled by the simple expediency of everyone calling the damn dog Henry.
From the first day he was a piece of shit. He ate everything but his food, he went the bathroom everywhere but outside, he would not come when he was called, he would actually have to be dragged if you put a leash on him, he ran away every chance he got. I really was not liking him one damn bit. To cut him some slack, if my name was henry I would not have come either.
A few months passed and he was at the point where I wasn't really looking that hard when he ran away. At this time we realized that he had IBS! What the hell? can dogs have that? YES! We discovered also, that he was terrified of power tools. I left a drill by his kennel, 5 feet away. He shat upon it. From five feet away this dog shoots a stream of IBS yuck all over my drill. I hated the little furrypants. So the next day he was banished to the back yard. I got home from work that day and found that he had eaten my hot tub cover. I know that he had eaten it because there must have been a power tool in the back yard that scared him, there was pooped pieces of cover all over the back yard. Then, too add insult to degradation, a new cover was 700.00 dollars!
So I got rid of the little creep. I called every single place I could think of. Even the drunk ladies. No one would take him. In desperation I called my wife's best friend who I hoped, would know someone. She did, a couple that Fostered dogs until new owners could be found. VIOLA!!! He was gone.
The happiness lasted until the womenfolk arrived at the homestead. Tears began, and continued ad infinitum. Even the cat acted like he missed the stupid chewer. I resolved to be manly and tough, master of the home and what not. I was not going to have that projectile pooping ball of vomit back!
One day later I called the foster couple and went and got him.
On the way Home I yelled at the Dog!! I yelled at the Family!!! I yelled at the car and the other cars and the truck that passed us!! No one was safe from my wrath!!!
Since then, he has been the best Dog ever. He comes when he is called, does tricks, barks at bad guys and goes running with me. The Kids love him, the wife loves him, and I love him. Even when he threw up on my brand new running shoes after a run one day. I just hosed them off and asked him if he was OK? He looked at me reproachfully, he seemed to say, "and you call me a dumbass?"

Perspective

This morning I realized I had not written anything for a while.
 Yesterday I was driving somewhere, I really don't recall where, and I saw a horse moving slowly across a field. It was a pretty horse as far as horses go, brown and seemingly healthy looking. I don't know much about horses, really only that they make me sneeze. I wondered what there was to make this horse move across the field so I pulled over to watch. It meandered back and forth, it seemed to me that it was acting shy, do animals do that? Did this horse feel that it had to put on a good show for the people that were watching it? My curiosity grew. I looked at the other horses in the field, they were all gathered together down at the other end, happily eating whatever it is that horses eat. Puzzled even more I looked closer at the field, it was a field. Nothing special, some grass some weeds and some hay bales randomly thrown out. A field. There was a trailer parked against the fence in the general direction the horse was moving, I reasoned that perhaps this was where the horse was going, maybe it was the hay wagon/trailer? The horse moved out of my view behind the trailer and even knowing what killed the cat I had to see what it was the horse was burning its caloric reserve to see. So I hopped out of my truck and walked slowly around the trailer to see what was so attractive.
Standing behind the trailer was a small girl, 7 or 8 years old. The horse was happily eating apple slices she was taking from her lunch box. She was happily scratching the horses head and kissing its nose. I left them undisturbed in their happiness and walked back to my truck. Content in the little joys of life.