Paws, Claws, and Love: Reflecting on a Life Filled with Pets

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Man, I could make this a really long post if I wanted to. I did over a thousand words on a Storyworth entry just talking about the two dogs I had when I was growing up. I’ve had a lot of pets since then.

The first was Pezel (pronounced like “petzel”), a dachshund. He was a barker and a biter. According to my dad’s records, they got him in 1965 as a birthday present for my brother. I really don’t remember much about him other than him being suddenly aggressive at times, just completely out of the blue. He’d bark a lot at people walking up the side path at the house, too.

One day when I was young—four or five years old at the most—I was playing with a toy dump truck, and I wanted to dump something out of the bed. Pezel had a bone. “Ah!” I said. “That’ll be perfect!” Pezel wasn’t thrilled with the idea, and the result was the scar over my eye. I don’t remember anything else about the event, so I don’t know if I went to the emergency room or doctor or anything like that. Give the era, I rather doubt my parents did much of anything other than tell me I shouldn’t bother the dog like that.

At some point in about 1971 or 72, he developed back problems like many dachshunds do. My recollection is that he had a slipped disc or two. We took him to the vet who suggested surgery, but the surgery had to be done up at the Ohio State Veterinary School. So we all piled in to the Chevy station wagon and drove him up there for the surgery. He came through the surgery fine, but then died in the middle of the next night. I never did hear why that I recall.

A couple of years later, we began talking about another dog. Dad recorded that this was supposed to be a birthday present for me, since Pezel had been for my brother. That may have been the case, but I’m not sure I necessarily would have chosen a poodle. At any rate, we found ourselves at a local Petland store down the river one evening, and I chose a miniature poodle with gray and red coloring. We named her Suzi and took her home.

The problem was that Suzi was actually Sam.

I’m not sure why that was such a big problem. It may have been that Mom and Dad wanted a female dog, thinking that part of Pezel’s problems stemmed from him being a male. At any rate, I recall much discussion and a bunch of tears over having to take Sammy back to get a female dog, but that’s what happened.

Man, but I loved that dog. She ended up weighing about nine pounds or so, and she was everything you’d expect from a poodle. Very dainty and kind of flighty. She loved chasing socks or balls or an old shoe that we gave her to chew on.

We spent a lot of hours watching TV in the recliner in the den, or just cuddling as I complained about the bullying I went through. She listened very patiently to my litany of wrongs, and she’s probably one of the reasons I made it through my teen years.

During the day, we kept the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room open so she had the run of the downstairs. We never really encouraged her to go upstairs, and even though I begged Mom, Suzi was never allowed to spend the night upstairs. I don’t recall Mom’s reasoning though.

We’d close that door at night, and in the beginning, Suzi was not at all happy about it. She’d paw and scratch at the door all night until one night, she was finally big enough to be able to push it open. We figured that out when we heard her barking at the bottom of the steps.

Suzi had her health problems, too. Poodles are apparently prone to something called “football knee,” where the kneecap can shift out of place in their hind legs. She was about eight or nine when she first developed it. We tried a couple of different things, including a splint that went down the back of her leg and back up the front, designed to let the tendons and ligaments recover. She wore that for about six weeks. I always thought it funny to see her run with it (which she wasn’t supposed to do). ClickclickclickThump. ClickclickclickThump.

We took her back to get the splint off, Doc flexed her knee, and the kneecap popped right back out.

The only option at that point was surgery, and I don’t recall where we took her. But the surgery worked, for the most part. She was never going to be able to run and jump like she had when she was older, but she was able to get around better than she had.

We had a footstool next to a window and she loved to sit up there and watch the world. She also spent a lot of time in my lap in the orange recliner. She owned that recliner, and if you sat there, she required you to share it with her.

One time Dad was relaxing there with his usual Scotch on the rocks sitting on the stool next to it. The next thing anyone knows, Suzi had helped herself. She did it again to my brother one Christmas season with his eggnog.

Suzi was a stubborn old dog, too. She limped along as best she could, and was pretty well blind near the end. I kept expecting to find her dead each morning when I came down for breakfast, but she held on as long as she could. We ended up putting her down in March of 1990. Mom and I took her to the vet because of some new ailment, and he convinced us it was time. I think Dad suspected it was going to happen, but he couldn’t or just didn’t go for whatever reason. When we got back and told him she was gone, that was only about the third time I ever saw my dad cry.

Since then, I’ve had a bunch of pets. Four other dogs: Lucky, Chaz, Chester, and Athena. Six cats: Kappa, Niban, Amber, Zeta, Sif, and Shadow. A bunch of different fish. A couple of toads. But I think Suzi will almost always be my favorite dog.

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