Parenting never ends. It doesn’t matter how old your children are, it seems you’re always bailing them out of something. Parenting can bring joy, satisfaction, agony, fulfillment and even heartbreak. It brought me a dog.My oldest daughter Heather has a 9 month old Mastiff/Boxer pup; 9 months old and Lucee is already 75 pounds. We don’t want to dog sit but we’ve already spent one blessed evening with her crying, moaning and barking (she must be in management). She wouldn’t shut up until her kennel was put in the living room and I slept on a mattress 2 feet away from her and I’m not even a dog person. Any time I’ve been around a strange dog it bites me, wets me or goes straight for the crotch sniffing, all of which are proud moments for me. I’m told dogs can sense fear in a human. I believe they sense indifference and resignation from me so they make me a target. Now I have a granddog (my daughter’s term).
Heather was going to Missouri
Check out time was 10 AM Friday morning at 4 Paws Unleashed so of course I got there early. Heather had paid for boarding her dog in advance so at least I didn’t get stuck paying the bill. I wandered around the “lobby until a young man grooving to some tunes on his I-Pod finally noticed me. I told him I was here to pick up Lucee so he disappeared around the corner for a few moments. When he came back through the lobby he had Lucee’s collar and leash but no dog. He went into the back room and a minute later reappeared with a brown boxer. Lucee is black with a white blaze on her chest. I was tempted to take this dog since it was smaller. I would simply tell Heather that she had a breed change operation. The young man handed me the leash but I handed it right back to him.
“Lucee is Black. This dog is brown. Lucee is a Mastiff/Boxer mix. This dog is all Boxer. You did get the right collar however.” The young man glared at me as he took the dog back but I glared right back at him and when his back was turned I stuck my tongue out at him. You don’t mess with the grandfather of a dog.
A moment later a young gal came walking into the room with Lucee. She had shown Lucee how to play in the small swimming pool outside at no extra charge. Now I got to drive a wet dog in a pickup truck. I quickly took out my notebook listing the 50 things I wanted to do before I die and crossed out #37 even though I was still north of the Mason Dixon line.
I tried to get Lucee to lie down on the floor of the pick up. Although I out weigh her by at least a hundred pounds I was no match for wet fur. I pushed her down. She wiggled up. I pulled her head down with the leash and her butt went into the air and plopped down on the truck seat. I pulled her out of the truck so we could try again. I showed her how nice and soft the carpeting was on the floor of the truck. I explained the nuances of safety to her and how an unstrapped passenger becomes an unguided missile during a sudden stop. She nodded her head and climbed onto the truck seat. It dawned on me then that this was a female so there was no chance I could change her mind. I rolled down the window on her side a few inches and shut the door. I walked around to my side, opened the door and was greeted by two things: the all encompassing smell of a wet dog and the wet dog. Lucee was sitting on my side behind the steering wheel. Now the bench seat was wet all across the truck. I tried to push her over but she didn’t want to go. I had to grab her collar and pull her and I finally succeeded in spite of the fact that my shorts kept sticking to the seat.
I pulled out into the street and Lucee slid toward me. I made a left hand turn onto Highway 69 and now she was beside me. I turned to look at her and she put her head next to me and tried to lick me. There is nothing that turns me on quite like dog breath. I tried to push her over again but she just kept edging closer to me. With one hand I was holding her head away from me and the other hand was used to push against her body. That left me with only my knees to steer and although I once drove 40 miles without my hands ever touching the steering wheel, I had never tried it with a dog struggling to sit on my lap. We saw wild sunflower plants in the left ditch. We veered to the right and admired the beauty of the purple flowers in the other ditch. We were amused by the strange one-fingered waves from the oncoming traffic. I finally got to a stoplight and using all my strength, I managed to slide her over to the middle.
We slowly limped home but I had to use my football straight-arm tactic while I drove. I pulled into the driveway glad to be home but afraid that any moment my other daughters might call. They’ll probably need money and you know I’ll give it to them because parenting never ends.
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