Kids and Dogs

It seems that I had my share of kids and with them came a steady assortment of dogs and events which intertwined into a litany of tales.
Robbie my oldest proceeded to lose his glasses at 4 y/o on a trip to the St. Louis Zoo he had had them only a week, I was only making $70mo and the glasses cost $50. When we lived in our first house he was playing in the basement and was told not to run; he immediately bounced off the steel support post splitting his head open and required a trip to the ER for sutures. Kenny and Robbie were playing with Titan our German Shepard, with their friend. Titan grabbed him by the arm and tore a plug out trying to keep them from running from him. When we were building the new house it was muddy and we chained Titan on the pool deck, one of the workers teased Titan and underestimated the length of the chain, this ended in he being bitten. I had to get rid of my favorite dog because of this.
The house I had designed had a special area for kids, the boys had a room Kenny and Timmy in trundle beds and Robbie had a loft space. One night they had a sleep over and I went upstairs to see why I kept hearing a thump noise that shook the house, to find them taking turns jumping from the loft trying to touch a huge globe light suspended from their ceiling and bouncing off the beds. Ask them what happened to them?
Another time I came home late from a delivery and they were all sleep, I went to the refrigerator to drink one of my DO NOT TOUCH dad’s Nehi lemon soda. to find it all gone. I yelled for everyone to come downstairs NOW! Diane, Michelle and Timmy were small and Michelle they called “Niagara Falls” because she cried at a raised voice. Robbie and Kenny said Michelle drank it Dad. I said Michelle reach in the refrigerator and she couldn’t touch the shelf so I sent the little ones back to bed, and said you boys asses are mine and proceeded to dispense a whipping they still remember.
But we had a West Highland White Terrier named “Popcorn” who the kids loved. While chasing them onto the school bus at the end of our driveway, the bus ran over him as it pulled away, to the horror of all the kids on the bus. I remember to this day driving down the drive way trying to signal the driver to pull off with all these little faces staring out at smooshed “Popcorn” on the pavement. I had to go back and scrape him up with a snow shovel before going to work. Then we had “Popcorn II” who came to live with me in my apartment and bit the maintenance man so I had to get rid of him. Next we had “Tinkerbell” who I bought for my new wife and she ended up giving her to her 2nd son since he didn’t want to live with us.
Then we moved to a house and got a Norwegian Elkhound “ Weegie” who would run away in a minute. I paid so many rewards for his return that I finally took his collar off and said if he was so dumb he can’t find his way home good riddance. This was right after he jumped up and pulled off some short ribs of beef I had just grilled. After that I got “Honey” who was a favorite of my wife and who loved to roam at night, but he tangled with a raccoon and loss big time. Then we got a little Shih Tzu we called “Sushi”, she was 8 weeks and went for her shots, my vet being the one that Titan had run out of the house years ago. This was Becky’s dog and that night the dog was kind of feverish from the shots and Becky asked “ Daddy is my dog going to die” I replied “ No way baby, dogs feel bad after getting shots” but she decided to sleep on the floor in her sleeping bag with him in our room. During the night, I had my hand kind of slung over the bed and heard this whimpering and the puppy was licking my hand, In the morning, I got up to get ready for work and didn’t see her. So I searched around the apartment we were living in. Becky was sound asleep in her sleeping bag. So I looked everywhere during the search I thought I saw her under Becky’s bed but decided it was a teddy bear and got a broom to kind of prod it out, until I saw it was “Sushi” cold, stiff and dead.
When my Becky and my wife saw her they went berserk, crying and saying the doctor had killed their puppy by over dosing the shots. I was about to dispose of her down the trash chute when they called the vet’s emergency phone number. Now it was chaos and he said bring him to the office on my way to work. So I put him in a big zip lock bag and dropped him off to get an autopsy. They have never forgotten this nor forgiven me for taking him to this vet. We got a replacement for “Sushi” and as fate would have it, she slipped out on a frigid winter night and she got loss in a snow drift and froze to death. Between my kids mischiefs and dogs death’s, I have had my run of bad luck.
My present dog is Alvin who was named after the one of the chipmunks and is now 10 years old and holding……..good for him and me and us!