My Life in Dogs

"Maybe we should look from our dogs' perspective," my nephew Craig suggested last month. I'd conveyed sad news that my sweet Mia's cancer has grown back, and her time is short. The brevity of our dogs' lives makes each day with them more precious, I'd said. But Craig observed, "From their point of view, we're great immortal beings that care for them. We're their miracle."

It's a beautiful thought. I repeated it this week at lunch with my mentor Frank Boggs. Remembering his father's phone call to his dorm with news that the family's Spitz had died, a memory 75 years old, Frank teared up. He cried again, recalling the German Shepherd who 40 years ago would sit on his feet and press his head up against Frank's thigh, inviting a neck rub.

How dogs bless us, how we bless dogs -- is a theme I've developed over years of blogging about my own dogs. For photos and articles about Brandy, her immediate predecessors Bo, Luis, Mia, and Mom's Sassy, and for reflections on dog - related books, see my page, "Loving Dogs."

The rest of this article is dedicated to the dogs of earlier decades of my life, going back to Dad's beloved Peggy, whose influence on Dad lasted all his life.

Cleo first appeared at the carport door of my home in Jackson, MS, when I was about to take old Churchill for his walk. Churchill and I stood in the open doorway, surprised, while she bowed, stretched, and stepped past us into the house, tail high and swishing. While she chewed on both of us, I tried a couple of weeks to find her true owner before accepting her as our own. Her signature whine was a yawn, from low to high, four octaves, like the jazz singer Cleo Laine. Flirtatious, playful, she added years to Churchill's life, and grew suddenly old when Churchill died. That same month, I moved with her to the Atlanta area, and I adopted Bo, a younger version of Churchill, and she perked up again. With Bo, she lived a good seven more years, until the day in 2004 when, following a walk and ride in the car, she suddenly seemed to be in great pain. I left her with the emergency vet for tests and overnight observation, but she died before the vet could run even one test on her. A favorite memory: When I came home in a wheelchair from six weeks at the hospital, Bo danced and barked, but Cleo stood on her hind legs, hooked her paws over my wrists, leaned into my face, eye to eye, and moaned. Was that a welcome home? A plea? I took it as a reprimand: Don't you ever leave us like that again!

[Photo: (above)My young friend Jason, some years after he was a 7th grader in my class, who got me involved with cycling. He knew Cleo from the day she chose me. That wild - eyed look and prancing step of hers were typical. (below) Cleo in repose late in her life.]

Churchill, a pure - bred Yellow Lab, had lived four years with the Headmaster of the school where I taught in Jackson, MS. When the Headmaster moved,  he offered Churchill to the young baseball coach Rick Edie, who rented a room in my house. We brought Churchill in, built a wire fence around the yard, and adored him. There was a scary moment during our house party when Churchill stumbled, trembled, and seized up. Instantly we carried him like a piece of furniture to the back of my station wagon. We feared poison; it was epilepsy. When Rick moved to Australia, I got custody. Strong, fast, friendly, curious, Churchill was a classy guy. A favorite memory is what happened when I took him for a walk at our North Campus, where there's a lake. Without hesitation, he pulled the leash out of my hand and jumped in. Instinct, I guess. That same walk, he encountered a bull on the other side of a wire fence: like mirror images, both males lowered their heads, growled, and shot up the hair on the backs of their necks.

[Photo: When I took Churchill to a soccer game, he was a kid magnet. Here, from a portion of a photo collage, is Churchill, embraced by eighth grader Scott Jones.]

Colonel was a West Highland Terrier brought over from Scotland by my grandmother's friend, an interior decorator whose home was overstuffed with brittle antiques. What was she thinking? So we shipped her "little Elstead" down to Atlanta, re-christened him "Colonel Sanders" for his white beard, and gave him the attention and playtime he needed. Fiercely territorial, he alerted us to every dog or person who passed by the house, and bit at the window frames in his excitement; Dad had to build a wire shield across the windows. When a neighbor's child pulled Colonel's tail, Colonel snapped at the child; so we regretfully passed our Westie to a rural couple where we thought he'd be happier running free. Instead, he ran off their property, and they called to let us know. Mom and Dad rushed out in two cars, and Mom found him howling on the shoulder of a country road. When she got out of the car, he ran to her, and never left her side for the rest of his life. In his later years, the cortisone shots that helped with itchy skin also deprived him of the use of his hind legs, but that never stopped him; he ran just as fast on two legs, and lifted himself up our stairs (though we had to carry him down). He also adored Missy. A favorite memory of mine is watching him gently licking her ears while she lay in the sun, eyes closed.

[Photos: a collage of Missy and Colonel in my bedroom, ca. 1972; and Colonel on Mom's lap, shortly after the rescue that made her lifelong object of his adoration. Missy, lying in the sun, is just visible behind Mom's chair.]




Missy, our Dalmatian.  In fifth grade, assigned to describe something, I wrote about Missy. I'm glad I did; each line recalls her more vividly than the photographs do:

She takes her chewed up bone in her paws and holds it up to her mouth like a baby with a bottle. She rolls on her back and deliberately drops it and stretches her neck back and looks at it, expecting somebody to take it and throw it for her to chase. If nobody does, she grunts, "Mmmmm!" and grabs the bone, shaking her head back and forth, growling like a mad dog.

No matter how she chews, her eyes invite you to come and take the bone away. When you do before she can get away with it ... it's a tug of war, which she usually loses. Then she jumps up at you, barking, until you throw it.

Sometimes she takes it in her mouth and throws it herself and chases it. She prances with front feet up in the air, then the hind legs up. Then it starts all over again.

Gabby, a toy poodle, didn't belong with little children. I never think of her without regret, although I believe she learned to trust me in her later years. Mom had been afraid of dogs before this tiny, dainty poodle cured her. After a few years, we decided that Gabby would be much happier with my Grandmother, and the joy was mutual; Grandmother's decline began when Gabby died. Once, I sat alone on Grandmother's sofa, while she spoke to my great - grandmother Mama Craig beside me. "I know Mama Craig died, but she's as real as you are, sitting there." I suggested that, so long as the dead were visiting her, she might ask Mama Craig to bring back Gabby; Grandmother laughed at that idea. A favorite memory is of Gabby's return home from her weekly shampoo and pedicure, ribboned and perfumed, toenails tapping the basement floor.

[Photo: Gabby, on the table at my Grandmother's patio, Cincinnati, ca. 1969]

Peggy was part Doberman. My dad remembered when a man stopped his car, said, "Kid, want a dog?" and shoved Peggy at him, driving off quickly. Mom was afraid of dogs, and so I believe Peggy stayed with Dad's parents after the marriage. Dad always remembered her fondly, and I believe he was thinking of Peggy when he convinced Mom to adopt Sassy in 2007.

[Photos: My father Thomas W. Smoot at 12, with Peggy, in Cincinnati. The year would be 1945. Below: When his children had left the nest, he convinced my mother to adopt a show dog, Frosty, and her amiable offspring, whom Dad named "KC" for his company Kor - Chem Technology (KCT), where KC charmed Dad's business clients and competitors alike.]