Holidailies, Day 7: Duck Duck and the Bear
Since yesterday was rather serious, today I am going to talk about Duck Duck and the Bear. Of course, before I do that, I need to explain to folks who don't already know who the players are.
That's the Duck Duck on the left up there, the one not laying with his legs all frogged out (that would be the Kitty Cat. She lays like that all the time).
The Duck Duck came into my family's life a number of years ago, when my parents caught him running loose on the street. They convinced him to get in the damn car (That would be a quote from my father) and took him up to the house. He was so thin that you could see his backbone, his ribcage, and his hipbones. When they tried to give him water, he threw it right back up. He was not, shall we say, a healthy dog. Mom and Dad were going to take him to the pound, but my sister (knowing what would happen to him there) cried and so they ended up taking him to the vet instead (I wasn't there at the time).
The vet said: "Do not get attached to this dog." Anyone who knows my family knows that it was already too late for that. And the vet was wrong, anyway, because we still have the Duck Duck. And no, that isn't actually his name. It's just what we call him (likewise, the other dog is not "The Kitty Cat"). This is a habit in my family; we get dogs, name them, and then never use their names again.
But I digress. Treatment for heartworms, gut worms, and a boatload of food later, the Duck Duck is a healthy, happy, ~100 lb Shepherd mix. Okay, happy may be stretching it, but he's definitely well-loved and much less neurotic than he was when Mom & Dad first adopted him. He's loving toward the members of our family, and anyone to whom he has been properly introduced, but not so trustworthy with other people and animals.
He is also about as bright as an unlit candle.
Mom and Dad walk the dogs daily. Their usual walking route runs about three miles around the neighborhood and down past the elementary school, either early in the morning or late at night. Somewhere down along the road near the elementary school is a house with one of those concrete bears in the yard. The four of them had been walking past this bear for months without either dog noticing the bear.
And then one day, the Duck Duck stopped and growled at it. Dad tried to convince him to keep moving until Mom said, "let him check it out." So Dad eased up on the leash.
The Duck Duck surged forward as he is wont to do when given extra lead, and then...
CLANG
Now, I'm sure, when my mother told my father to let the Duck Duck check out the bear that she was imagining he would sniff at it, growl at it, possibly pee on it, and get over it.
No.
He bit the concrete muzzle of the concrete bear. Full-force.
Dad hauled him back in and checked his teeth to see what he'd done to himself. The Duck Duck looked at my father as though to say, "What the Hell was that?" but was uninjured, largely because he has no brain to rattle. My mother was absolutely useless, because she was laughing hard enough that she had to use the person's mailbox to hold herself up. And the Kitty Cat? Well, I don't think anyone was paying much attention to her, but it's not hard for me to picture her at the end of her leash, looking back at the three of them, her tail curled up over her back and a look of "we're supposed to be walking" on her face.
I can only imagine what the people inside the house thought.
I would imagine that the Duck Duck got it into his lack of brain that the bear was somehow a threat to himself or to my parents, and that's why he lunged and bit. Dad says he still growls at the bear when they walk by it, though he hasn't attacked again.
Would you?
That's the Duck Duck on the left up there, the one not laying with his legs all frogged out (that would be the Kitty Cat. She lays like that all the time).
The Duck Duck came into my family's life a number of years ago, when my parents caught him running loose on the street. They convinced him to get in the damn car (That would be a quote from my father) and took him up to the house. He was so thin that you could see his backbone, his ribcage, and his hipbones. When they tried to give him water, he threw it right back up. He was not, shall we say, a healthy dog. Mom and Dad were going to take him to the pound, but my sister (knowing what would happen to him there) cried and so they ended up taking him to the vet instead (I wasn't there at the time).
The vet said: "Do not get attached to this dog." Anyone who knows my family knows that it was already too late for that. And the vet was wrong, anyway, because we still have the Duck Duck. And no, that isn't actually his name. It's just what we call him (likewise, the other dog is not "The Kitty Cat"). This is a habit in my family; we get dogs, name them, and then never use their names again.
But I digress. Treatment for heartworms, gut worms, and a boatload of food later, the Duck Duck is a healthy, happy, ~100 lb Shepherd mix. Okay, happy may be stretching it, but he's definitely well-loved and much less neurotic than he was when Mom & Dad first adopted him. He's loving toward the members of our family, and anyone to whom he has been properly introduced, but not so trustworthy with other people and animals.
He is also about as bright as an unlit candle.
Mom and Dad walk the dogs daily. Their usual walking route runs about three miles around the neighborhood and down past the elementary school, either early in the morning or late at night. Somewhere down along the road near the elementary school is a house with one of those concrete bears in the yard. The four of them had been walking past this bear for months without either dog noticing the bear.
And then one day, the Duck Duck stopped and growled at it. Dad tried to convince him to keep moving until Mom said, "let him check it out." So Dad eased up on the leash.
The Duck Duck surged forward as he is wont to do when given extra lead, and then...
CLANG
Now, I'm sure, when my mother told my father to let the Duck Duck check out the bear that she was imagining he would sniff at it, growl at it, possibly pee on it, and get over it.
No.
He bit the concrete muzzle of the concrete bear. Full-force.
Dad hauled him back in and checked his teeth to see what he'd done to himself. The Duck Duck looked at my father as though to say, "What the Hell was that?" but was uninjured, largely because he has no brain to rattle. My mother was absolutely useless, because she was laughing hard enough that she had to use the person's mailbox to hold herself up. And the Kitty Cat? Well, I don't think anyone was paying much attention to her, but it's not hard for me to picture her at the end of her leash, looking back at the three of them, her tail curled up over her back and a look of "we're supposed to be walking" on her face.
I can only imagine what the people inside the house thought.
I would imagine that the Duck Duck got it into his lack of brain that the bear was somehow a threat to himself or to my parents, and that's why he lunged and bit. Dad says he still growls at the bear when they walk by it, though he hasn't attacked again.
Would you?