Earlier this month, I took my beloved Russian Blue cat, Mavis, to a veterinary hospital for surgery performed on a blocked nostril and a wonky eardrum.
After I got the bill, my wife, Amy, and I won’t be taking a vacation to Europe this year.
Anyway, I spent a lot of time in the waiting room, which was way bigger and nicer than my doctor’s office. It didn’t take long to notice that owners kept bringing in their bulldogs. One English Bulldog, as big as a Smart Car, had its own pull wagon to ride in and decided to mumble in a loud voice to everyone in the waiting area. Lord, it was cute.
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So was the French Bulldog, who was still a youngish puppy who had injured a front leg in all the never-ending frisky energy. The zoomies, I believe is the medical terminology.
“It will be hard to anesthetize him,” the owner explained to an assistant. “(The pain killer) gabapentin does not slow him down one bit.”
An American Bulldog, who tried to hide beneath a bench, walked with such bowlegs that Scatman Crothers would have blushed.
Seeing all the bulldogs made me miss the Boxer Bulldog I had grown up with named Nero.
Don’t tell my wife, but I was not always a cat person.
Nero, there you are
Recently, my three older brothers and I had all the family’s 8mm reels converted to digital. The timeline was not in sequence, so the silent mini movies jumped around throughout the years. I was a baby one minute, a pouty teen the next, back to the awkward tween years. Dead relatives were all on display and walking around. Good luck naming all the squinting kids who passed through.
Wait, wait, there’s my first birthday party. Oh, gosh, I saw a childhood friend of mine who dropped dead of a heart attack Christmas Eve before last. Here comes an old girlfriend who looked frightened by my loud family, and I don’t blame her now. Jeez, it was nice to see my mother again.
The only constant was Nero.
The color of newly polished copper, Nero would pop up at birthday bashes, strut around as kids pulled on the Boxer’s ears, lie in the yard with the nobility only self-assured dogs possess. Never in a hurry. Never agitated. Always calm.
Everyone watching the collection of films gushed when they saw Nero pop up on the screen. A collective “awwwww.” And this dog grew up around four hellion boys and never once snapped at us. The patience and wisdom of Dali Lama or Dolly Parton.
Nero, who died as I entered elementary school, was such a majestic animal that my father named his first Doberman in tribute to Nero. Let’s just say Nero II, if the animal had been human, would have cheated badly at poker, run with prostitutes after church and put empty orange juice containers back in the refrigerator.
Then there was Pug, a Pit Bulldog with a head the size of a Honda Civic tire. When that Pit Bulldog pooped in the yard, it was like a drunk Andre the Giant had visited the house and used the front lawn as his lavatory.
Only one Pug. Thank God
Pug was as bone white as a snowstorm. Thick, mean and short. Not a good combination. The dog wanted to be an only dog, which probably came as news to our two Dobermans, Blitz and Krieg.
I watched as the two Dobies tugged and chewed on Pug’s ears until their teeth got tired. When they relinquished, Pug would go crazy on the Dobie’s tall, gangly legs. Breaking up a dog fight is dangerous and foolish. So, I just watched the violent chaos as I yelled.
My father soon grew tired of paying the exorbitant veterinary bills (now I know how he felt) so he gave Pug to a large man who hunted wild hogs while he rode horseback around the Sand Hills of Calhoun County. Pug had a pugnacious character, so this seemed to be a natural fit.
When Pug and the man on horseback came upon a passel of feral hogs, the hunter ordered Pug to catch one. Pug looked at the rider, agreed and then chomped the horse by the nose. The Pit Bulldog threw the horse and the hunter to the ground.
The next day, Pug, a dog that loved to ride in cars, was given to a man with kids who lived in Sneads. The dad worked at a job at the mental hospital in Chattahoochee across the river in a different time zone. Pug made the drive north but growled when the car came to a stop in the garage and the dog collar got tugged.
“Fine,” the third owner of Pug said. “You will be ready to get out in the morning.”
When the newest owner went to stir Pug because work beckoned, the Pit Bulldog would not let the driver into his own car. Unlike Nero, Pug snarled.
Pug was eventually given to a solitary woman who lived alone in the woods south of Quincy. She scratched Pug’s belly and fed the bulldog bacon. An only dog at last.
Snore and snore again
In my wife’s former career, she worked as a pharmaceutical salesperson and had to go to see her new partner at his apartment in Tallahassee. She had never been to his place before, but he always talked about his rotund bulldog named Boozer.
Keep in mind these were the times before GPS, so Amy drove around until she heard loud snoring coming out of an open window on the second story. We’re talking about Curly Howard-style breaths, wheezes and gasps.
She parked the car and walked up the staircase. There was what had to be Boozer, stretched out by the screen, reclining in the warm sun. Not a worry in the world. She knew she was in the right place.
Amy said, “Awwwww.”
Mark Hinson is a former senior writer for The Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at mark.hinson59@gmail.com.
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