Our Point of View

Life with a hard-headed dog

By Mark A. Jicha • February 22, 2004

Publishing this column beside a non-profit pitch for the adoption of abandoned golden and lab retrievers might be at cross purposes; while I support the effort to place good dogs in good homes, I came close to pitching another pooch into the pile just a few days ago.

Bubbee, a black labrador puppy that may live to see her first birthday, is something of was bouncing biohazard to all
property and most forms of life. She has, at different times in her short but eventful life, tested the very limits of both space and time.

Seven weeks to the day when I fetched her from the kennel in Ft. Valley, she almost didn’t make two months. Exhibiting a stubborn streak which has become her trademark, I walked down the front steps with my sweet old yellow lab (we call her St. Augie now). The puppy stopped at the top step and refused to budge. No amount of coaxing or cajoling would get her to come down, so the old dog & I walked off toward the back yard for a stroll.

A few seconds later, I heard this horrible scream: she had squeezed thru the porch railing and flung herself off the 12-foot porch. I thought her back was broken, but after a few frantic moments and a call to Dr. Bill Disque, she was no worse for the wear. She did learn that by limping piteously she could generate
a great deal of sympathy, and she has employed that tactic whenever I try to apply some discipline.

One day she burrowed into her puppy chow and ate 15 pounds before waddling back into my office, where she cut a huge fart. She looked like she had eaten a small watermelon and exuded gaseous plosives for days.

She mugs my older dog something fierce, eats shoes and empties garbage cans with impunity. Being the alpha female of her litter, she marks her territory like a male dog and barks ferociously at an
intrusion, real or imaginary. For all her shortcomings, she has proven to be an able hunter and an interesting companion, and there’s always that outside chance she’ll mellow in the next decade or so - at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

But my patience and her short little life almost came to an abrupt end the other day, and while she survived my initial onslaught, it was touch-and-go there for a couple of seconds.

Let me set the stage - after years of dreaming and months of planning, I have booked an ambitious bird hunting expedition to South Africa. My good friend Jack Bell introduced me to the Mark & Glen Haldane, professional hunters who outfit expeditions for spurwinged geese, guinea fowl, sand grouse, francolin, ducks, doves and pigeons. Jack has hunted with the Haldanes before, and so he didn’t need much of an excuse to assemble a party of willing henchmen for another foray across the Atlantic.

I gladly joined the fray. Fifty percent of my fee has been paid. Airlines have been contacted - in-country flights are being arranged. South African authorities need confirmation of firearm serial number and passports for participating hunters.

There’s the rub.

After storing that most essential of all IDs for many years, I asked the wife to pull it out of the safe deposit box last week to get the number. I placed it on my desk. The next morning, during a quick trip to the kitchen, the cute little puppy climbed up on the desk without disturbing any of the dozens of papers amidst the clutter,
hauled down the passport and proceeded to shred it. Not the whole thing, but most of one corner and more than enough to
render it invalid.

I won’t tell you what I said, but I will tell you what I did: after trying to shake her teeth from her jaw, I dumped her into a large
cardboard box, put a chair on top and would randomly beat on the box with my hand. I don’t know if I accomplished anything more than throwing a good scare into both myself and the dog, but I do know that little doggie used up another life in that instant when I recognized the remains of my passport.

Were I paranoid, I might suspect an ulterior motive - realizing she would not be invited, she set out to ruin it for everyone else.

Now I have learned that Uncle Sam won’t recognize the old passport and demands a copy of my birth certificate & driver’s license, the old passport and a letter of explanation before he will even consider issuing me another, and so my overseas plans
are on hold.

I’ve tracked down my birth certificate and asked
the wife to keep it in safe-keeping; if the dog gets
ahold of this document, I won’t even exist.