Son’s Pleadings for a Dog Unleash Memories--and Skepticism

My 11-year-old is pushing me to get a dog, any kind of dog--old, young, big, little, dumb, smart, he doesn’t care, just as long as it can bark and has a tail it can wag.

I’m not sure whether he’s been watching too many reruns of “Lassie” or whether there isn’t a natural need in little boys to have a living creature around that enthusiastically endorses any and every scheme that could conceivably pop into a kid’s mind.

No dog in history has ever mildly questioned, let alone vetoed, an 11-year-old’s idea. I don’t care if it’s “What do you say we set fire to the house?” or “Let’s skip the homework and take a run on the beach.” Either is greeted with jumps and slobbers and much face-licking.

So, realistically, we’re not talking about a pet here; we’re talking about an accomplice.

Now, before you rush to get your poison pen and paper, I realize there’s a flip side. I know the only humans capable of a dog’s blind devotion, love and loyalty were long ago elevated to sainthood.

Of course, saints are a lot cleaner. And don’t eat as much. And never have a veterinary bill. And never have to be left with friends who don’t ever seem quite as close after you return from vacation.

I guess what’s come over me in this whole matter is a sudden spasm of wisdom, the first real understanding I’ve had of my mother’s eyes-rolling-upward-into-the-head expression when any of us lucked upon a dog in need of a home.

My mother, you see, was never particularly fond of dogs, more of a subscriber to James Thurber’s belief that the only true dog-lover in the world is one hound smitten by another.

She also had the rather odd idea that she would inevitably wind up as the dog’s sole support, that she would do all the plowing while we reaped all the fruit.

Our increasingly busy school-social calendars would leave her the chores of feeding and cleaning up after the cur--and any enmity for missed feedings--while we earned love and loyalty with a few scratches and tossed balls.

So, after the eyes came down from inside the head, she would voice her objections to this scraggly creature in a most logical way.

We countered with equal logic. Of course, we’d feed the thing--all the time. Why, we’d delight in keeping the yard clear of certain unmentionable debris. No, we’d never let it in the house.

And then the clincher. “Do you want the poor thing to die? You’re going to take him to the pound and make sure he dies?” Follow those lines with a few tears and I guarantee you’ve got yourself a dog.

As a result, we had a long procession of dogs when I was a kid, some descript, some non so descript.

Some, like the one that half killed an intruder when we kids were all at the beach for Easter week, she grew to like. Others, like the snarly one she had to fight off with the broom in order to hang clothes in the yard, didn’t stay long on her Christmas list.

The latter one, incidentally, was a jumper and had to be kept on a rope even though the back yard had an eight-foot fence. Once, the rope was either a tad short or a tad long and my mother answered the door to find a little kid with this question: “Lady, did you know your dog is hanging?”

Seems the rope was just long enough to clear the fence but not long enough for the dog to touch ground. But the dog survived, leading my mother to state often that “you couldn’t kill that dog if you tried”--and leading us to wonder if maybe she hadn’t tried once or twice.

My habit of choosing, shall we say, peculiar animals continued long after I left home. There was the terribly insecure bloodhound (Bones by name) who never learned to hike his leg and always squatted like a female and peed on his chin.

We had a two-foot picket fence around the front yard and Bones often fell over onto the sidewalk, where he would stand and bay until someone went out and opened the gate to let him back in.

About the time we got Bones, Pierre came into our lives. A miniature poodle abandoned on the freeway, Pierre was awfully cute but had some bad habits, like urinating on the throw rugs.

If we did as the training books said and took a newspaper after Pierre, the housebroken Bones would think we were coming after him and take off yelping--and leaving a thin trickle of urine along the hardwood floors. It became easier to clean up after Pierre than it was to take the chance of spooking Bones.

I think of Bones and Pierre and the creature that forced my mother to arm herself to go into her own back yard when my 11-year-old begins his pleadings for a dog.

I stand there as he promises he will be extremely responsible and feed the dog every day and make sure it has water and take “really, really good care of it.”

And I wonder, as my eyes roll far back into my head: Am I ready for this?