Abby Kept Away From Me

I remember Abby's reaction when I opened my bedroom door after studying for an hour or so and realizing Abby was just outside my door waiting for me. I don't remember exactly when this story took place. It must have been in my third year in grad school but I don't know what I was studying for. I did take one class in my third year, Heterocycles, but I only took it pass/fail so I didn't study as hard for it had I taken the class for a grade. Abby was less than a year old.

Nevertheless, I was back in my room studying by myself. After an hour or so, I took a break and low and behold, Abby was sitting immediately by my door loyally waiting for me. I looked down at Abby and her whole body started to wiggle because she was wagging her tail so hard. The look on her face can best be described as "happy." It seemed like her eyes were smiling. She was so happy to see me. I didn't realize she wanted to see me or else I would have let her in.

From then on, I kept my door slightly cracked so Abby could come in and see me. I felt bad she was alone by her baby-girl-self. I thought she was so sweet the way she missed me so much.

What distinguished that moment from many others in Abby's puppy days was the realization that I was more to Abby than her plaything or occasional caretaker. She missed me and was becoming attached to me.

Needing a New Screen For Porch Because of Abby

The screen is at the left.

In a previous entry, I noted how we dealt with Abby sneaking out of the fence. When she was a puppy, she was still small enough to squeeze through the fence post and the house, and sometimes she would do just that: squeeze through. We easily fixed that problem by putting a cynder block in front of the gap. Besides, later on, Abby's growth obviated the need to block the gap. She would become too big to even put her Baby Girl head through the gap, let alone her whole body.

Unfortunately, we had to face another consequence of Abby's growth. She was a powerful, nitro-fueled Labrador puppy who we had a hard time controlling. She still had separation anxiety issues, which I have noted elsewhere. But even when she was outside, her separation anxiety still popped up now and then.

If someone she knew and liked was in the screen porch and Abby was in the back, Abby would grow extremely excited and could not contain herself. She would burst through the screen as if it were not there. After a few episodes of this, the screen porch was rendered useless. It wasn't meant to contain Labrador puppies, just bugs.

My mom hired a handyman to reinforce the screen with a high density plastic barrier able to withstand Abby's excitement. I know the description of the plastic barrier doesn't sound flattering, but the guy did a good job and it has stood strong for the last 15 years. It cost a few hundred dollars. Our Baby Girl's destruction cost us quite a bit when she was a puppy. She was wild as hell.

That part of Abby's growth, the rambunctionsness and spontaneity, irritated me at the time, but I miss it now. I was proud when she matured but her wild days did have some redeeming qualities. It made things fun, frustrating and unpredictable.

Abby Fights a Laundry Bag

I tried to tell stories about the babies in a linear fashion. However, there will be times I forget stories and have to go back to fill them in. The following story is one about Abby when she was a puppy.




When I would take my dirty laundry to the utility room, Abby would viciously attack the hamper. I would drag the hamper on the floor out of laziness and energy economy so Abby was easily able to get at the hamper. Abby saw the bag of soiled laundry as an open invitation to play and fight. She pounced on the bag, snarled at it, flashed her teeth and wrestled with it all the way to the steps between the foyer and den. Once I put the bag back on the floor in the den, Abby resumed her battle. Finally, she gave up once we were in the utility room.



I thought her fighting the bag was cute. I did all I could to encourage these sessions. I would wait to take the laundry until I knew Abby was in the path of my journey from my bedroom to the utility room. I wanted to make sure the hamper crossed paths with Abby. To further incite Abby, I would pick up the bag and gently swing it into her body. That sent her into the stratosphere!



She eventually grew out of this aggressive phase. The one vestige of her aggressive phase that lingered well into her adulthood was her playing tug-of-war with the squeaky toys.

Housetraining Andy

Housetraining Andy was so much easier than it was for Abby for the most part. Having Abby around combined with the fact that Andy was a follower, meant Abby essentially helped to house train Andy. I don’t remember Andy having the problems using the bathroom inside to the extent Abby had. All we had to do was let Abby outside and Andy would follow. Once outside, Andy figured out that it was a ‘bathroom break’ and acted accordingly. However, Abby wasn’t around Andy all the time. In the times Abby was away from Andy is when Andy would go off the reservation and use the bathroom in the house.

For example, my mom’s bed was positioned in the middle of her room making it quite easy for Andy to slip out of bed and soil the carpet somewhere. He thought he was slick by climbing back in the bed and acting like nothing in the world was wrong. His facial expressions often gave him away before the ‘present’ was discovered because he would lie on the bed without his relaxed appearance and have his head resting on his front paws while his eyes were slit open and cutting at you. My Little Man would not have been a good poker player. This drove me nuts because Andy knew this was wrong but didn’t bother trying to wake anyone to let him out like Abby did.

When Andy did use the bathroom at night, he would often sneak into my mom’s bathroom and relieve himself on the bathroom rug. Other times, he would sneak outside the bedroom and go to the side door and take care of business there. As a matter of fact, if my mom’s bedroom door was open, it was an open invitation for Andy to go and use the bathroom. Fortunately my mom caught on quickly to this behavior and kept her bedroom door closed at night which dramatically cut down on Andy’s midnight bathroom breaks.

There were a couple of factors making it very difficult to fully address Andy’s potty issues. First, my mom was even more slack about disciplining Andy than she was with Abby. When I would ask my mom if she spanked Andy, she simply replied, “No, he’s too cute.” I am a firm believer in negative feedback and was at my wit’s end when my mom did this. Andy knew that using the bathroom in the house was bad as evidenced by his body language when he was about to be exposed for his naughty behavior. He needed to be punished, but my time around him was limited so I wasn’t able to fully exert my will on him. Andy knew he could get away with it and kept doing it.

Something else foiling my attempts at punishing Andy was Abby. She absolutely hated to see Andy get spanked. When I did try to spank Andy in front of Abby, Abby would walk between us in an attempt to block me from Andy. She would then sit on her haunches and try to ‘huggy and kissy’ me. It was the same tactic she used when I spanked her except now she was trying to protect Andy. After looking at those those sad eyes and her pitiful begging, I almost always stopped the spanking and hugged Abby first and then Andy. As cute as I thought this was, it hampered my attempts to discipline Andy and make him understand what he did wrong.

A few years later after I had moved back to Raleigh, I returned from work and noticed that Andy left a ‘present’ in the guest bathroom. I knew it was Andy. Anyway, I let the dogs out, and when they tried to come back in, I let Andy in who was first in line (He was always first in line. He insisted on being the first in the house. It was a manifestation of his separation anxiety), then I blocked Abby from coming in with my hand. I had to put some might into it because she was determined to go back inside; my baby girl was strong. I closed the door with Abby looking up through the glass in a quizzical way. I then marched Andy back to the guest bathroom, pointed at the feces and asked ‘Did you do that?’ He did his best to look away and would not look at it or me. And then I went over and gave him a ‘little spank’ on his rump. Telling him that I was going to spank him hurt him more than the actual spanking itself.

Once the spank was over, I let Abby and Father in, and our lives returned to normal. Did my punishment work? I don’t know. Andy was relatively good about not going inside after that. I must admit that Abby had set the bar pretty high when it came to this matter.

The Hot Seat

It didn’t take long in Andy’s first summer with us for his quirks and idiosyncrasies to appear. He has so many hang-ups that it would be hard to list in one place. In some ways, his odd behaviors were sad while in a way it was cute and endearing. One day in mid-afternoon, Andy was rolling around on the lounge chair barking and fidgeting around. I had no idea what he was doing there. He didn’t appear to be playing and he didn’t appear to be happy either. He was mad, but at what I didn’t know. After a few minutes of this, he would finally settle into a position as comfortably as he could and lay with his head on his paws. He wouldn’t or couldn’t sleep. He would lie there as still as he could closing his eyes, but not all the way. He would have his eyes slit open and would cut them at his surroundings. It was obvious he was irritated, but I couldn’t figure out what was bothering him.

My mom was able to find out why Andy was so mad at the chair, and yes, he was mad at the lounge chair. In the summer sun, these chairs could get very hot. Since I didn’t lay out on them, I didn’t put things together that the chairs would be so uncomfortable due to the heat. My mom on the other hand sunbathes on a regular basis, so she knows how painful those lounge chairs could be to the touch. Normally, we would douse the lounge chair with water to cool it down or we would put a towel down to buffer our bodies from the heat.

Andy didn’t have the luxury of doing these things to avoid the hot lounge chair. We could have watered down the lounge chairs to cool them off, but once we realized what was bothering Andy so much when he was rolling around in those chairs, we thought it was so cute to watch him fuss around on the hot seat and relished every moment we could to see him perform this routine. It got to the point that Andy, in anticipation of the hot seat, would sit beside the lounge chairs and start barking at them in a preemptive manner to show his displeasure at what he knew was going to be scalding hot patio furniture. To those unfamiliar with him, Andy’s barking at an empty chair must have seemed peculiar at best and crazy at worst. To us it was so damned cute and precious. Andy in his older age doesn’t bark at the hot chairs anymore, but he does fidget around in the chair and gets real quiet stewing in the heat and discomfort of the chair. It’s still cute and makes me smile to this day.

Andy's Sleeping Arrangements

Andy quickly adjusted to his new home. He immediately befriended my mom. They were inseparable, and spent almost every waking moment together, as well as their time asleep. Andy slept in her bed right by her pillow. Andy quickly established the bed as his domain and would become restless or fidgety if anyone or anything tried to get in the bed other than my mom. Andy would tolerate Abby sleeping in the bed, but she had to stay at the foot of the bed. Father, on the other hand, could not get in the bed unless under unusual circumstances such as a thunderstorm. Otherwise, Andy would growl at any attempt by Father to climb in the bed. At night, my mom had her bedtime rituals. It would be initiated with the following question to the dogs: Do you want to go nighty? It didn’t take Andy long to learn what that meant, and when he did, that question would send him into a trot down the hall straight to my mom’s room.

He did this to establish his position on the bed which was his safe haven, cocoon, and a place of his own solely of his dominion. Sometimes Abby or Father would have a head start because they were in the hall while Andy was on the couch with my mom. This only accelerated Andy’s gait. He would forcefully thrust himself past Father and Abby to jockey for position in order to be the first in bed. Abby took the slight in stride, but Father would be indignant and snarl and snap at Andy. Under these circumstances, it didn’t matter since Father couldn’t catch Andy, and once Andy was on the bed, no dog would challenge him. It was sort of like their own version of king of the mountain and Andy was the King. My mom’s bed was a place of comfort for Andy. There he was free from his fears and phobias, but it was in the bed that Andy could be aggressive.

For example, one night a couple of years later when I was down visiting, I went to my mom’s room one night after I had just arrived from my 8 hour trip from NJ. Father was so happy to see me that he wanted to jump on the bed to greet me. Andy would have none of that. Andy let out a low growl. I felt his normally soft and squishy body tense and become hard from his muscles flexing. Just then, Andy lunged at Father. It took everything I had to hold Andy back, and I’m not a little person either. Andy was a strong little bastard.

Even when if I approached my mom’s bed with Andy on it, Andy would become anxious, stand up and shift his body in a tactical position as to block any attempt of mine to sit on it. He wasn’t mean about it, but he was subtle about the fact that I was not completely welcome to approach that bed. He didn’t mind Abby getting on the bed, but she had to wait her turn while he would get in and position himself before she was allowed to climb on. He would not allow her to sleep by my mom at the head of the bed. The head of the bed was Andy’s and Andy’s alone. My mom’s bed was Andy’s sanctuary and the only place where he would sleep at night.

Andy Makes New Friends

Andy loved my mom from the start, but he still had to deal with another person and two dogs in his transition to his new home. Andy was sort of scared of me, especially after the ‘cooky-coo’ incident when I jumped off the slide and yelled at him. He liked me though since I was loved so much by Abby and Father. Andy was also scared of Father, and Father wasn’t too keen on the new upstart who he viewed as a competitor. The fact that Andy was a male exacerbated this problem. Father never did anything as dramatic to Andy as he had to Abby when Andy was a puppy. Father was tense and snarly around Andy, but he would not attack Andy, especially when I was around. The relationship Father and Andy had would always be strained and tense throughout their lives.

Abby got along with Andy right from the start. Their relationship wasn’t a mutual one. Andy viewed Abby as his big sister or even his mother, while Abby viewed Andy as a protectorate to be shielded from me and Father whenever Andy got in trouble. All traces of puppiness were gone from Abby now that Andy was on the scene. She seemed to noticeably mature before our eyes. In a way, Abby helped to raise Andy. She nurtured him and was his guide showing him the ins-and-outs of the house.

I thought it was funny and took sadistic pleasure watching Andy roughhouse Abby. He would give my Baby Girl hell, much the same way that Abby had given Nikki and Father in her younger days. Unlike Father and much like Nikki, Abby took it in good stride. Andy would jump on her back, bite her, wrestle around with her, and Abby put up with his energetic play in good natured way. Once in a while, she would show some teeth, but it was never anything malicious.

Andy never roughhoused with me. If I tried teasing him or initiating play, either he would withdraw into a shell shutting himself off from the world, or he would find a toy to play fetch with, and then I’d be committed to throwing that toy a couple of dozen times.

When it came to swimming, Andy was a natural in the water. Within a few days after Andy arrived at our home, we put Andy on the top step in the pool. Unlike Abby, Andy didn’t bolt out of the water. Instead he sat there and watched us swim and play. As a matter of fact, Andy started swimming so fast and effortlessly that we don’t remember his “first” time swimming like we did with Abby. Abby was the one who took so much time and work to show and convince to swim. Abby did her part in teaching Andy how to swim. It was so cute the way Abby did it. While Andy was sitting on the pool ledge, Abby would slip into the water, swim in a small circle, stand on the steps and look up at Andy like “See how it’s done? Now come in.” She was so sweet how she was teaching Andy how to swim and subsequently inviting him into the water. I don’t know if it was Andy’s disposition or our efforts to teach him to swim, but no more than a month after Andy arrived here, he was able to swim and loved it.

Andy navigated around Father’s temperamental ways and stayed out of trouble with him. And with me, Andy got along with me as best he could. However he made friends easily and readily with the ones who mattered the most: my mom and Abby.

Andy Adjusts to His New Home

If this narrative were strictly a linear one, I would be discussing the days of deciding to bring another dog in our house, choosing the puppy and bringing it home. I’m fairly certain we got Andy in June sometime. I had finished all of my interviews, was offered several jobs and accepted the one in NJ. I turned down both offers in the Bay area fairly quickly, but had the offer in San Diego came quicker, I most likely would have accepted the job out there. Unfortunately, the company in NJ that offered me a position needed a response from me, and the deadline for the decision there came well before the San Diego offer was made. How different my life would have been had I moved out there.

In the meantime, I sat around and waited for my adviser to read my thesis and give me the go-ahead to defend it. I pouted and sulked a lot. The guy was jerking me around taking his sweet ass time getting around to letting me defend.

I should have enjoyed the time off and the remaining time I had with Abby. I did play quite a bit with her, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. In the meantime, I watched Andy acquaint himself to his new home. I only spent a couple of months with Andy before I had to move. The most vivid memory I have of him is how pretty he was. I know I picked him out almost primarily because of his looks, but he was a cute puppy. He kept getting prettier as he aged. My power of this language isn’t strong enough to describe his pulchritude. There just aren’t enough words in this language to describe how pretty he was. His coat was soft, and he smelled so good. If a company could capture that puppy-smell of Andy’s in an air freshener, the shelves of these fresheners would never stay full because they would sell so fast. Andy felt good too. He was so ‘squishy’, making me want to hug and squeeze him any chance I could. I wanted to fawn all over him, but I had to refrain for a couple of reasons.

First, I didn’t want to make Abby jealous. Abby may have been my Baby Girl, but she could be jealous at times. The jealousy manifested itself in many ways depending on the situation and her mood. Another reason I held back from over-loving Andy was that I didn’t need two dogs pining over my departure. I didn’t need Andy becoming attached to me the way Abby had. I had been assured that Abby wouldn’t take my moving too hard, and I clung to that belief until I moved. I didn’t think Father would miss me.

Andy became quite attached to my mom, which was the way I hoped it would be. I worried that Andy would take too prominent a role in the house with my mom sacrificing love and attention that Abby would otherwise receive. Fortunately, when it came to loving the dogs, my mom’s affection was not a zero sum game. She loved them all, and they loved her. But with Andy, it was special. He clung to my mom for attention, love and protection. He gazed at her in a wide-eyed innocence. This was a look he never gave me. Don’t get me wrong, Andy would come to love me, but what he had with my mom was special. Andy quickly accepted our house as his new home and quickly made friends with my mom. Things worked out the way we planned it. He still had to establish relationships with me and more importantly the dogs.

I Couldn't (and Didn't) Wait To Say "Hello."

“Hello Bebe” I said, “I love you Bebe.” It was in the summer of ’96 at the time I was uttering these words to Abby one day, and by this time, many, but not all, of my family members grew accustomed to me talking baby-talk to Abby. Maybe they thought it was weird, off-beat or even cute given my normal disposition of being taciturn and dour. My cousin, who was driving the car I was in, kept glancing in her rear-view mirror at me. She tried to be as inconspicuous as possible when she kept cutting her eyes at me. Her eyes said it all: what the hell is wrong with this guy? The problem with the scenario is that I was alone in the backseat of a car which was 5 miles away from the dog I was talking to.

My mom, cousin and I went to Greensboro to see my dad. I’m not sure if my parents were still separated at this point or if the divorce had been finalized. Ostensibly, my mom wanted to go back to her old home to retrieve a few things she forgot when she officially moved out in December, 1994. (She had left him about a month before.) I think the real reason she wanted to go back home was to check on my dad, spy on him, snoop around and see how he was doing. We did retrieve a few things, nothing of consequence except for some old tapes that he had recorded of our phone conversations. Why in the hell that man bugged his own phone is still a mystery to me to this day. It was a set of these cassettes that my mom found in the fall of ‘94 which she listened to which led to their break-up. There was some juicy stuff there. Suffice it to say, there was quite a bit of incriminating information on those tapes. Anyway, we found some more tucked away in the front closet which I sneaked into the car and listened to later on the trip back.

Normally, finding taped phone calls and listening to them would be the highlight of a trip especially with the content these tapes contained, but not this time. It had to share top billing with me talking to myself on the way back. We were a few miles from home on the beltline between Yonkers Road and New Bern Ave. when I uttered my words to Abby. My cousin didn’t want me to know she was looking at me yet she couldn’t turn her eyes away. It’s sort of like walking past the schizophrenic guy on the park bench downtown all by himself who is deep into conversation with god knows who. You know it’s impolite to stare, but it’s so entertaining that you can’t help but not to. And so it was with my cousin and me.

At about that time, the car became quiet which was when my mom noticed my cousin looking at me. By now, my mom knew full well I was talking to Abby. My mom started laughing loudly at my cousin. “Don’t you know he’s talking to Abby?” my mom said. “I didn’t know what was going on” my cousin responded “I thought he was losing his mind.” Once my cousin realized I was being a little weird and eccentric and not crazy, she too started laughing at me.

In a matter of minutes, I would be reunited with my Baby Girl who would be ecstatic to see me. She was a bright spot in an otherwise miserable year.

Abby's First Christmas

(This wasn't the tree mentioned below, but it pretty much looked the same and was about in the same place that tree was in '96.)

Christmas in ’96 was the first one after my grandmother’s death, and the 3rd one that my dad would not spend with us since this was in the middle of his ‘period of troubles.’ On a brighter note, this was the first Christmas ever for my baby girl. As if we didn’t dote on her enough, we thought we would involve Abby in the festivities by purchasing her a gift as well. I bought her a gift basket from a big-box pet store. It was filled with pigs ears, milk bones, rawhide chew toys and some squeaky toys. The fact that a pet store would have such an item meant I wasn’t the only one out there who paid a little too much time with his pet and overindulging it. It was a relief to know that there were other dog owners out there who were just as eccentric about their babies as I was. I even went so far as to wrap the gift basket and place it under the tree along with the other ‘people gifts’.

Not wanting to leave Father out and hurt his feelings, I bought him a gift basked too, wrapped it and placed it under the tree. My plan was to open their presents on Christmas Eve when we opened our presents. Things didn’t work out the way we wanted. The day we put the gift baskets under the tree, Father zeroed in on one of them, sat in front of it and guarded it in full earnest. When Abby walked by him, he growled a little and drew even closer to the gift basket, with the gift between his front paws. Father grew anxious and irritated even when I or someone else came close to his gift.
I thought it was so cute that Father knew the gift was his. He picked it out of the whole stack of gifts and wasn’t going to let it out of his site. It was almost like a predator-prey scenario. He stalked out his loot and wasn’t going to let it go. Father wasn’t too mean to Abby. Abby was somewhat confused, but she didn’t press the issue since there was so much more going on to divert her attention from a possibly volatile situation.

We couldn’t let this situation go on for days on end. Had we let Father, he was going to stay by his prize as long as he had to until he reaped the rewards. We decided to go ahead and give Father and Abby their baskets which they absolutely loved. Come to think of it, this gift to the babies was about the only thing I remember about that Christmas. I’m not sure if we ever gave them gifts like that again. I wished I had taken pictures of that time, but I didn’t.

Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone

(Abby is right beside the part of the counter where the loaf of bread was. The main counter is to the left.)

My grandmother owned a bread maker which I used a couple of times a month. I would make bread, pizza dough and donuts with that bread maker. Normally I’m skittish about baking with yeast because it’s a pain properly preparing yeast based products since the optimum temperature in which the yeast will work is somewhat narrow, too cold, the yeast’s “activity” is too low and the bread won’t rise, too hot, and the proteins in the yeast will breakdown, and once again the bread won’t rise. The bread maker removed that attention to detail needed for baking with yeast that would otherwise overwhelm my occasional fastidious self. Sometimes in the kitchen, the chemist in me comes out and my overly cautiousness can double the time needed to measure out or weigh things. And yes, I do have a kitchen scale which I absolutely love.

So, on the second weekend of my mom’s Great Britain trip, I baked a loaf of bread. The amount of work needed for fresh bread was cut down quite a bit with this bread maker making this task easy and routine. It was so easy and routine in fact that I can’t even remember making the loaf itself on that day. However where things do become vivid is when I removed the loaf from the bread maker and cut a slice, putting the loaf on the side counter while I put the sliced-off piece on the main counter. Now the loaf, or the rest of it, was at my back. I was putting some butter on my slice of bread when I noticed Abby hustling down the kitchen and into the dining room. “How odd”, I thought. She didn’t seem to be in a playful mood, and no one was in the other room calling her, “Why is she running like that?” As I walked towards her, I noticed an empty space where the remaining loaf had been. Abby took the loaf and darted into the dining room with it (I have mentioned that she was getting bigger, right?). I have no doubt that if I gave her a chance, she would have eaten the whole thing! I couldn’t believe how stealthy and bold she was in taking that bread. I didn’t hear a thing, nothing, and my hearing is pretty damn good.

In my heart, I thought it was cute and funny that Abby would sneak on the counter and take the whole loaf of bread like that, but on the outside, I had to maintain some standards and discipline by admonishing her and giving her a ‘little spank’. I took the loaf from her and threw it away. I said the usual things like “Bad girl”, “Did you do that?” or “Do you want a spank?” I swatted her rump but didn’t hit hard. By this time, the events leading up to the spank, such as saying the word ‘spank’ itself was more upsetting to Abby than the actual spanking itself.

I think the lesson she learned was “Don’t take food from Gary” and not “Don’t take food from the counter” which I intended it to be. A couple of years later when I was no longer living at home, my mom told me a couple of stories of how Abby sneaked food off the kitchen counter and also the coffee table. The coffee table is right at eye level for her so any unattended food there was too tempting for her to pass up. However when she took a sandwich from the counter when she was around 10 or so, she knew better and was trying to get away with something since my mom, the non-disciplinarian, was home alone and wouldn’t spank her.

As a matter of fact, I think her lesson from that day when she took the loaf of bread from was indeed “Don’t take food from Gary” and not “Don’t take food from the counter.” When Abby lived with me at my condo in the downtown Raleigh area, not once did she take food from my counter or coffee table even though she had ample opportunities to do so.

That loaf of bread would be the last I made, ever as of this writing. My aunt wanted that bread maker, so she told my mom to give it to her, which she did. How often did my aunt use it, I don’t know. The last time I saw it was at my aunt’s house sitting in the utility room above the washer and dryer.

Rain Rain Go Away

Abby learned early in her life that a rainy day meant no play, or at least outside. She had many ways of asking me to go outside such as staring at the front door, standing by my seat and looking away from me or simply barking at me and running to the door. However when it was raining, she knew better than to ask to go out. She would go out briefly during rainy days to go to the bathroom, did her business as quickly as possible, didn’t dillydally around and went right back inside. This is not to say Abby was happy about her predicament. She had her ways of conveying her mood to me. On rainy days when she wanted to go out but couldn’t, she would pout, mope around, lie on the floor pointing towards the window and cut her eyes at me like I had something to do with it raining.

During one four day stint in this two week vacation period, it rained solidly and continuously. I tried to vent Abby’s pent up energy by engaging in play activities inside, but after the fourth day, Abby had enough. When I let her out for a bathroom break, she not only refused to go back inside, she grabbed a Frisbee or a rope and demanded my attention and that I play with her outside. We played fetch and had a few rounds of tug-o-war while we became drenched in the rain. This improved her spirits afterwards, and she wasn’t so antsy and irritable as she had been on the preceding three days.

Go Out There and Break a Leg.

The climax of ‘Inside Playing Games’ came on a Saturday evening a week into the two week stint of my mom’s Great Britain trip. Abby was over six months old then and was growing stronger and faster by the day. When it came to chasing games, the tides were clearly moving in her favor so I had to do something to gain an edge. First, was the direction I chose to go around the indoor loop which was in a clockwise fashion (living room to foyer to den to breakfast room to dining room and back to living room). When Abby ran through the den and gained a good head of steam, she had to slow down quite a bit when she approached the breakfast room since the floors in both rooms are hardwoods. Had I ran the other way, the turns would have been on carpeted areas, and she wouldn’t have to slow down much at all. I had to slow down going from the den to breakfast room transition too, but not as much as Abby had to.

Something else I had to do was to cut the corners as hard as I could, and that is where I would pay the price. On the last indoor chasing game I had with Abby, I was having a wonderful time with her, and she seemed very pleased and excited herself. As I mentioned to earlier, Abby was getting faster. These games were getting shorter and shorter because she caught me so fast. I was going pretty quickly through the den, zipped through the breakfast room and rounded into the dining room with Abby close behind. I cut the corner hard, my body leaning further than it should have. Something had to give. Had I been on my other foot, my left foot, my left ankle would have given and I would have collapsed. I have sprained this ankle a dozen times at least. Like a doctor told me one time, spraining your ankle is like biting your lip. Once you do it, it makes it easier for it to happen again. I’ve had three ‘knockdowns’ with this ankle, where I could hear the ankle snap and my body collapsed right on the spot. The other times, the ankle rolled, sometimes snapping, sometimes not, but I did not fall on the remaining occasions.

But I was on my right ankle, the ‘good one’, the strong one. As I said before, I was leaning too much and something had to give. It wasn’t going to be the laws of physics. It wasn’t going to be my right ankle. It held up just fine. My footing slipped on the carpet, and down I went. My forward momentum carried me into the living room where my knees hit the floor and my shoulder hit a chair. From point of departure to point of contact, I went over six feet forward and down two steps on my way below. I heard something snap, but I didn’t know what. My shoulder? My knee? I didn’t feel much pain. (I may have had a couple of beers that night.) Abby ran down the steps and leapt on my back. She was so happy because she clearly won the game. I rolled on my back and she started licking me and wagging her tail. After her post-game celebration was over, I stood up and hobbled to the recliner and sat down.

The next day, I found out what was injured—my right knee. It was literally black and blue. Also, my knee was quite swollen, so much so that I could feel the fluid jiggle around whenever I took an oh-so-painful step on it. I limped to the kitchen, put some ice in a bag and iced my knee intermittently with heating in between all while keeping it elevated and a took a few doses of Excedrin. My biggest concern was making it to teaching labs the next day (I did). The swelling subsided considerably the next day, but my knee was stiff for a few weeks after that and I had to stop running for a month or so. The only way that I can tell I had injured that knee is the fact that it pops from time to time while the other knee does not.

Fast forward 10 years. I’m in a sports medicine physician’s office because of my compartment syndrome. One of the ways compartment syndrome is caused is a broken bone, which is why the doctor ordered X-rays on both lower legs. The doctor came in and said that even though it appeared that I broke my leg at some time in my life, the old injury didn’t appear to be the cause of my compartment syndrome.

I was so enmeshed in the compartment syndrome that I didn’t bother asking the doctor which leg had been broken and where. Was it the time I was playing with Abby? Was it the time I wrecked my cousin’s minibike the same year I injured my leg playing with Abby? It may have been another injury from my childhood, but I suspect the two injuries mentioned above are the most likely culprits in my old, previously unknown leg-break. I never knew because I never went to the doctor to have these injuries checked out.

That weekend marked an end to a series of games Abby and I played inside. We never played an indoor chasing game after that. She was too fast; I was too slow and it was too dangerous. I’m sure by this point, there are some motherly types reacting to my running around the house and getting injured and thinking “I told you so.”

Teasing Abby

Up until my mom went on her trip to Great Britain, I hadn’t spent much time alone with Abby while awake, and what time I did was late at night when I was tired. When I arrived home, someone else was around so Abby’s attention was divided between me and whoever else was in the house. However once this trip was underway, I had Abby all to myself. At first I thought of her as being something to care for and keep alive until my mom returned home. But Abby had a way of demanding attention and usually got it. When my mom was at home, I tried roughhousing Abby but I was normally chastised for this behavior because my mom didn’t like the noise and commotion generated from all of our activity. She tried to achieve harmony and tranquility in her house. It was a miracle that she got the dog in the first place let alone a big floppy dynamo like Abby. My mom also claimed that my roughhousing and teasing made Abby mean. Who knows, maybe it made her more aggressive. Admittedly, I really didn’t know much about dog behavior so I didn’t have much ground to stand on in any response to my mom’s statement.

I soon discovered that it was fun to play with Abby. We played like we had before, but this time there was no one to keep us in check and tell us to cool it. What we had now was like before but amped up on steroids and amphetamines. Our play was high energy, robust and full-contact bouts of running, chasing and wrestling. My mom didn’t mind us playing hard outside but drew the line at such activities inside. Now we could play day and night, inside and out. I felt like a kid with a new puppy. I didn’t realize how fun puppies were until then.

Abby loved to be teased and would eventually relish it. There were many ways I’d get her going. If she had a toy in her mouth, I’d say, “Give me that”, and she would start growling and then crouch down and trot to me and run away real quick. When I repeated that command, she would run even faster and growl even louder. When I did take the toy away, I’d put it just out of her reach and watch her jump and bark in frustration at her attempts to get the toy. I would simply hold the toy up in the air just above her, or I’d put the toy on a shelf in plain view and say to her, “Give me that”. She would go nuts, but it was loads of fun for her.

She also liked it when I’d sneak in the back and hide from her. As mentioned earlier, it was difficult to break away from her, but when I did, I would go in one of the beds, go under the cover completely and yell Abby’s name. She would trot to the back while I would peak out of the blanket and watch her pass by the room I was in, and I would then yell her name again. She was in frenzy by this point, but eventually she found me and would dash to the bed, leap on it and start biting and slapping at me while trying to burrow under the blanket to get at me. We would wrestle and play for a few minutes and then return to the living room where we usually hung out inside the house.

Abby mastered the hide and seek game quickly. She learned to use her sense of smell to track me. I would see her get to the point where I had made a turn, and that was where she would stop, point her nose in the air, twitch it a couple of times and then head directly to me. To counter her new weapon in her arsenal, I would have to find better hiding places. One way was to hide behind the shower curtains in the bathroom. The first time I tried this, Abby would stop in the bathroom and stand there with a perplexed look on her face. Her nose told her that I was there, but her eyes said otherwise. When she left the bathroom, I would climb out of the shower, sneak up on her and grab her. Of course she was happy when she saw me and went nuts, but she caught on to that hiding space very quickly so it was on to something else to keep her entertained.

I also loved to tease her by putting a blanket over me, walking to the front and sneaking up on her. She would bark and growl and then start running around and jump on me. This was almost guaranteed to start a wrestling match. This was something I could not do with Andy or Father. Andy would get scared whenever I tried to tease him, especially when I disguised myself someway. He would growl but in a different way from how Abby did it. Abby’s growl was a playful fun display but Andy was truly scared and he would slink away from me and hide in his ‘sanctuary’, my mom’s bed. When I tried to tease Father, he either became scared like Andy or just plain confused.

Even when she was older and slower, she still liked to be teased. Her all-time favorite was “I’m going to get a little girl.” It was not only what I was saying but how I would say it that drove her nuts. I would say it in a low, slow, singy-songy way. She would become agitated when I first said “I’m” and by the time the words ‘little girl’ came out of my mouth, she was growling at me and then top it off with a loud bark. It was cute every time she did it.

For Abby, teasing gave her an outlet to release some energy, initiate play, socialize with me and a way to challenge me. She had as much fun being teased as I had teasing her. During that Great Britain trip and after, Abby wasn’t just a pet to me, she was a play-thing and a source of limitless amusement.

Tippy Tips

In the great amount of time I spent with Abby while my mom was in Great Britain, I discovered how clingy or needy Abby was. It was understandable, after all she was still a puppy and normally she had, up to that point, always had someone around to keep her company. I honestly don’t know if she was this clingy before, but it really came to light in my time alone with her. I guess my time away at school leaving her all by her baby girl self made her miss me more so than she otherwise would have if my mom were home. I know Father was there, but I’m not sure if he was a good companion for her. Father’s emotional development was still stunted at that point, and he often looked to Abby for guidance on how to behave in the house. Instead of Father being a stabilizing force for Abby, it was the other way around.

I still haven’t said what “Tippy Tips” is. Tippy Tips was one of many nicknames I had for Abby. What made this nickname so memorable is the fact that I can remember about the time and circumstance under which I gave her a particular nickname. During the Great Britain trip, I had a lot of time alone with Abby. She stuck to my side wherever I went while I was at home. I mean everywhere. It got the point where Abby would accompany me when I had to use the bathroom or take a shower. I wasn’t thrilled about it at first, but I got used to it. A couple of times, she even poked her head through the shower curtains while I was bathing, but once she realized what I was doing she immediately backed out not wanting anything to do with a shower.

If I was watching TV and popped into the kitchen real quick, Abby would hop up the moment I left my chair. For those thinking she was doing it for the food, I considered that at the time and did a little experiment. As I was heading towards the kitchen, I would take a detour to the den, and sure enough, Abby would be right behind me in tow. I would even walk around in circles from the living room to the dining room then breakfast room, den, foyer and back to the living room. Abby was right behind me hanging around me like a shadow. Sometimes I’d go in this circle 10 times, and Abby stayed with me the whole time.

My mom has nice hardwood floors in several rooms. When the dogs walk on them, it makes a characteristic sound as their nails hit the wood, a tip tip tip sound. I came to associate that sound with Abby’s companionship and attention. Soon I began calling her “Tippy Tips”. It wasn’t my most endearing nickname for her, but it stuck. I rarely called her that when others were around. I didn’t want people to think I was weird or anything.

She was so cute, I could have squeezed the you-know-what out of her.

(I haven't found any photos of me hugging Abby, but I did find the one above with Nikki.)

She was so cute that I wanted to squeeze the shit out of her. For the most part, it is a figure of speech, but in my case with Abby, it wasn’t far from the truth. I often called Abby my ‘Huggy Baby’ because I used to hug her all the time. Sometimes if I was excited or overly enthusiastic, I would squeeze, once in a while too hard. Abby normally liked the attention even if she was sometimes smothered with it. A couple of times she whined at the discomfort I inflicted upon her. One time in an overzealous state, even by my standards with Abby, I squeezed her so hard that she vomited. She wasn’t mad at me, but I was embarrassed that I hurt my baby girl. I always checked the vigorousness in which I hugged her from that incident on. I didn’t stop hugging her and kept doing it even on the day she died.
A few years later, when that series on National Geographic aired, The Dog Whisperer, I learned several ways to deal with an unruly dog with behavioral problems. It turns out that I had stumbled upon several of these training techniques admittedly by luck. For example the hugging. To me, hugging Abby was an outward manifestation of my love for her. However from her perspective, not only was the hug a way for us to bond, but it was a show of my dominance over her. Abby had natural tendency to lead and take charge, regardless if she was dealing with people or other dogs. By me asserting myself over her in what I thought was a simple hug; I was able to find a way to check her sometimes aggressiveness and keep her in line. I needed whatever luck I could find because I had no idea how to raise a puppy when we bought Abby.

Spank

(From the spot the photo was taken just past the mailbox was the route Abby took when she was chasing a squirrel as described in this passage.)


“This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” Was there ever a trite overused expression more annoying than that especially when said by your parents right before they were about to administer a spanking to you? In the times one of my parents said this to me, one of the first things to cross my mind was “Sure, let me have the switch, and I’ll beat your ass instead.” Of course this cliché was a hollow meaningless expression to me until I had to dole out discipline to Abby when she was a puppy. I should say now that I am single and have no children. Abby and Andy are the closest things to children I have. Yes, I know they are dogs, and in the end, children count for a whole lot more than a dog does, but nonetheless, I love the babies.

One day I was doing some yard work in the front. The front yard is not fenced in. The part of the yard I was working in was around 100 feet from the street, maybe more. Even though the yard was not enclosed and Abby was not leashed, I thought it would not be a problem for her to hang around me while I piddled around the front doing a few chores. While I was removing some steps in the front at the top of the hill, I caught Abby in the corner of my eye making a bee-line straight towards the street chasing a squirrel trying to make an escape from me and Abby. Immediately, I yelled at the top of my lungs “Abby, Abby, stop, stop.” She halted and made a U-turn but not until she had actually made it to the pavement. I kept yelling at her. She was so scared that she ran from me around the house and to the back yard. Before I made my way to her, my mom knew something wasn’t right with her. She could tell by Abby’s demeanor that something wasn’t right. Also, Abby had gone on the stoop by the patio. Whenever Abby sat on the stoop like that, something was wrong. It meant she was either scared or mad. For example, when she was young, I put her in the pool one time in an attempt to make her swim. My effort failed and only made her mad at me. She almost instaneously jumped out of the pool and ran straight to the stoop. I can’t begin to describe the ugly look she gave me that day, but suffice it to say that if looks could kill, I would have been dead that day. And so there she was on that stoop waiting for me to get her.
As I rounded the corner, my mom quickly asked me what was wrong. She could tell Abby was scared. I would explain to her what Abby had done. In the mean time, I had to whip Abby’s ass. My mom hated it when I did that which I found this odd. In my childhood days, she was quick to meet out punishments, deserved or not. On this day, she would not talk me out of spanking Abby. My spanks involved hitting Abby on the base of her tail or on her rump and was accompanied by a harsh reprimand. I hated doing it, but I could not have Abby running unfettered into the street. She had to know her boundaries. One thing I’ve noticed about disciplining a dog is that the most effective way to teach them is to catch them red-handed. The more closely associated the negative feedback was to the infraction the more likely the dog would learn from its bad behavior.

Some can say that I was at fault for letting Abby unleashed in an unenclosed area like that. True, I do take some blame for that. Had a car hit Abby that day, I would have felt awfully and had considerable guilt on my shoulders ever since. However, Abby made it through that unscathed, but I had to teach her about where it was acceptable for her to go. Abby learned her lesson. For a dozen years after, Abby spent many days playing in the front yard and without a leash on her. Never again would she run in the street. She had a few close calls, but she learned her lesson. I hated being the ‘bad guy’ but had I not spanked her on that day for her running in the street, she may have ended up killed by passing car. She wouldn’t hate me for my disciplining her. She didn’t hold grudges like that, fortunately for me.

A Day at the Park

(Above is Withers Hall at North Carolina State University. Many undergraduate teaching labs are there as well as classrooms and offices.)

A big milestone in mine and Abby’s relationship took place on a late summer afternoon one Sunday. My cousin invited my mom to Jordan Lake to spend the afternoon with her and her family. Abby too was invited. My cousin, her daughter, husband and Nikki went camping at the campsites operated and maintained by the Jordan Lake State Park authorities. Jordan Lake is a reservoir in the Triangle area close to Durham created by the damming of the Haw River. The Haw River eventually empties into the Cape Fear River, one of NC’s biggest rivers, and flows past Fayetteville and Wilmington. I was also invited but was unable to go. I was busy teaching labs and Sunday was when I graded papers. Grading lab reports was a pain and what I liked the least about teaching labs. I found it best to grade all of the papers at once so that I would grade the papers in a consistent manner. You can bet your bottom dollar that if I took off one point for a rounding error on one paper but two points for the same error on another paper, those two students would find each other out and the ‘2point’ person would hurt me down to point out how unfair I was in my grading. So, I needed a large block of time, and in grad school, Sunday was the only day when I had that much time available to grade.

Back to the story. I thought they were supposed to return home, my mom and Abby, around 6 in the evening, so when 6pm came and went I started to worry when there was neither sighting of them nor a single call. Finally, around 8pm, my mom reached me on her niece’s cell phone. The reception was broken and crackly, but I could hear my mom say that she and Abby were fine, but that they were unable to leave the park and would not come home until the next morning. The park rangers have a strict policy of when the gates open and close. Once the gates are closed for the night, no one goes in; no one goes out. Everyone inside is on lock-down until the gates open the next morning.

I was in a near panic. My imagination went awry and all I could see was that my mom had lied to me and that instead Abby got lost. I further thought that my mom was making up a story to find time until they found my baby girl. I came very close to driving the 45 mile trip out there and getting my baby girl but I had a few beers that afternoon and didn’t want to chance a DUI. (Did I mention that the students seem smarter after I’ve had a few beers and the grading goes more smoothly?). All I could do was wait.

The next day, Monday, was a school day. I had labs to teach so I had to go to school. Normally, after teaching labs, I would go to the research labs (as opposed to the teaching labs) and do my own lab work. On this day, I changed my routine and went home to see how Abby was doing. My mom’s car was in the garage so that was of some relief to me, but I had to see my baby girl. I checked the living room and den, but they were not there. It turns out they were both layed out in my mom’s bed. When I came into the bedroom, they didn’t even notice me at first. That is how tired, worn out and deep asleep they both were.

I leaned over the bed and hugged Abby. She thwapped her tail on the bed and without lifting her head, licked my face and fell back asleep. Those two were tuckered out and it showed. I went back to school, relieved knowing that my baby girl was safe and secure.

Upon returning home later that day, my mom filled me in on what happened. Abby had a wonderful time. She played with Nikki, swam in the lake, got to eat people food at the cook out and spend the night with Nikki and my cousin’s family. My mom shared a tent with my cousin’s daughter, who was 13 at the time, Nikki and of course Abby. Abby had quite a good time. My mom, on the other hand, was miserable. She had no air conditioning and no pillow. There were deer all over the place, their eyes reflecting in the light. My mom has a hang-up about wild animals. In times when a bird has flown into her house, she immediately evacuates the house screaming the whole way out and would not return until the bird had been removed from the house. (I wish I had known about this phobia when I was a kid.) Her irrational fear of wild animals can petrify and immobilize her so that night must have been hell for her. My mom’s sleepiness was attributed to the fact that she slept three, maybe four hours tops. Abby’s sleepiness was due to the fact that she had been in over-drive the previous day and had worn herself out with all the fun and activities at the lake.

I had been fretted and saddened by the fleeting thought of what would happen if Abby was gone forever. Fortunately, that time wouldn’t come until over a dozen years later after she had lived a full, happy life. She wasn’t just a dog or a pet to me. She was my sunshine angel beauty queen.

Abby & My Morning Demeanor

Another affect Abby had on me was on my morning time demeanor. I am not a morning person. I’m slow to wake up and snooze as long as possible until I drag myself out of bed. I don’t like people looking me in the eye in an early hour and definitely don’t like someone trying to have meaningful conversation with me in the morning either. I’m not so grumpy that I won’t talk at all in the morning, but I would prefer the conversation to be lite and non-indulging such as topics on the traffic, sports or the weather. My family knows this and respects my wishes as best they can. I’ve had to train my co-workers to adhere to this quirk of mine as well.

One morning my cousin, Christy, was visiting my mom. Abby at this stage was big enough to get in and out of bed by herself, so she would often get out of bed before me to visit my mom and Father, go outside to the bathroom and to eat—all this while I was still sleeping. On this morning, Abby had already made it to the living room. After I awoke, I made my way to the kitchen when I saw Abby in the corner of my eye in the living room. My face lit up and I chortled “Hay Abby, how are you baby girl?” Unbeknownst to me, my cousin, too, was in the living room.

I could tell by the look on her face that she was confused and surprised by the way I reacted to Abby. She commented that she didn’t think I could smile in the morning. She also said that I should have gotten a lab many years ago by the way Abby made me so happy. How could I not be so happy whenever I greeted my sunshine angel beauty queen in the morning? Often when I would wake up in the morning, I’d say to Abby when she was a puppy “It’s a bebe day!” (Bebe rhymes with Phoebe and was one of my many nicknames for Abby.)

Andy's First Full Day

From Andy’s perspective, the new surroundings must have been scary for him. He no longer had his mom or any puppies to keep him company and play with. Now he was surrounded by big dogs and a big man. How imposing Abby and Father must have seemed to a little puppy such as Andy is something I wondered.

The most notable story in Andy’s first full day with us was a good ol’ game of “Cooky coo”. Andy had no idea this was a game or even what to expect when I climbed to the top of the slide. Andy was directly across the pool from the slide. I can still see Andy looking up at me curiously as I stood on top of the slide staring at him. My mom was in the corner of the pool at the shallow end opposite of where the steps were. She liked that spot because 1) it was in the shallow end 2) she is barely over 5ft 3) the spot was a good place to catch the last remnants of the afternoon sun before the shadows were cast across the pool starting at the deep end and finally ending up at the shallow end. My mom was diagonally across the pool from Andy, that is, halfway around the pool. So, Andy was on the ledge, I was on top of the slide and where Abby and Father were, I do not know.

Andy was looking up at me still in an inquisitive manner. At this moment, I yelled in a high-pitched voice “COO COO” and jumped in the water straight towards Andy. Upon surfacing immediately afterwards, I looked up and saw that Andy was gone. The poor guy was so scared that he ran all the way around the pool straight into my mom’s arms. As far as my mom was concerned, this absolutely sealed the deal about if she loved Andy or not. Andy couldn’t have endeared himself to my mom anymore than what he just did. I found out quickly that Andy has a nervous disposition when he was huddled in fear by my mom. My eccentric and erratic behavior didn’t help matters.

This moment would forge a close relationship Andy and my mom had with each other. There was no doubt that he was my mom’s dog and only my mom’s. My mom wouldn’t have to share Andy with me like she did Abby. Abby loved me, my mom and even Father, but each in a different way. There was no doubt to anyone knowing us that Abby favored me the most, but that didn’t mean she wanted me and me only. We all had our roles in her life. Take one of us away and it would make her life a little more empty and a little more lonely.

Andy loved my mom and loved to be with her. He slept with her and even had his own spot with her up by her pillow. When my mom would read, he didn’t sit on the floor like Abby; he sat beside her or behind her on the couch. I wasn’t upset Andy didn’t take a shine to me. I was moving from Raleigh soon. Andy was my mom’s dog which was the way it was supposed to be.