This could be about those pre-teen years of “love”, but this is about real puppy love.
I clearly remember when I got my first puppy.
Dad brought in a cardboard box and set it on the floor. He motioned me closer. When I looked in, there was the puppy curled up on a towel in one corner.
I fell in love like only a boy can.
Brownie became my best friend forever … we ran together, ate together, slept together. As a boy, I thought it would last forever ,,, but that day came to an end on a nearby street.
I’ve told that story before. I also told about my friend who recently lost his Lab. He just got another one. A rescue puppy, and this 55 year old is just like every boy with a puppy.
After some time had passed, Dad got me another puppy.
I was excited, but felt guilty. I named him Shep, but more than once I called him Brownie. He would cock his head as if to ask : Who ?
When he was still small, we all came home from a movie, and I hit the door calling for him. When he didn’t come we started searching and then we heard some whimpering.
We lived in a trailer home (what some call a mobile home now, but it’s still a trailer home).
We traced the sound to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Shep had jumped on their bed and fallen between one side of their bed and the curve of the back wall. He was suspended upside down. Who knows for how long? He never got on their bed again.
Of course if you get a puppy, you have to spend time house breaking them.
I had a childhood friend, Bobby, who would rub his puppy’s nose in his mess.
I told Granddad that it seemed like a good idea, but Granddad struck a match to his pipe, took a drag and said something I will never forget: Bobby does that cause he wouldn’t like his nose rubbed in his mess. That dawg don’t care. He might even like it.