Just the other day, I bumped into one of my acquaintances in the park. Of course, the people I meet in the park generally have a companion with them – of the four-legged variety. Anyway, as often happens among dog walkers, we got talking about breeds, dog compatibility and ages of our pets.
“This Kerry’s a bit older than my last dog,” I said to my dog-walking acquaintance.
“Mine too,” he said. “She’s been with us throughout the lives of our kids.”
I was about to say ours had been with us throughout the lives of our grandkids, but I just nodded instead. And it occurred to me that as pet owners we almost always refer to our dogs, cats, or whatever animals live around us, in terms of our own lives, or portions of them – when we were kids, when we got married, when our kids were growing up. It’s almost a way of keeping track of our lives by way of the animal we had at the time.
If you’re like me – a dog person – I can connect most parts of my life with the presence of a dog. When I was barely in elementary school, my parents bought me a black Labrador. I named him “Bullet” because the most heroic dog in my life at that time was the one that Pat Brady packed with him in his jeep Nellybelle. For those who don’t remember, the show (c. 1953) opened with Roy Rogers galloping across the screen firing his six-shooter from horseback, as the announcer boomed in:
“The Roy Rogers Show, starring Roy Rogers, king of the cowboys. Trigger, his golden palomino. And Dale Evans, queen of the West. With Pat Brady, his comical sidekick. And Roy’s wonder-dog Bullet.”
As a consequence, I always associate Bullet – my dog and Roy’s (even though his was a German shepherd and mine wasn’t) – with my childhood. The problem was, as a kid I never really understood what owning a dog meant. I didn’t always feed him, so my mom did. I wasn’t always keen to walk him, so my dad did. So after a while, my parents (and I) recognized they’d given me a dog long before I understood how to be responsible. Bullet went to a police K9 unit, as I recall, and became adept at tracking down bad guys. That was somehow appropriate symmetry, given what Roy’s dog Bullet did on the TV screen.
My folks and I revisited the dog ownership thing when I turned 10, about this time of year in 1959. That summer, I vowed to do much better in the dog feeding, dog walking, and all-round dog-care end of things. So, my folks gave me a collie, we named Topsy. Not sure where her name came from, but Topsy fit. And she blended into our lives about the time my parents bought a small cottage on Lake Simcoe. As with all pets, Topsy had her quirks, I guess very much a reflection of our lives on the lake. While Topsy really didn’t appreciate being in the water, she was certainly attracted to it. Whenever the seagulls gathered, somehow Topsy felt they were invading her territory and she’d dash right to the end of the dock, barking all the way, to dissuade the gulls from landing on her turf.
“We’re safe from a seagull invasion,” my dad used to say. And so, Topsy, for as long as she lived, was the defender of the cottage dock.
When my wife and I settled in Saskatchewan and later in Edmonton, we found a breeder who eventually delivered us a black-and-white coloured Springer spaniel. Lindy became the dog that grew up with our kids. Like most dogs that come into a family about the same time children do, the kids and the dog became inseparable. I have fond memories of all of us – kids, parents and dog – tumbling around on the backyard grass and the living room rug. Funny, whenever we played with Lindy, we all got down on all-fours and acted like dogs. As I said, pets and families have a way of connecting completely.
Our most recent two dogs have been Kerry blue terriers. And like all the other dogs, we remember them for the period of our lives into which they fit so perfectly. Keenan grew up with our girls when they went from high school to university. And when our daughters went off to have families of their own, Finn, coincidentally from the same Kerry pedigree as Keenan, came along to combat any “empty-nest” feelings we had.
And, as I indicated back in January, Finn also became a devoted companion of our long-time neighbour, Ronnie Egan. He still looks longingly at the house she occupied all the years of his life. So, he’ll always be associated with thoughts of a great neighbour and friend. Dogs – and other pets – are certainly our best friends when they join the human pack, help us keep track of time and place, and create indelible memories.
