On dogs

This household is home to two dogs. Old Dog - Tanner and New Dog - Smoke.

Tanner is old. She turns 15 this fall and is showing her age with selective hearing and questionable eye sight. And arthritis. Poor thing. I didn’t believe she would make it through last winter, yet here we are staring down the barrel of another cold and flu season. But there she is… napping on her dog bed, quietly snoring.

Tanner came to us in a sad state. We were looking for a dog - something small-ish and easy maintenance, as dogs go, for Banana. We were in a new town and in our first Real House and it just seemed time to Get A Dog.

I don’t know. Logic fails me when it comes to animals.

Anyway, we went looking in all the right places for an animal: the paper, animal shelters, the bulletin board at the local Alco. Believe it or not, we ended up at a pet shop (THE HORROR, I know). But there in the middle of the back room was a portable fence barely corralling three sick looking puppies.

The shop clerk kind of sniffed at me when I asked about them and said, “Someone brought in 12 of those puppies. Found them in a box in the middle of a field when he was hunting, I guess. These three are in pretty rough shape.” While she talked, one of the puppies was making a valiant effort to climb the fence. I reached down and pulled her off the rungs.

That was it. She was ours.

We have no idea what breed she is, so when people ask we tell them she is a “Field Boxer” and tell her story in homage to what we do know of her heritage.



Smoke is of not so humble beginnings, being pedigreed and papered and officially registered. Silver Smoke, as His Highness is formally called, is a Silver Lab. The existence of such creatures I had no knowledge of until he arrived in the house last year about Thanksgiving time.



He is such a… boy. Rambunctious and nosy, nothing happens in the house without his knowledge. Nothing happens in the 5-mile radius surrounding our house without his knowledge. And he usually comes in from outside smelling of his, um, knowledge.

Smoke likes forks. He will take a fork - just the fork - from your dinner plate, all ninja stealth and then give you the “WHAT? I LIKE FORKS!” look when you take it away from him.

He loves anything plastic that he can systematically destroy. I had a nice little collection of Tupperware-esque containers and such until Smoke arrived. Now I’m finding pieces of gnawed plastic strategically placed about the property. I pity my children’s Barbie Dolls as they are second only to rolls of Toilet Paper as the drug of choice for The Royal Pooch.

And rolls of paper towel? Puppy heroin.



Sadly, the Labrador brain does not fully engage until around age three. So I have two more years of his nonsense. But what lovely nonsense - when he leaps onto my lap, licks my face and, after getting comfortable while simultaneously staying as close to me without actually being ON me, promptly falls asleep.

I miss Rex. We had to put him down in the fall of 2009.