I’m an introvert and so when I was thirteen, my parents got me an Afghan hound and my sister, a silky terrier. The idea was that we would take them to puppy shows to get over our shyness. It was fun and something new to do and it did help! Not all the way, but somewhat.
I adored Tasha, well, Katie too. I love animals. But Tasha was mine to care for and I loved her. She was a crazy dog, chasing us in the backyard and they’re fast runners, so that was no contest for her. She would bite us in the back as if we were her puppy playmates when she was this tall and we couldn’t stop laughing. We would toss the ball to her and one time, it hit her on the nose and she went under the bushes and sulked. No amount of telling her we didn’t mean for it to hit her on the nose made her change her mind until SHE was ready to come out and return to the fun.
Dad was always digging holes for new trees in the backyard, and as soon as he had one in the ground, she would try to chew the sapling as if it were a chew toy. She would rest her nose on her paws and just wait for him to start digging the next hole. He’d give her a steely-eyed gaze, warning her not to touch the tree. She’d raise her furry eyebrows, head still on paws, asking, “Who me?” And then as soon as he got back to work, she was at the sapling. He tried hot sauce on the tree, that was just a, uhm, well, hot and spicy treat for her.
They’re so different from a dog, really, having more of a cat personality. They’ll go with anyone who would take them somewhere, so not at all loyal. At least she wasn’t. But she was so much fun.
We stayed at a family-owned motel on a trip through Tennessee from Florida and the owners sat out with us while we swam and she was tied to the umbrella-covered table and was trying to pull it toward the pool to join us. She was a nut.
She jumped from bed to bed in the motel room, thinking this was the most fun she’d ever had. And she loved riding in the car. We stopped at a scenic outlook in the mountains and took a walk through the woods where way down below you could hear the sound of a bear calling–at least everyone thought so. We came around a corner of the mountain where a man and boy were screaming, terrified, running toward us until they realized Tasha wasn’t a bear and she was on a long leash I was holding onto. lol
Just as we’ll always have that fond memory, they would have too.
But when my dad lost his job at the cape with all the layoffs and cutbacks they had (we had transferred in from the California company and he didn’t have the seniority that the ones who worked for the Florida company had) we moved to Oregon. I couldn’t take my beloved Tasha with me because we were staying with my grandparents. I hated that I had to give her up. But I never regretted owning one cat-like dog that ran like the wind, dared my dad to turn his back on her when he was planting trees, and sulked when she thought we were being mean to her. She had the cutest personality.
Okay, I barely got started on the Christmas anthology yesterday, so off to work on it some more.
Have a super fun day!!
Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”
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