Wednesday, April 06, 2005
April 6, 1966
Funny, the things that stick in your head.
On this date 39 years ago, a litter of Cocker Spaniels was born. I was in the midst of heavy-duty negotiations to get the privilege of a dog all my own, and sometime that summer, Happiness (Is II) became mine. Even after nearly four decades, I remember her birthday.
Happy was a typically overbred, somewhat neurotic kind of Cocker. She bit my father once when he alarmed her by dragging a Christmas tree in the front door. She was also terrified of the vacuum cleaner. But once when my mom was using it, she playfully poked it at me laying in the middle of the living room floor, where I was pretending to be too engrossed in my book to move. Happy flew out from under the couch where she had been hiding and savaged it in my defense, leaving visible tooth marks in the plastic housing. Mom used to say that if I somehow fell off a cliff, Happy would jump over too, just to be with me.
Happy and her descendants got me into the dog show game in high school. At one show, there was a lady with a table, painting pictures of pets on rocks, from photographs. I commissioned this one. It's not very accurate (Happy had more of a neck than that), but it has outlasted the photos I had.
Even funnier than this well-stuck memory is that after all these years, even though I have moved a couple dozen times, and my house is, ah, over-full, and how disorganized I tend to be on a regular basis, I knew EXACTLY where this rock was so I could take a picture of it.
(Ok, yeah, I might be back posting again. You never know.)
On this date 39 years ago, a litter of Cocker Spaniels was born. I was in the midst of heavy-duty negotiations to get the privilege of a dog all my own, and sometime that summer, Happiness (Is II) became mine. Even after nearly four decades, I remember her birthday.
Happy was a typically overbred, somewhat neurotic kind of Cocker. She bit my father once when he alarmed her by dragging a Christmas tree in the front door. She was also terrified of the vacuum cleaner. But once when my mom was using it, she playfully poked it at me laying in the middle of the living room floor, where I was pretending to be too engrossed in my book to move. Happy flew out from under the couch where she had been hiding and savaged it in my defense, leaving visible tooth marks in the plastic housing. Mom used to say that if I somehow fell off a cliff, Happy would jump over too, just to be with me.
Happy and her descendants got me into the dog show game in high school. At one show, there was a lady with a table, painting pictures of pets on rocks, from photographs. I commissioned this one. It's not very accurate (Happy had more of a neck than that), but it has outlasted the photos I had.
Even funnier than this well-stuck memory is that after all these years, even though I have moved a couple dozen times, and my house is, ah, over-full, and how disorganized I tend to be on a regular basis, I knew EXACTLY where this rock was so I could take a picture of it.
(Ok, yeah, I might be back posting again. You never know.)
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