Frazier was a duplicitous doggy
Exactly why? It was always foggy.
A rescue dog, he seemed happy to be home
But as adventure dog, Fra was destined to roam.
Fra was sweet, winning awards in puppy school!
He would sit, drop-it, and try to follow each rule.
But at home, he quietly kept an eye on the door.
When opened, he got low and started running full bore.
We’d head outside to track that dog down
Wondering, does he want to go back to the pound?
We’d find him, clean off the mud, and his duplicity would kick in:
Sweet-soft-little Frazier would curl up and our hearts he would win.
Frazier, a name tailor-made for silly variants:
Fra, Blazer and Fra-Fra are some places we went.
He wouldn’t reliably come to any of those names, unless
He was in tired or in the right mood---yeah that boy was a mess.
A pet with a personality that shows two sides with clarity
He loves me? He loves me not? Would he show us some charity?
It came with age, as he came home, stayed near, didn’t run
Then we missed our speedy old Fra who’d been so much fun.
Frazier considers making a run for it.
Sweet Fra.
Robin.
LIFE WITHOUT A PET? NEVER
We always had a dog or cat when I was growing up. We had: Blacky, a black mix, then Tag-A-Long, a beagle, and then Mr. Washington, another beagle. We also had two cats: Calico, a calico cat, and when she had two kittens, we kept Muldoon and gave away Toody (Car 54 Where Are You).
At UT, I adopted a beagle mix I named D-O-G. It did not work out so well to have a dog in a dorm so I sent DOG back to my mom in Wilmington to live with Muldoon who had gotten pretty old by then.
Meanwhile, I started dating Bill who had a bulldog named Bulgher and a cat we called Kitty. He gave Bulgher and Kitty to a friend so he could adopt an English setter Jean. Jean had 11 puppies. We kept one we named Rhett and gave the rest away. When Bill and I divorced, it broke my heart to leave the dogs. I would visit them sometimes when he wasn’t home.
I did not have a dog or cat for years because I worked full-time and went to GA State at night. But one Saturday on the way to work, I hit a dog. No vets were open so I took it home. When it got over the shock of the accident, it was fine. I gave him to my friend Judy and Luckie dog got to move to Lake Harwell and live the rest of its 19+ years.
When Duffy and I got married and moved into our house on East Conway, we got a dog Maggie from the pound and a cat Roxanne from a friend. Duffy loved Maggie, because she loved running as much as we did. She was a fence jumper, though, and we could not figure out where she was jumping. One day, when we got home from the Y, we saw where Maggie got out, but this time, she had caught her paws in the picket fence (never get a picket fence when you have a dog). She had been caught for too long and the vet could not save her. Then poor Roxanne was run over by a man who was doing construction work at our house. During the time we lived on East Conway, we also had the $400 cat (remember, it bit me the day I was having a miscarriage), and our neighbor’s dog Lucy who used to sleep on our front stoop.
When Maggie died, I went to the pound and found our next dog, Sally, a yellow lab mix, who was so good with the kids. We also got cat brothers Bob and Dewey. Bob disappeared one night. Dewey and Sally moved with us to Vallo Vista, but Dewey disappeared right after we moved in. I kept checking the old neighborhood to see if he showed up there, but he never did. By then, my sister moved to Washington, DC with her family for a year. She did not want to take her cat Manna whom she had found in the country as a stray, so Manna came to live with us. By the end of the year, we loved Manna and she loved it here, so she stayed with us. As Sally aged, she had arthritis and mini-seizures and became incontinent. I would cut out the carpet where she peed until there was nothing left. When her arthritis became so bad, she could no longer get up on her own and would often end up trapped in her own pee or poop if we were out and about, we put her to sleep. Manna lived another year, to 19. She never wandered which I think was the key to her long life.
A couple of weeks after Manna died, Trip Ramsey called to say they had found a stray cocker spaniel in his yard. No one claimed her, so we named her Rae. But you knew Rae and how great she was. I think we had her 6 years but had to put her to sleep when her breathing became so labored from cancer spreading in her lungs. I felt so lonely without her that Robert and I almost immediately went to adopt Bonnie from the pound. You all know what a sweetheart Bonnie is. Duffy did not want another dog, but he hadn’t met Bonnie yet.
So, will I ever be without a dog or cat? Never.
