Once upon a time, long long ago, we acquired (somehow people would just give us their rejected critters) a little beagle pup with a stub tail (not sure how that happened) and a crooked nose. He came to us as “Chico”, but spent most of his years with us as “Chickie Poo”, later shortened to just plain “Chickie”. He was a stubborn little guy, and he loved to feign stupidity in an attempt to get away with doing his own thing. But we knew better. Chickie loved to curl up on the sofa (no-dog’s-land) for his naps. We would patiently pull him down off the sofa, each time met with a blank look of (fake) confusion (“huh? I didn’t know better”), replaced with obvious disgruntlement at having to go to the trouble of getting himself back up onto the couch to his napping spot. This little guy, who pretended to be ignorant, would inadvertently give himself away by displaying an occasional intelligent response to the English language. For example, at baseball games, he would follow my son out to home plate (as my son was catcher for his team). From the bleachers, I would call to him, “Chickie, get out of there. Come back here and sit down” and he would obediently make a u-turn, exit the ball field, and climb up to the top row of bleachers to sit with me. Soooo….selective stupidity.
Chickie’s best buddy was the boxer, Schultz, all white with a black ring around one eye (like the original Taryton smoker who would rather fight than switch, for any of you old enough to recall that ad; and/or like the dog belonging to the Little Rascals in the Our Gang films). Schultzie was dauntless. His swagger said it all! Schultzie’s favorite sport was pinning down other dogs and intimidating them and backing people up against their cars or houses, barking at their stomachs, ….just because he could. Interestingly, he never actually bit anyone. Okay, he sort of bit one kid, but he didn’t break the skin. My human son loved to zoom around on his bike, and, back in the day, he wore bell-bottom pants. Schultz’s part of the game was to chase him and grab the pantlegs in his teeth. While that worked well with my son, the result was a bit different when Schultz attempted to play the same game with the kid up the street who wore peg-leg pants. Schultzie got the leg instead of the pants, and the kid’s mom was threatening to sue for the doctor bill ($10 back in those days, but that was a lot!) until she came to our house to talk it over, sat in the kitchen and had Schultzie trying to climb into her lap to slurp her face in sloppy boxer love. (Schultz charmed his way off the hook for his mistake, and we later learned that the “bitten” kid’s skin was not even broken.)
But our boy Chickie was an instigator. HIS favorite sport was starting fights with other dogs in the neighborhood (preferably in their own yards), then stepping off to the side leaving Schultzie to defend his honor. (Note: all those years ago, in a quasi-rural neighborhood, leash laws were not so prevalent, and the local mutts would cavort about outdoors with a fair amount of freedom, often with the kiddos from their respective households. In addition to that, when we did strive to contain the critters indoors, we found that Chickie and Schultz were amazingly talented at finding ways to let themselves out to play. Life is a challenge, right?)
Chickie and Schultz were with us during the early years of Mo (third child, second monkey child). Due to Schultz’s delusions of invincibility, Mo had to train him not to steal the monkey chow. (See story More Mo, Mo Mojo, Mo-dini – The Thelmian Chronicles.) And, when a stray cat adopted us, Chickie and Schultz double-teamed him ( Schultz, PomPom, and How a Toy Gun Stopped the Violence…. – The Thelmian Chronicles).
Schultzie, to add to his set of challenges, suffered from colitis, which made life interesting and a little scary (reference the blog article It’s a Guy Thing…Caught in the Middle – The Thelmian Chronicles).
Chickie had a few of his own little quirks, too, as referenced in Hamster Dance…beyond Mo… – The Thelmian Chronicles. And poor Chickie Poo, who unfortunately liked to chase cars from the front, eventually met his maker that way overnight one night. (And his good pal Schultz tried to jump out the second story window when he heard the yelp…but we intercepted him.) At some point there will be a rather odd story about how it came to be that Chickie was buried in the outhouse, but it’s not time yet…..