Once upon a time my human son brought home a “puppy”. We named him Bruce. At eight weeks of age, Bruce was approximately eighteen inches long… or so…and had feet the size of my fist. We later learned that his heritage was half golden lab and half St. Bernard. Bruce grew up to be a big boy!!
Despite the fact that Bruce wanted desperately to be a lap dog, he never fit on anyone’s lap, try as he might. And it became readily apparently that he was not destined to be a house dog. He simply didn’t really fit. There were areas of the house in which he had to back up because he was too large to turn around. So Bruce had a doghouse in the yard on top of which he liked to sleep. When we began to feel guilty about having him live outdoors through the chill of midwest winter, we learned that he could not tolerate being indoors. When we had a record 29 degrees below zero, we tried to bring him in. He began to cough due to the heat and proceeded to whine by the door to get back outside. Bruce, we learned, was virtually weatherproof. He had inherited the best of both worlds — the thick St. Bernard let’s-go-rescue-folks-in-the-Alps fur which ensured that he was snowproof, and the thick wiry labrador coat which rendered him quite waterproof. In addition, his skin was so thick that he never, ever had a flea bite. Ever! In the spring, we had to rake bushels of fluff out of the yard when Bruce would shed his winter coat. Because of his girth and strength, he was on a heavy chain on a runner attached to trees. For sport, Bruce enjoyed chasing the cats. And the cats knew exactly how much “give” was in the chain, so they would taunt him by running along a path just about an inch further than he could reach. At one point we had kittens that were young and naive and could not measure the reach of the chain. Bruce surprised himself by getting a mouthful of kitten. Immediately, “Pfftt!!” — he spit it out. “Ugh! Furball!” (The kittens figured it out.)
After one of the major snowstorms, I looked out the door to see his chain lying across the snow. No Bruce visible. Oh, no!! “Bruce!” I called desperately, hoping he had not gotten too far away. “Bruce!” And the snow rumbled a bit, and a large head (the neighborhood kids called him “Cujo”, by the way) popped up and shook off the snow. Bruce eyed me with an annoyed “duh!” blink. I had obviously disrupted his nap.
Another little adventure occurred when a friend had given me a ride to an all-day speech tournament as we both were scheduled to judge but I had a car problem. On the way home, about half a mile from the house, we spotted a large mass of fur with mud up to its leg-pits. It looked suspiciously like…yep!…Bruce. He had broken loose and was cavorting in the canal. Well, we couldn’t just let him run around and hope that he’d find his way home. So we pulled into a little parking lot. He came immediately when called (always a good boy, Bruce). But he was covered with gobs of filthy black mud. How to get him home? My friend was driving a little Chevette. She popped the hatchback, dug around a bit, and came up with a shower curtain which she spread out in the hatch. “C’mon, Bruce! In! Come on! Jump!” This was a dog who easily would jump onto the roof of a very large doghouse, but he eyed the back of the car as though we were expecting him to pole vault. Well, we weren’t going to pick him up. First of all, we were in our good clothes and he was slimy. But, more importantly, he was huge and heavy, so lifting him was not feasible. My friend dug around some more and produced some rope. (What my friend was doing with rope and a shower curtain in the back of her car I will never know and was afraid to ask!) So we tethered Bruce to the rope and got into the car with my window down so I could hold the rope to guide Bruce home. What a ride! We toddled along between first and second gear with Bruce trotting along beside the car…except for when he would detect a scent interesting enough to stop and sniff. Yikes!! Fortunately, my arm was able to remain in the socket, but….oh, it was a challenge. We did finally, amazingly, get him home. Whew!!
Bruce stood about three feet tall on all fours and close to six feet tall when he would stand on his hind feet with his paws on my husband’s shoulders, begging to take the man for a walk. Big Bruce!! We miss that guy!!
