My First Pets – Part I

I steadied myself by placing my tiny hands on the hand-blown glass windows of our 1732 colonial home. I peered through a pink-tinted pane and saw a furry bundle of dark browns and amber tans with splashes of black and white.

Lassie!

I might have been three, maybe four year old, when I encountered the family dog for the first time. In their benevolence, my parents let me name him. Woo Woo started out as a Shetland Sheepdog but kept growing until he reached Collie size and beyond. I’m going to take a guess that “Woo Woo” was short for my interpretation of “Woof Woof,” which undoubtedly is what my parents were repeating to me as what the new doggie from the pound (an old-fashioned word for animal shelter) was saying.

My parents were no simpletons, but they lacked imagination when it came to naming things.

One fine spring morning I was sitting outside “Tara” (yep, our colonial farmhouse was named for the estate in Gone With the Wind) when Woo Woo sauntered by on his way to the large open bag of cat food for our calico-colored cat named Calico (no explanation needed). I studied Woo Woo while he chowed down on the kitty kibble. He seemed to be having a blast. Well, never one to miss out on the fun, I joined in the repast. I grabbed a handful of the little dark kitty Cheerios, which left a fine brick-colored dust on my finger tips, much like cornmeal does when eating pizza by hand. I shoved a whole handful in my mouth. I started to chew. I furrowed my brow. I tasted the fish-flavored sand on my tongue and instantly spit out the broken O’s and used my fingernails to scrape the paste from my tongue. Woo Woo stood by at the ready and ate what I had just regurgitated for him … much like his mommy might have done in the wild, had Collies been a wild species in Westchester County, New York in the early 1960’s.

In a photograph of myself as a toddler I am seen with Woo Woo, squatting beside him, puckering my lips and softly blowing his large mane into a casual part. My early canine-human bond has only grown with time despite my failed attempt to chow down.

I don’t remember when or why Woo Woo left us, but one day he was replaced by a pedigreed AKC-registered Scottish Terrier from the pet store. Being a purebred with papers, he needed a proper name, in case one day he was to appear on the newly invented color television in the famous Westminster Kennel Club dog show. His “show” name was Angus Dow Jones McDuff Nelson. I guess the early days of overt self-explanatory names were over. Dad was a stock broker at the time, thus the Dow Jones. I don’t know about the McDuff part, sounded Scottish enough, and Nelson was our last name.

During the early years with Angus, my grandparents lived across the street from us. Our house, across Broadway, was part of a big estate. They were the caretakers of the lovely property, originally named “Zee View” after the Dutch lookout on the Hudson River. Built in the 1920s the rambling landscape filled with Sleepy Hollow-themed architecture included a large chain-link kennel with a heated dog house.

The highlight of my pre-school years was taking Angus across the street to visit with the kennel’s sole inhabitant, a German Shepherd guard dog named Bruno. My grandfather would put Angus in an adjoining run and the two would race each other back and forth along the fence line for hours.

While the dogs raced, I played outside the kennel in a little nook of tall pines with an old camper’s knapsack. The heavy canvas bag with dried out leather trim and rusting buckles came with a small red plaid blanket roll and canteen set. As my working dogs toiled in the run, I would prepare them a “camp meal” of dried pine needle sauté with a red berry topping. I tried not to rupture those stinky red berries with tiny green centers that looked like miniature capers. Afterwards, it was time to don the knapsack, grab the Scottie, put on his matching red tartan dog blanket and head up to the highlands.

The “highlands” were atop a large rock with spectacular river views surrounded by a vast green lawn. On our way we would pass a garden silhouette, a black witch, nestled among dwarf Japanese maples. Angus chose the witch rather than the trees to mark his turf.

Next stop were the lowlands, where Angus and I would sit by the boating lake on little white mushroom stools with garden gnomes in attendance watching the koi dart between lily pads. Our adventure then took us through the tennis court and up the rock steps to bench seats made of locally quarried stone where delicate purple flowers pushed their way through the crevices. Angus looked rather handsome with his collar filled with these flowers.

 My grandparents had two German Shepherds when my Dad grew up on the estate.

“Grossmutter, why don’t you have dogs any more?” I once asked my Swiss grandmother on a return from the highlands.

“It’s too hard when they die,” she said, her German accent still intact after 30 years in America. “After Lucky died, that was it.”

I was still lucky. I had yet to experience the death of a beloved pet.