I couldn't fall asleep last night. When I can't, I try to set activities for my mind that I hope will distract me from wakefulness and send me to dreamland. Last night's mind activity was "Things to Blog About." I am an inveterate dog lover, and Linda always says she enjoys hearing me talk about the dogs I have owned, and that I should write about them, so that's what I decided I would do. I would blog about my dogs. Still, I didn't fall asleep, but at least, I had a blog topic. I don't really remember my first dog. When I was 3, I shared ownership of a nasty cocker spaniel named Sport with my aunt. My mom and dad and I lived in an apartment in the rear of my grandmother's house. Sport lived in the main house with my grandmother and my aunt Barb, who was probably 10 or 11. One day Sport bit the paperboy, and so he had to go to Lollipop Farm. Lollipop Farm is not a euphemism for euthanasia. It's the name of the ASPCA branch in Rochester. So exited Sport from our lives.
My first real dog that counted was Mittens. She came to be my dog in the spring of 1956. I know it was then because I was a Wolf in Cub Scout terminology, which meant I was 8 years old. My cub scout den mother's dog had had puppies and there was one left, a little black female, probably the runt of the litter, with white paws, a brown slash across her chest, and one oozing, very blue eye. Mrs. Tracy, the den mother, said I could have the puppy if my mom said it was O.K. I ran home as fast as I could to ask my mother. Another cub scout, who already had a dog, had said maybe he would come back and take the puppy. I wasn't going to let that happen.
My poor Mom didn't have a chance. She wasn't then, and still isn't, a real dog person. But, we had talked for a long time about getting a dog. Suddenly, here was this available puppy. Mom couldn't say no. I ran back to the Tracy's, even faster than I had run to our house, and in a few minutes, I was carrying the little black puppy home.
On the way home with my puppy, I stopped to show her to a couple of my friends. They were playing with a real bow and arrows. You have to remember, this was 1956. Kids played with real bows and arrows and real bb guns, and I even know a kid who really got his eye put out. One of my friends, and they really were friends, said he might just use my puppy for target practice. I scurried home.
My mom named the puppy Mittens for her four white paws. We couldn't name her Bootsie, because a beagle of that name already lived up the street. When my dad, got home from work, I showed the puppy to him and pointed out Mittens' running blue eye. My dad said, "That's what's called a 'blue eye,' and some of the greatest race horses of all times had them. It'll go away in no time." I still don't know if he had made up the part about the race horses, but sure enough, Mittens' eye was better, and brown just like the other one, in no time.
In those days, most dogs didn't have the run of the house. Mittens was confined to the kitchen and the cellar. She immediately took to this arrangement and to her new family. She was as sweet and playful and smart a puppy as you would ever want to meet. She was strong and fast and full of life, although we did have one scary night with her. This was before dog vaccinations for distemper, and we hadn't had Mittens very long, before she got the disease. My dad and I took her over to the local vet., who had his office in his basement. He gave poor, sick Mittens an antibiotic shot and told my dad to feed her some calf's liver. He also told my dad that she had two strikes against her, but if she made it through the night, she'd be O.K. Fortunately, I didn't hear that part. So we got some liver, took her home and fed it to her, and put her in her bed in the basement. When my dad got up the next morning, he was afraid to go downstairs to see if our puppy was still alive. But when he went down, Mittens was sitting there as fine as could be.
For the first couple of months, Mittens spent more time playing outside with my brother Tim, who was only four, than she spent with me. This didn't please me then, but in looking back on it, I realize that Tim and his friends were puppy-sized persons perfect for a puppy to play with. By fall, Mittens had latched on to me as tightly as I latched onto her, and she had grown to be a medium-sized dog, perfect for a kid of a median sort of age.
Back in the 50's there were no leash laws in suburbia. Dogs roamed with their kids everywhere. One of my favorite childhood memories is how all the neighborhood dogs would walk us kids to the bus stop in the morning, and, then go home after the bus came and picked us up. When the bus arrived back at 3:00 or so in the afternoon, all the dogs would be waiting to pick up their kids.
When I was outdoors, Mittens was always at my side. This made playing hide and seek difficult, because, Mittens liked to hide with me, and she just couldn't keep still . We kids had two favorite places to play. A little woods called the Pines, and a big woods called, you guessed it, the Big Woods. Mittens and the other dogs trotted along beside us as we rode our bikes down to the Big Woods, which had a creek full of frogs and tadpoles and little crawfish. It was a great creek into which my friends and I were always stepping or falling and getting what we called "soakers." Mittens was in the creek from the time we got to the big woods chasing whatever creatures were swimming around. She always got a soaker.
The title of this posting comes from Mittens' truly carnivorous nature. We used to play in an idle farmer's field (the field was idle not the farmer, although he was retired). We called the field Putt Putt's field after the sound that the farmer's tractor had once made. In fact, we called the farmer Putt Putt and made up stories about how mean he probably was and how he would probably chase us with his tractor and catch us and imprison us, although his tractor hadn't been out in a couple of years. In fact, when we finally met him, we found him to be a sweet and gentle man. (Sorry for that excess information, but I wanted to share it.) Anyway, Mittens loved to run in Putt Putt's field, and twice I saw her chase a mouse, catch it in her mouth, and gobble it up alive. This amazed my friends, whose dogs did not eat mice. I was very proud of Mittens.
My friends were envious of Mittens for other reasons, too. For example, if she couldn't jump a fence, she'd find a way to climb it. Really! When I pulled our wagon down the street, Mittens would hop in the wagon and take a ride. The other dogs were afraid to do such a human thing.
Our adult neighbors loved Mittens, too. Bob Beardsley, who lived behind us, was very deaf. It was difficult, sometimes, to understand him when he spoke. But he loved our dog, and a couple of times a week, he'd step out on his back porch and call, "Mitten! Mitten!" Bob couldn't hear his esses. "Mitten" would trot over, and Bob would have a bone or some other treat for her. Also, Mittens had the run of the house at my best friend Fred's. I'd walk in the living room, and Mittens would be stretched out on the living room rug next to Fred's father's chair. And Fred's father would be scratching Mittens' ears.
Mittens was also monogamous. Her best friend and mate for life was a collie named Pepper. Pepper's owners, Terry and Jack Butler, were the same age as Tim and I. Pepper was a beautiful pedigreed dog and Mittens was a mutt. I like to think they fell in love. In the late 50's, Bob Barker wasn't on TV telling folks to fix their dogs. In fact, the host of PRICE IS RIGHT was a guy named Bill Cullen. A fertile Mittens and Pepper produced puppies. Three lovely litters over the years, a total of sixteen puppies, I believe.
Mittens' first litter was six puppies, but when we went down to the basement the morning after they were born, and saw Mittens and her babies in the nest she had made for them, we knew something was wrong. One of the puppies wasn't properly formed. One of its front legs was misshapen, and the puppy was sick. The problem was that mother Mittens was spending all her time trying to take care of the sick one, and ignoring the healthy pups. I remember standing above the nest, seeing the sick puppy trying to nurse and then spitting up all the milk it had suckled. My dad took the little puppy upstairs, and when it soon died, we buried it in the backyard. Mittens went back to being a good mother to her other five. One of the great experiences of my childhood was watching Mittens take care of her puppies and playing with the bundles of fur when they were old enough. We found homes for all of them, and several resided with families in our neighborhood.
Even in her death, Mittens taught us lessons. When she was eight, and her mate Pepper had died, Mittens was cornered by another neighborhood dog who wanted to mate with her. I saw it happening and tried to stop it, but when dogs want to, they really want to. Sadly, Mittens fourth litter came when she was too old. She got an infection in her womb, and after only two days of caring for her puppies, she had to be taken to the vet and had to stay there. The job then went to my brother and sisters and mom and dad and me to feed and care for 6 newborns. My dad built dividers to separate the puppies, because they would nurse on each other's ears or legs if left together. We fed them condensed milk from baby doll bottles and learned how to burp them by rubbing their stomachs. It was another amazing experience brought to us by Mittens.
After we took Mittens to the vet, I never saw her again. I was a junior in high school, hoping desperately that she would somehow survive. Each day, I'd come home from school to get the report from the vet. I recall being so happy the day that the vet said, "Mittens had taken a little water." I vividly remember coming home from school one afternoon, and having my mom tell me that Mittens had died. I went up to my room, and for some reason I still don't understand, forced myself not to cry. It is a great regret that I never cried for my amazing dog Mittens, a dog who was cool enough to eat mice.
