A Wiener (Dog) For Dinner

Princess and my brother, Davie

               I grew up in the time of family supper each night. My mom, leaving home at 6:00 a.m., arrived back home after 5:30 p.m. and cooked a full supper for her family then cleaned the kitchen. “What,” you might ask, “were her family doing in the afternoon and evening?”

               Good question. The answer is, “Never enough.”

               Princess brought begging to high art. She came in after we sat down around the smaller kitchen table. While we said grace, she decided on her mark. Then, she looked up, raised the upper part of that l-o-n-g deep chestnut body, carefully balancing with her tail, tottering at times because, truly, dachshunds are called wiener dogs for a reason. Finally, her balance reached, she carefully s-l-i-d down until her bottom hit the floor, her short front legs folded in front of her, those beautiful brown eyes looking up at the target, eyebrows brought close together in a begging frown, a quiet, staring presence.

               Just try to eat with those eyes boring into your hand as it brings a bite to your mouth, back to your plate, to your mouth, to your plate, back, up, down, her head barely moving, that long nose pointing the way.

               After a few minutes of this, en masse the four humans came to agreement. “Princess! Go to the living room! Go on!” At which point, her short legs lowered that long body. “Go on!” Her sad eyes looked up, nose pointing to the floor. “GO!” And with sadness defining every vertebrae in that extended back, she slowly, one short leg at a time, walked to the living room.

               At which time we sighed and enjoyed eating without a little dog staring hopefully at us, measuring our every bite.

               Invariably, it seemed, after a few minutes, wild barking broke out in the living room! “Ark! Ark! Ark! ArkArkArkArkArkArk! ARKARKARK!!!!” Or, translated, “Somebody’s at the door!! Come quick! Come quick! COME QUICK!” Somebody’s at the door!”

               And somebody—usually my older brother or I—got up to go rescue whoever dared arrive at our door and disturb the dog. We hadn’t heard a knock, but, well, who needed a doorbell or door knocker? We had Princess.

               Once at the door, we quietly asked her to stop the shrieking barking. “PRINCESS! SHUT UP!” which did no good at all, then opened the door.

               And saw no one. Hmmm. No one there. Well, she had heard something and alerted us just in case. “Good girl! Good girl, Princess!”

               Then, as we walked back to the kitchen, the little, stubby-legged dog came trotting along behind.

               “No one there?” asked my mom or dad?

               “Nope.”

               “Well, Princess must’ve heard something. She sure let’em know, didn’t she!”

               “Yep.”

               Meanwhile, in a new spot, different than earlier, a little, long-backed dog, lifted her head and front legs, and balanced her stretched-out body on her tail, got balanced j-u-s-t right, then s-l-i-d down onto her bottom.

               It took us longer to figure out her scheme to return to the kitchen than it had her to come up with it. My whole life I’ve had dogs smarter than I am.

               And, I don’t care.

Princess

              

               My mom wanted a dachshund; I wanted to name her Princess. Turned out the puppy’s mother wore the name something like “Queen Esther of Camelot” as her owners lived on Camelot Avenue. They called her Queenie, of course; her father was King Something-or-Other of Camelot. So, Princess fit her well.

               As I recall, she cost fifty dollars. According to Google, that’s over $400 today, and a quick glance for dachshund puppies today shows her to have been a bargain. Even so, she proved herself worth well more her dollar value; she wiggled that long little body into our lives, and became our beloved family dog. She had a prominent overbite, her bottom lip not reaching her top one, that row of top teeth showing the whole of her life. As her back stretched into adulthood, and her legs didn’t seem to increase in length much, if at all, her overbite stayed the same, and for her whole life, her top lip overlapped her bottom lip.

               From the first, she slept with me, a little red bundle pasted to my side at night, sleeping to my rhythms, beginning the habit I learned to crave off and on throughout my life:  a dog beside me—or between two people—in the night. As a child of 12, she became the confidant I couldn’t find at school, the ever-present friend. She learned the cadences of our home, greeted us at the door with the joy of dogs from time immemorial, and captured the hearts of her family for the over 13 years she lived.

               As we knew at the time, we did our best with her, taking her for the occasional walk which started with her excited jumping around, gleefully starting up the sidewalk, and usually ending with whoever handled the leash picking up and carrying her home, those legs not able to last the entire walk. Of course, we should have used consistency and added gradual length to those walks to make the whole thing more fun for her. But, truly, we did our best with the knowledge we had, and loved her fiercely and fully—and she returned that love.

               At one point my parents bred her beautiful solid deep chestnut self to a male dachshund who had the same red, but only on his feet, the end of his nose, and, if you raised his tail, you could see his shining red little bottom. One amazing morning we woke to Princess’ seven puppies—five marked just like their father, two little red miniatures of Princess, one of them complete with her overbite. A good mother, her problem came with only having six feeding stations, and my mom got a toy baby bottle, some pablum mixture from somewhere, and helped her feed her brood. I wanted badly to keep the little girl with the overbite, but my dad put the kibosh on that, and they never bred her again, a decision I’m sure Princess appreciated.

               But if dogs are the ever loyal, never changing creatures, children or young people in a home tend to grow up and leave. First my brother finished high school and left for college. Though his family missed him, of course, at least we knew what caused his absence. What Princess knew was that one day he was there, then he wasn’t. The brave little badger dog, who would have fought any threat to her family she knew about or could see or find, could not fight the invisible hazard that had made her boy disappear.

               She couldn’t understand; but she could mourn.

               And one day she, herself, seemed to disappear.

               My mom couldn’t find her; she called her, but got no response from the dog who lived for her family and always—ALWAYS—ran to answer her name. She looked in each room; we had no doggy door, so Princess couldn’t go outside with no help. She checked each bedroom, opened each closet door with a crack in it. And, then, in the bottom of my brother’s closet on top of some clothes fallen to the floor lay the little red wiener dog, her misery obvious. “She really had tears in her eyes,“ my mom said.

               By the time I left, she had adjusted to my brother coming home periodically, happy to see him, but her allegiance to my mom grew as we came to other times of life, college taking us away, always happy to see her when I came home. As I recall, she still came to my bed when I slept there, but age took the toll it takes on all creatures, and those little “hot dogs” have long backs that can falter with age, that can, eventually, hinder their movements. So, my parents built a ramp for her as stairs became a barrier too great for her to overcome.

               And I—I left for a summer in Galveston with a Christian college group, then for a couple of years in Liberia to teach with a Mission group. I went to graduate school for a year and when the boy who claimed to love me more than life itself, who begged me to wait for him as he finished his last year with the same Mission group. . . .  as I finished my first year of graduate school and that boy decided that, really, he knew I had done my best, but he actually loved the girl from Mississippi with the  long blond hair who moved into my apartment a few weeks after I left more than he loved me, so I unwisely didn’t finish grad school but moved to the lovely North Carolina mountains to housesit for friends, Princess, continuing to age, still continued to offer comfort and love when I came home, packing and planning before leaving home again. Now she slept more on her blankets in the corner under my mom’s prized antique railroad desk, still loved, still a feisty representative of her breed.

Till, one day my mom called me and said, “Princess has died.”

               It almost broke my mother. An era of my own life ended; the dog who raised me had died. As so frequently happens, until then, I didn’t realize all she had given me.

               I know how blessed I was to have that sweet, kind dog love me so as I grew from child to woman, her little legs moving as fast as she could make them, but her loyal, loving heart as big as any dog alive.

               From Princess I learned what every person who loves a dog knows: that their dog is the best in the world. . . .. and every person is right. Now I have border collies. But, many border collie folks I know have a small dog of some kind as well, not infrequently a dachshund. At times I think I, too, should get a small dog, one you can carry in one arm. None of my dogs fit that description. Maybe, someday.

               Till then, I know the standard—a little red dog, overbite prominent, who loved me, who gave me the gift of the dog—that unconditional, ever present heart, that dogs give. I was fortunate to find that gift early.

               With dogs before her, certainly, but the standard finalized forever in a dog named Princess.