“And the Award for Best Dog in a Supporting Role goes to…”
Jim and I are animal lovers. Dogs mainly now, because over the years I’ve become allergic to cats. Still, all animals have a warm spot in our hearts. Except snakes. But that’s a story for another day.
Years ago, right after we settled in our first apartment, I was on the hunt to get a small dog similar to the Bichon Frise that I had as a pet growing up. Fast forward to our first Christmas Day as a married couple. Visiting Jim’s parents, we decided to stop at the dog pound in Meriden, Connecticut. As it turned out, the dog warden was there feeding the animals.
The shelter was filled, but there was no little white dog. Well, if there was, we never got to see it. As we were walking down the aisle, the dogs were barking and howling…until we reached one cage. A large, silvery black dog weighing about a hundred pounds sat quietly watching us with the most soulful eyes. When I put my fingers through the chain link, he stood up and pressed the top of his head against my fingers. His name was Bear, we were told, and he hadn’t cut it as junkyard security. That was all it took for both me and Jim. Bear went home with us.
Bear was half-Labrador and half-Newfoundland, and he wasn’t fully grown at the time. He was truly a great dog but had separation anxiety. Eating the dashboard of my first new car. Jumping out a window eight feet off the ground. Eating a newly reupholstered chair. Unlatching sliding glass doors regularly and finding his way to the nearby grocery store while we were shopping. But he was also fond of stealing the neighbor’s groceries. He regularly brought home packages of steak and chicken. He would drop them on the porch proudly without a tooth mark on them.
He lived to be about fourteen years old, survived the heartworm he had when we got him, and grew to about a hundred and thirty pounds. Big, silvery black, and as gentle as a lamb with our firstborn.
When we wrote The Thistle and the Rose, we made him a character.
Our next dog was Max, a Golden Retriever. Our boys grew up with him. He had all of the personality that goes with the breed. As far as he was concerned, he was the center of the family’s universe. Actually, he thought he was the center of the entire universe.
And he loved our sons. When we were living in Connecticut, there was a cemetery past the woods near the house. Beyond the cemetery were the playing fields of the school our boys attended. One day, we were watching our older son playing lacrosse. Max was home with our younger son and his friends.
Suddenly, the crowd of parents were shouting at a goofy yellow dog jumping up on one of the players on the field. He was totally disrupting play. We couldn’t believe anyone would be so inconsiderate as to let their dog loose on the field. Then we realized the player was our son and the dog was Max. One of the neighborhood kids had let Max slip out of the house, and the beast had raced up through the cemetery to the playing fields and found his human. He was the highlight of the afternoon for both players and parents.
When we wrote our second Jan Coffey novel, Twice Burned, we made Max the romantic lead’s dog. He nearly stole the show there too.
It’s true that we tend to think that every dog we have is the finest animal on the planet and the best dog we’ve ever had. Our current dog, Marlo, is no exception. Eighty pounds, light tawny colored fur, a black face and deep brown eyes. And an absolute love. He doesn’t destroy things and doesn’t bring home dinner. And his favorite activity is moving from my office to Jim’s and back again. He also considers himself the schedule keeper. He can tell time and knows how to push us out of our chairs when the hour comes to feed him and take a walk.
Marlo is super friendly with other dogs and kids and neighbors. Unless you smell like a hamburger. Then he’d probably lick you to death.
He’s so special that we had to make him a character in the new series of Nik James Westerns. But we couldn’t JUST make him the protagonist’s dog. We named the hero after him. Yup. Caleb Marlowe.
Our animals are so precious to all of us. It doesn’t matter if they’re dogs, cats, canaries, goldfish, hamsters, goats, horses or whatever. So often, these creatures provide the unconditional love that gets us through the tough days.