Dutchess Takes a "Tumble"

Shortly after I turned fourteen, an ad in the local penny saver (advertising circular) read, “mixed breed puppies—free to a good home”. That morning, my mother showed me the ad and suggested it was time to get a new puppy. The best part was that the new dog was to be my dog.
The process of selecting a puppy relies largely on ESP—unspoken communication between potential masters and a bushel of yipping “Pickmepick mepickmes” is an undefined art form, and is not to be taken lightly. When we stepped into the yard of the puppy playpen, the mother of the wriggly pups calmly approached us and sniffed at our hands approvingly. Several of the brown bundles of noses and tails attacked our legs and yipped excitedly. All but one.
One sat quietly aside, looking at me… interested. We connected. It was easy to ignore the other puppies as I gazed into the soulful eyes of the dog that was to be mine. She had a beautiful chocolate and black coat, and her little tail wiggled convulsively as she seemed to nod me over to her.
“They are part Doberman, and part everything else...including Chocolate Lab. Both parents are well behaved and even tempered.” The faceless lady told us.
“How big do they get?” My mom asked.
“Well, that’s their mom there, and the father is about the same size.”
Based on the mom, we could see that our new family member would grow to be about knee high. I reached down and picked up my new puppy…the one who grunted and yawned rather than yipped… and was surprised by how warm she was. I cradled her in my arms like a newborn and said, “We’ll take this one.” I named her “Dutchess” right then, because my older sister in Kentucky had a similar looking dog named Duke.
A couple of days later, my friend Terry and I decided to take Dutchess around and show her off, so we took her for her first walk around town. She had a lot of extra skin around her neck, so using a collar and a leash quickly proved impossible with an untrained puppy. Terry picked her up and carried her like a baby—with her head on his shoulder. He carried her like that for over an hour, stopping at friends’ houses and enjoying the day walking around town. Then Dutchess threw up all over him.
It was pretty repulsive seeing chunks of creamy puppy chow smear down the front of his sweatshirt. Fortunately, Terry has an affectionate understanding of puppies, and he comforted little Dutchess and apologized to her for making her motion sick. I, on the other hand, was a few feet away trying not to throw up all over myself.
Despite this caring and concern, I think it is fair to say that most teenage boys have a mean streak in them. I think that that may be a part of growing up—testing the limits of cruelty before guilt kicks in. The months that Dutchess was a puppy, Terry and I subjected her to lots of things that my parents called cruel, despite the fact that Dutchess would come back to me, tail and tongue wagging affectionately.
There was a part of me that was convinced that Dutchess could fly—or at least that she enjoyed being thrown across the room. She weighed about five pounds and was very sleek, and I suppose it is possible that her sleekness contributed to her ability to sail through the air in the living room—making soft landings in the oversized beanbag chair.
That chair was so big and soft that when she’d fly across the room, the sheer inertia caused her to sink into the chair so deep that she’d actually disappear. The whole chair would wiggle like a round fuzzy gray beast from a 50’s Sci-Fi film until her black nose and big paws worked her little body free of its clutches.
She grew quickly—and she ate pretty much everything. She loved peanut butter, and we loved to give it to her. The sight of her long pink tongue slooping in and out of her face like a serpent was enough to keep us laughing for hours—but the “cruelty” that I practiced as a teenager included giving her mustard.
It only took one yellow spot on her tongue for Dutchess to realize that mustard is NOT a dog-friendly food. She started licking the carpet and then ran to the water dish to douse out the French’s Fancy Yellow from her mouth. From that day on, any food with mustard on it would remain untouched. Hot dogs, hamburgers and any other kind of meat sandwiches would sit ignored at her nose’s end, and would eventually get eaten by one of the other animals in the house.
Most of the “Meanness” that Dutchess encountered was light-hearted, and she always slinked back across the room, head low, tail wagging—ready to lick your face until you couldn’t take it any more. She was an extremely forgiving and loyal dog.
Even though I was occasionally cruel, I don’t believe that I was ever abusive. My mother thought otherwise, especially one summer afternoon.
One of the most valuable “toys” in my house as a teenager was the family video camera, and my friends and I often made short films—mostly nonsense, of course, but my folks were always interested to see our cheap entertainment on the small screen. That one day, however, my mother was NOT entertained.
If I were to script out our amateur video, it would probably go something like this:

Take 1:
(Continuous shot) Human picks up Dutchess in the living room and walks her through the house, camera following human with the dog into the laundry room. Human says, “Dutchess, you are all wet, I think you need to be dried off.”
Human places the dog into the tumble dryer, closes the dryer door, stands up.
(pause camera)
Remove Dutchess from the dryer and replace her with an old pair of sneakers. Close dryer door, and stands up as before- as close to the exact position before camera was paused as possible.
(un-pause camera) Human pushes the start button on the dryer and lets it run for about a minute, as the contents bang around inside the dryer with soft and hard thumps. Human says, “I think she’s done now.” And opens dryer door slightly to stop the cycle.
(pause camera)
The sneakers are replaced with the wiggly brown dog, human moves back into position with the dryer door slightly open.
(un-pause camera)
Open door the rest of the way, and remove Dutchess, tail wagging.
Human says, “Yes, she’s all pretty now!”
Places Dutchess on the floor, where she slinks off out of the Laundry room. Human smiles at camera
(Fade to black)

These camera tricks were primitive at best, and the “pause/un-pause” gimmick usually worked well for making somebody “disappear” from the room. In this case, the cheap trick backfired a smidge.
When the tape was played for my mother, she apparently overlooked the obvious glitches in the tape and honestly believed that Dutchess had been tumble-dried on camera. I had abused my dog.
It was difficult to explain our crude cinematography techniques to a woman who wouldn’t stop screaming and slapping me, but I managed. She concluded by stating, “That’s just terrible. Why would you do that?”
I shrugged, suffering once again in yet another moment of misunderstood humor – which, for the most part, is the story of my life.