Bubba

Bubba came from the pound, and was, therefore, a used dog. Like a hand-me-down coat, Bubba came with the stains of his previous owners embedded into him. One of his hind flanks was forever marked with a cigar-sized scar, he was terrified of plastic bags of any kind, and he had a ferocious reaction to men in ball caps. In spite of his difficult start, he spent the remainder of his life loving and entertaining an entire household.

He was the sixth member of the family, the others being two parents and three grade-school-aged children. Still a puppy when he arrived, it was Bubba’s joy to escape out the front door and run figure-eights in the family’s yard, the neighbors’ yards, and eventually a dizzy block away before he was convinced by the father that his skating career was over. The children’s skating careers, however, had just begun! One at a time, a child would strap on his roller blades, hook the leash to Bubba’s collar, and take off down the sidewalk. The child didn’t have to work at all but the dog worked himself into a lather, ears flopping and teeth bared against the wind, front and back legs working in harmony as he propelled both of them through the neighborhood.

Bubba had the mistaken notion that he was a big dog when in fact he weighed less than twenty-five pounds and stood only fifteen inches tall. Many times the consequences of this error in judgment resulted in pain, including a bloody eye and quite a few stitches after his head was pried from the jaws of a huge black lab.

Curiously, Bubba was very persnickety about his habits, especially in foul weather. His owners were forced to scoop a path through the snow for him to do his business; otherwise, he would simply take one step out the back door and leave his “gifts” on the top step.

Over the years, Bubba picked up the habits of his family, waiting to finish his dog food until they were seated for their meals, and then taking it a piece at a time from his dog dish to the carpet to crunch, crunch, crunch until it was gone. He was also known for slurping loudly from his water dish during most mealtime prayers.

Snack time, however, was a different story. His preference was to dig treasures out of the cat’s litter box and leave them in the middle of the living room carpet, covered with kitty litter and looking exactly like Sno Caps.

His family, being the joking sort, enjoyed dressing him up in baby clothes and holiday costumes. Whether it was a Santa suit or a baby sleeper, the paralysis that seemed to overtake him whenever wearing human clothing made him all the more ridiculous. He would sit back on his rear end, hind legs quivering off the ground and shiver until someone took pity on him and returned him to his natural state.

Trips to the vet were viewed as an impending death sentence, and in fifteen years those trips never got any better. Being a short-haired dog, he didn’t normally shed much, but the second he was placed into a vehicle he would begin to shake violently, hair literally flying off his body, panting heavily and usually showing us private parts we would rather not see.

One by one the children left home, and as Bubba grew older he stayed faithful to the mother, following her around and loving her unconditionally as only dogs can do. When his eyesight failed and he developed arthritis in his back and legs, the father carried him up the stairs to his little bed. His figure-eight days were long gone now, echoing only in his dreams.

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