![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Shoestring-980x1024.jpg\" "\\"Shoestring\\"")
<\/a>My brother about 30 some years ago with Shoestring<\/p><\/div>\n
One pet we kids begged her for was a dog.\u00a0 Which she always insisted we couldn’t do.\u00a0 A dog needed room, which she claimed we didn’t have.\u00a0 (Although we had a pretty big backyard compared to hers or mine NOW!\u00a0 So she must have had an acre in mind!)\u00a0 She told us, should we EVER even THINK about getting a dog it would be a small one.\u00a0 Of course, I think at heart she really just didn’t want another pet to deal with. (As a mother, I completely don’t blame her!)<\/p>\n
So imagine how shocked we are that one day she comes home from her office (her Pediatric office) with a puppy.\u00a0 An Irish Setter puppy, no less!\u00a0\u00a0 Hello!!!\u00a0 NOT a small dog!<\/p>\n
“Don’t get attached, ” she announces.\u00a0 “I’m only holding it for 10 days for a patient.”<\/p>\n
Turns out they couldn’t pay the fee and used the dog as collateral for payment!\u00a0 Needless to say that patient never came back for said collateral!\u00a0\u00a0 And just like that we had a dog.\u00a0 So we had to name him.\u00a0 Us kids called this puppy everything from Big Red to Rex to King to Fido.\u00a0\u00a0 But my father called him Shoestring…. because he had a shoestring tied around his neck like a collar.\u00a0 And of course, THAT is the name that stuck!<\/p>\n
None of us knew how to train a dog, much less how to OWN an Irish Setter.\u00a0 He got minimal baths and the even rarer brushing.\u00a0\u00a0 There was no formal obedience schooling to a leash so he was just a bitch to walk.\u00a0 Pulling constantly and obeying never!\u00a0 When he was a puppy we played with him.\u00a0 When he was an adolescent dog we played less.\u00a0 When he became an adult dog we mostly ignored him.\u00a0 Although it was fun to get him on the trampoline, he loved it.\u00a0 When he was dealing with horniness and humping everything in sight we actually took him somewhere to\u00a0 breed which basically cured it.\u00a0 I mean, after doing it with an actual female dog he left visitors and such alone!<\/p>\n
Like the cats, it never occurred to us to have him fixed.\u00a0 He never used his dog house, preferring to sleep & hang out in the crawl space under the house.\u00a0 The better to scare the shit out of the mailman with deep, loud barking whenever\u00a0 he came.\u00a0 And as he aged he got eczema that pretty much denuded his fur from his tail up to his shoulders.<\/p>\n
He did two things that are the most memorable for me.\u00a0\u00a0 Once, as a high schooler I decided to take him for a walk.\u00a0 I put him on the leash and was successfully wrestling him down the block by trying to walk as fast as his pace when from the corner came the sudden barking of a dog.<\/p>\n
And Shoestring lunged into a run.\u00a0 I, the hapless victim, was pulled off my feet and dragged the length of a house<\/em> before I could even let go of the leash.\u00a0 When I stood up, my dog was no where in sight.\u00a0 The first words out of my mouth were, “I’m going to KILL that dog!”\u00a0 Which, looking back, was downright hilarious when you realize I then spent an hour LOOKING for the dog.<\/p>\n If I really wanted him dead, I would have just walked home and let Fate HAVE him.\u00a0 To hell with the damn beast.\u00a0 But even though I\u00a0 went home with no dog, eventually he did show up, limping slightly, sometime that night.\u00a0 At which point I ceased to WANT to be a veterinarian as my father suggested I examine the dog’s leg to see why he was limping.\u00a0 The dislike of that drove me right out of that career choice!<\/p>\n My other main memory of my childhood dog was how my brother would walk him.\u00a0 He wouldn’t exactly “walk” him.\u00a0 He’d put him on his leash (a choke chain collar… yes we were ignorant horrible pet owners) and then get on his skateboard and have Shoestring pull him down the street.\u00a0 The dog loved the effort, my brother loved the ride.\u00a0 But really, we should have used a harness!<\/p>\n We sucked as pet owners!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did I tell you the story about my childhood dog?\u00a0 No?\u00a0 Suckers! So while growing up we had so many different pets.\u00a0 We first had cats, then chickens, then rabbits and at one time a pet rat.\u00a0 We eventually even … Continue reading