I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
........August Strindberg
Jesse bit me on the left foot a few nights ago. I can’t say it was totally unexpected because he had done it once before. The previous time I had my shoe on and the bite was ineffectual but a warning none the less. With this most recent bite my shoe was off and only my sock was between my skin and his teeth. He broke the skin on the top of my foot with one of his incisors. If you have never seen Jesse you cannot possibly understand how strong his bite is. His jaw muscles (Fascia Parotideo Masseterica) are formidable. People have asked me occasionally what is wrong with his jaws because the muscles are so huge and exaggerated he looks slightly deformed. He is like a scary cartoon dog. Over the following days my foot turned a dozen different shades of blue, purple and yellow. The bruise discolored my foot from the top of my instep all the way down to a point between my large toe and the one next to it, around to the bottom of my foot. It was a constantly changing rainbow of colors.
On that particular night I was watching television and Jesse came to lie down at my feet. He is rarely allowed into the house and I cannot for the life of me remember why he was in that night. In front of the fireplace I was relaxed in my recliner. Moose was nearby and I have since wondered if Jesse thought my foot belonged to Moose. He does bite Moose fairly often even though it rarely breaks the skin. Frequently when Moose is at my feet I stroke his side and rump with my socked foot. Attempting the same thing with Jesse, he bit me. In my long history of having dogs, not one has ever bitten me. His bite infuriated me and I quickly looked around the room for something heavy and blunt to club him with. He was still growling and slinking looking at me a threatening way. Jesse has a history of doing unpredictable things at times. Linda intervened on his part and I regained some of my composure. He is a very good yard dog considering that we live out on a dirt road in deep mountainous country with few neighbors and easily within sight of the road. He always barks and growls at strangers(and friends)who come into the yard unannounced and gives the impression that he should not be trifled with. Most people give him a wide berth and watch him intently while he is in the vicinity. So do I.
The first time I saw Jesse he was a tiny five week old pup in a house off in the Covington Highway area. Most people would think he was a ghetto dog and they would be right. The person that owned the pack of Dalmatians was a black man whose face I cannot remember at all, much less his name. The house was just like the other houses on the street with one big difference. No people lived there, only dogs! All the doors and windows were hanging open and the dogs came and went as they pleased. In the living room of this house was an overturned sofa that served as a sort of bed for many puppies and grown dogs. There was little other furniture. Feces littered the entire first floor of the house and the urine smell was overwhelming. I never saw the second floor. Dalmatians ran free in the back fenced yard and many of them had gotten out and wandered in the front yard, the street and the neighborhood in general. The place was appalling by anyone’s standards. I started for the door realizing it was a puppy mill. Being highly opposed to people who run that kind of operation I only wanted out of there. At the very moment I was turning to go one of the many tiny puppies came up to me and sat on the top of my foot. He looked up at me with small black eyes and it gave me pause. I had to consider him regardless of his background. Remember that I really wanted a dog and had been waiting for an add in the Atlanta Journel paper for a long time. Picking him up I knew he was the only puppy I wanted from that place. After some finagling I paid the man for the puppy, (he would not take a check and snatched the puppy from my arms when I offered one) and said, "This is a cash only operation, mister, no checks!" When he seemed unwilling to negotiate I offered to let him ride with me to a local teller machine to withdraw cash to pay him, he agreed. After driving the man back to the nasty house I promptly left and did not look back. A month later I had to call him about the AKC registration because he had not sent the forms in. Why was I so desperate for a Dalmatian and especially at that price? Hard as it may be to believe, there are some reasons.
My older dog was a liver and white Dalmatian, Checkers and was absolutely the best dog I have ever had. He did not chew things up, never threatened a human and adored me at the cost of everything else. Although he did not like other dogs much, he was my best friend. He was always gentle, affectionate and with me every minute he could be. If I was outside, he followed me where ever I went. We took naps together in the day bed on the front screened in porch, I read and he snoozed. He would lie at my feet when I watched television and never seemed bored with my lack of activities. He was however an older dog and I knew his time was getting close to being over. He had such trouble with his hips, dysplasia and his sight was not all that good, hearing either. I could not bear the thought of doing without him and thought another Dalmatian would fill the bill and ease the pain when the time came to put Checkers down. Boy was I wrong! I actually wonder if even Caesar Milan (the dog Whisperer) could manage this particular dog. Personally I think Jesse is a little psychotic.
To say that Jesse did not live up to expectations would be the understatement of the year. At night he would run through the house leap onto the bed and had no clue what being house broken was all about. He was so wild and rambunctious I had to buy a cage to keep him in. No matter which room I put him into we could hear his mournful howling and hysterical barking all night. We got no sleep for days until I discovered one night around 2:30 in the morning that if I drug his cage (with him in it) out to my jeep and closed him up in the area behind the rear seat we could not hear him carrying on from our bedroom. It worked for a while. One night we had plans to go to the Alliance Theater for a play. It was very cold that particular night and we left Checkers, and Jesse in the bed room with the door closed. Linda had been doing research for a class she was planning and had left four or five library art books on her side of the bed. The books were the coffee table type, oversize, full color very expensive books that she was making slides from. When we returned home after the play the bedroom was a shambles and the art books had been turned into confetti. The book covers ripped off with whole sections of the book just missing. Much money had to be paid to the Clayton County Library to replace the books.
We have had destructive dogs before but this one rivaled the worst of them. Sarvis our Siberian Husky was one of the worst. One afternoon when the boys were small we drove down the road to take a swim in the creek. There was a hole in that one area of the creek that the boys could dive in and actually be over their heads. The swimming area was across the street from an acquaintance we had become friendly with (Truman Neal) who had been born and lived his entire life here at Big Creek. He had free range chickens all around his house. Knowing Sarvis would eat and or kill everyone of the man’s chickens, we left her in the car with the windows partly down in the shade of a huge tree. After our swim we returned to Linda’s new two week old car. As we approached the car I noticed a line of what appeared to be red fluid running from the small vent side window by the passenger seat down to the bottom of the car. It was blood. Sarvis had eaten up the passenger seat, the door panel, the window knob, the rear view mirror and much of the floor mat. It was a very expensive afternoon swim we had that day.
Thank goodness I never had Jesse neutered, although I probably should have. From Jesse came Moose whom I like almost as much as I liked Checkers. He tends to wander away and I spend much of my time looking for him even though he is invariably down at Hobard's farm just up the road from us. He is always happy to see me when I go up there to retrieve him and he races me all the way back home, he runs I ride. Thank goodness for Jesse and his interest in reproduction or I would now have just the one dog that I do not like very much. Never to have gotten to know Moose would have been tragic. Also I would be hunting something heavy and blunt every day of my life.
Having said all this I still cannot see myself having Jesse put down just because I can’t manage him. He is a beautiful animal and healthy as can be, AKC registered too. All his shots are up to date. I have twenty bucks and a month’s supply of dog food if anybody is interested. Are there any takers?
Just kidding but am willing to talk!
I have noticed that Jesse's hearing is getting quite bad. All white or mostly white dogs frequently have hearing problems and Jesse will probably be no different. When he is asleep on the front deck you can walk up on him through the gravel and it doesn't even wake him up. Don't ever do this because when he does wake up and you are too close to him he reacts rather badly. So far his hips don't seem to be giving him any trouble but I know that it is just a matter of time.
His ageing is obvious to me and I feel for him. I too am getting to the point that my hearing is not so good anymore and getting around is not as easy as it once was. I have lost all interest in climbing trees and that is a sure sign that a person is getting old. Once climbing trees was a favorite pass time for me, any tree, and any time. Those days to, I am afraid have passed. Every time I climb a tree now I invariably fall out. I do however still maintain a healthy appetite.
The End
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