The beer barrel polka

When my parents returned from their vacation in 1984, they had no idea what was waiting for them. These were the days before cell phones made us each a flip and a text away from each other; where Facebook and Foursquare let us know what our friends were doing the very second they were doing it. In 2011, there's no way a kid could sneak a pet into the house for four days without the parents knowing...even if the parent was in Peru. But, in August of 1984, my parents were obvious to the furball sleeping in the garage until they pulled in the driveway and opened the garage door. Oooh boy, they didn't stand a chance. I honestly don't even remember the conversation - I may have already been in bed - but Tigger got to stay and was the Best Dog Ever for 14 more years.

 Tigger and I...kickin' it circa 1985. Totally rad.

To this day, my dad complains about Tigger and what a naughty dog he was. One day I came home and there was a huge barrel in the middle of the kitchen. Looking in the barrel, there was Tigger asleep at the bottom of it. His whole life, he was always running away (which likely explains how we got him in the first place) with my dad begrudgingly running after him. My dad even tried to change Tigger's name to Bob to prevent the embarassment of walking up and down the streets of our neighborhood at 10pm yelling "Tigger!" On this particular occasion, he had run away and, once found, my dad decided to put him in a barrel as punishment. Not much of a punishment, as Tigger was at least 12 years old at the time and just slept off his time in the clink. Actually, he probably liked it in there, all cozy and den-like.

Early on with Nadine, my dad commented about what he would do during Nadie's visit if she was a Naughty Dog. No need for a barrel, he figured. She was so small, a bucket would do nicely! And now, on those very rare occasions when I mention some teeny, tiny, insignificant thing that Nadine has done that ever so slightly inconveniences me...my dad's only words are, "Time to get out the bucket!"

No matter what kind of front my dad puts on, or all of his complaints about Tigger, aka "that ND," when we finally had to say goodbye to him, there was no doubt that my dad loved him as much as the rest of us. I mentioned that my dad is stoic and emotionless; well, that is not quite true. He simply doesn't show those emotions as bluntly as the rest of us. Instead, he builds a cradle for your new dolly, or silently changes your car's oil after you've ignored it for an extra 2000 miles, or fixes your broken kitchen sink that has dripped for six months.

They day we put Tigger to sleep, my dad spent the afternoon hard at work in the garage. Tigger was buried in the backyard in a casket built by my dad.

Superdad, Man of Steel

So far I have written a lot about my mom and all she went through with our Little Pot, the basket case that is Nadine. My mom did a bang-up job with the Nadester. It was, and still is to an extent, nearly impossible to predict Nadine's behavior. As her health and comfort-levels improved, her behavior's altered as well, so things were really in flux those first few weeks and months. Point is, my mom was a trooper for taking on Nadine and I could never have adopted this poor wee thing without her help.

So anyway, remember how excited my mom was to meet Nadine? My dad was the opposite. He's not a bad man, just not big on pets...unless they are raccoons named Ricky with sweet little hands (that are used to break into coolers when camping, but that's another story). His cold heart of steel is not due to a terrible childhood or soul-crushing job. It caused by his ancestry: West Michigan Dutch. We are a stoic and emotionless people. With absurdly large feet.

Pops wasn't all that interested in meeting Nadine. He wasn't particularly happy about having a dog - a non-housebroken dog no less - in his house. He was possibly a bit worried that having a dog in the house would prompt my mom to adopt a dog at some point in the near future, which might cause additional poop stains in the house and pee stains on the driveway. He made jokes about putting her in a barrel, as he was known to do with other wonderful dogs beloved by his one-and-only daughter. My dad is simply not a pet person and pets would not be welcome in the house, unless said pet could be kept in a cage or tank, explaining the parrots, fish, and chameleons we had growing up.

That is, until my parents went on vacation when I was 10.


The Story of Tigger

My parents traveled a fair amount when I was a kid. Apparently they needed to get out of the house, which I'm sure had nothing to do with me. How could it?! I'm perfect! Anyway, on one such trip, my aunt and uncle were taking care of me for the 5-day weekend while the parentals went to Stratford for their annual trip to see lovely Shakespeare plays and drink lovely wine and do other lovely things couples do on mini-breaks that I would prefer not to think about in regards to my parents. Ahem.

I had been asking for a dog for a while at this point and always getting a pretty convincing "not a chance in hell" in reply. A week or so before, my babysitter's family had found a dog. He was lying in the middle of the street with his legs splayed out behind him. They assumed he had been hit so they pulled up next to him to see if he was hurt. On opening the door, this sweet 20 pound black and brown Spaniel mutt hopped up uninjured and jumped in the backseat!

They spent a while trying to find the owners of this pooch and then trying to find someone to adopt him. He was housebroken but didn't have a collar. Finally, a day before they were planning to bring him to the Humane Society, my babysitter came over with him on the off-chance my family would want to adopt this nice dog. Guess who IMMEDIATELY fell in love? No, not just me, but my aunt and uncle too. Being as impulsive as the 10-year-old they were babysitting, my aunt and uncle agreed to take the dog. The deal was that if my parents wouldn't let me keep him, they would adopt him.

Tigger was the nick-name of my favorite counselor at Girl Scout camp that summer, so I named him Tigger. I never even considered that Tigger was a Winnie-the-Pooh character and even now, when I hear the name Tigger, I automatically think of my dog and not Pooh.

Tigger spent the next few days becoming the "Best Dog Ever" to me. We became buddies that no parent would rend asunder. Especially the parents of a child who had perfected the bottom-lip-jutted-out, eyes-watering, chin-quivering pout. No doubt, the parental guilt of raising an only child would help my cause. "I have no one to play with!" I would cry. Like Ralphie and his Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle, I plotted to keep my Tigger...

Home Alone

After two weeks of wandering and cycling in Spain, I came home and drove up to Michigan to pick up Nadine. Would she remember me? Would she be wary of me and prefer staying near my mom with whom she undoubtedly bonded with much more over three weeks than she did with me in three days? How would her habits now be, after all this time freed from that puppy mill life? She was sick when I first got her and so timid; I wondered if those behaviors would have changed.

My mom had not managed to perfectly housebreak the Nadester, but in nearly every other way, she was a different dog. She was slow to do her business outside (still is, unless she smells an invader dog - which in my neighborhood is every single tree, bush, fence, piece of garbage...), but would bullet around the dining room table upon coming back inside. Each time she got a treat, she would snatch it from your fingers and tear off like a dress on prom night. Whether she was afraid someone else might take it from her or she was just so happy to have a treat, it was hilarious to watch her nab and run.

Her tail was one of the most obvious changes. No longer tucked between her legs or hanging lifelessly to the floor, Nadine's curlicue tail stood straight up, with the end twirled over and poofball of fur resting on her back like a 50s starlet's mink stole. Glamorous Nadine was most definitely a happy dog. As I previously mentioned, that tail is her barometer - up means she is content with the current situation; wagging is VERY happy and usually indicates a treat is in her mouth or she is antagonizing a dog considerably larger than her; hanging down is uncertainty likely caused by a nail clipper in my hands or I am saying "crate" when she doesn't feel like doing "crate"; and tail tucked under means it's thunderstorming either outside or on the telly. She really can give you the weather report!

Much to my relief, Nadie did remember me. Her reaction wasn't what it is today when I get home (a writhing, wiggling mass of fur, running circles around me in between jumping on my lap and licking my arm with her freakishly long giraffe tongue), but at least she wasn't scared of me. She also knew I was someone from her pack and that I needed watching. For the rest of the weekend, she followed me or my mom around that house, like the momma dog she is.

While my mom and I were making a lot of mistakes in Nadine's training, we had at least learned that a crate was Nadie's happy place. Yet for some anthropomorphic reason, I wanted to give Nadine a little more freedon when we were gone for more than a few hours. Ignoring the crate experience my mom had so far, we tried keeping her in the bathroom with the gate one afternoon while we ran errands (read: bought more dog crap). On coming home, Miss Nadie came barreling at us, no longer in the bathroom, with tail wagging and a sense of pride in a job well-done. She had freedom, alright, just a whole lot more than we expected. Further investigation showed that she had managed to push, rip, and tear the metal fencing of the gate and wiggle her little 10 pounds through a hole she MacGyvered. Where she found the duct tape may always be a mystery...

Our Little Houdini had done it again...whether it was the fabric travel crate or a metal gate, this dog was not going to be contained in anything smaller or larger than her lovely, plastic, 1x2 foot box. And good thing too, as it was time to hit the road back to Chicago and I was hoping I would have a better experience in the car then my parents. We knew she was ok in the car, as long as she wasn't in that travel crate. She rode on the floor of the car all the way to Canada during her stay with my parents, so the car was no longer scary. I just hoped she could travel in her new plastic crate the three hours to Chicago with me. I wasn't about to risk having her loose on the floor - she had to be in a crate - but would she flip out and try to claw her way of that too once we hit 70mph?