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The Life of Mookie

A dog's life, in 11 acts:

•  First Days
•  A Boy And His Dog
•  Soccer
•  Hide&Seek
•  Desert Trips
•  Little Runaway
•  CHP K9 For A Day
•  Bee Slayer
•  Emergency Vets
•  Revenge of the Turkey Baster
•  The End

First Days With A New Pup

I got Mookie from the Humane Society of Silicon Valley on March 16, 1991.  I had wanted to get a dog for a long time, but had held off until I could get a house of my own with a nice, dog-friendly yard.  Once I finally moved out of my East Palo Alto rental into my own house in Redwood City, I started looking for a dog in earnest.  Every weekend for four months or so, I cruised all of the dog pounds in the Bay Area looking for just the right dog.  My requirements were:

•  Short hair (easier to take care of)
•  Medium sized (big enough for a burglar to take seriously, but not too big)
•  Not some goofy dog, but one that seemed smart

Looking back, I have no idea why it took so long if those were the only requirements.  I guess I was looking for something special, too. 

One fine Saturday in March, I was checking out the dogs down in Santa Clara and I found a skinny 9-month old puppy with dark brown eyes and tiger stripes.  She had the look of a miniature greyhound: built for speed!

I stuck my arm in between the wall and the cage gate, to give her a scratch.  She stood up on her hind legs and grabbed my arm with both front paws and gave me this complete "Get me out of here!" look.  Of course, I was totally suckered in.  And that put me in a dilemma: instead of just coming to bowse like always, now I had to think about actually adopting a dog.  So I went home and though about it for a bit, and then called my girlfriend and asked her for her opinion.  She told me to go for it, which was all the prodding I needed at that point.

Back at the pound, the drill was to take a pull-tag and wait to get served.  In all my trips to the pound, I had observed that it was not uncommon for multiple people to want the same dog.  Whoever had the lowest pull-tag number got the dog.  I remember thinking  that I had just wasted an hour and a half as I got my pull-tag.  Fortunately, when they finally called "C39", she was still available.  The adoption advisor went and got her so that we could meet each other, and we looked over her paperwork. 

The paperwork said that her name was currently "Boo", and that this was her second stint in the big house.  Furthermore, the paperwork used words like "aggressive", "tears carpet", "barks/howls", and "chews".  I thought it sounded more like a rap sheet than a personality profile, and I asked the adoption advisor what it really meant.  She looked kind of sad and said that it meant that some people signed their dog's death warrant when they filled out the surrender paperwork.  But Mookie's tail was wagging and she seemed totally excited by all of the other activity in the adoption center.  Me, she could care less about.  I tried scratching her and petting her, but all she wanted to do was to check out what interesting things were happening in the outside world.  I didn't know it at the time, but that pretty much covered her attitude towards life.

Anyway, I was sold, so we did the paperwork.  All dogs adopted from the Humane Society needed to be spayed, so I did not get to pick her up for a couple of days after.  But finally, I got to bring her home. 

She moved kind of slow for the first two days while recovering from her surgery.  In the picture above, you can still see where her belly was shaved.  When it was time to take the stitches out, I had been told that I could take her to a vet, or I could do it myself.  I figured that I would do it myself as the initial rite of passage into being a responsible dog owner.  When it was time, I took them out.  Mookie didn't complain even a bit.  She would turn out to be a tough dog.

Picking her a new name caused me some trouble.  I wasn't too keen on "Boo", but wanted something that wasn't too far off in case she had already become accustomed to the sound.  I watched a fair bit of baseball at the time, and I always thought that Mookie Williams had a cool name.  After a week or so, I hadn't thought of anything better, so "Mookie" she became.

Once named, she needed a birthday.  Her rap sheet had said that she was about nine months old at the time, so I worked backwards and decided that she must have been born sometime in July 1990.  Taking a small liberty, I decreed that she must have been born on July 1st, 1990.  Furthermore, having being born on July 1 (Canada Day), she was to be awarded honorary Canadian citizenship.  I believe that this must have been the case, since we traveled to Canada a few times over the years.  At the border, the Immigration Officers always  treated her like a citizen and never asked to see her passport, even when she growled at them.

 For the first year or so, her left ear never folded quite like the right ear.  I took a lot of pictures of her, and I think that this next one is one of my all-time favorites.  It captures her pretty well.  She is more interested tracking the rest of the world than getting her picture taken.

Soccer

The strangest part about Mookie was that she didn't know how to play.  I think that her previous owners had just left her in the yard and never interacted with her.  It took her a long time to warm up to people and get interested in anything at all.  But finally, she discovered the love of her life: soccer. 

I am not sure how we worked the game out, but the rules evolved into something we both understood.  She was the goalie, I was the shooter, and the back fence was the goal.  If I took a shot and was able to hit the fence, I won.  If she could block the shot, she won. 

Winning was everything, for both of us.  If I scored, I would do a victory dance and gloat wildly.  If she blocked it, she would prance over and drop it at my feet with a definite air of satisfaction before tearing back to the goalmouth in case I tried to kick it before she was ready.  She was fearless.  I would kick the ball as hard as I could.  She would leap in the air and block it with her body, or bite it on the way by.  If I tried to lob it over her, she would leap in the air.  Once, she did a complete back-flip, blocking it with her body while upside down in mid-air before landing on her feet.  Another time, I kicked it so hard that when she caught it, it got totally wedged in her mouth.  We had to stop the game momentarily so I could pry it out.  Once it was out, she went right back in goal.  You can see that her soccer balls took a beating.  I used to buy them in bulk.

Hide And Seek

Another great game we played was Hide&Seek.  I would stand by the garage door, and kick the soccer ball into the far corner of the yard.  While she was tearing off to get the ball, I would run off to find a place to hide.  She would come back with the ball, but as soon as she noticed I was gone, she would drop the ball and start tearing around the house and yard looking for me.  It was pretty tough for me, since I only had about 20 seconds to find a spot to hide.  Traditionally, I would run inside the house and hide behind the couch.  Mookie would come flying in, leap onto the couch, and look over the top.  She would get all excited that she found me, and we would go do it again.  She never seemed to get tired of finding me behind the couch, but it started to get old with me.  To make it more interesting, I would hide just out of sight in the garage, and then wait for her to go tearing into the house to check behind the couch.  As soon as she passed by, I would run outside and hide in the shed or climb a tree.  From my vantage point in the tree, I could see her zoom in and out of the house, and go look behind the shed, and basically run herself ragged looking for me.  She got some good exercise from all that running around.  She finally figured out all my tricks, though, so it was time for something new.  Mookie was a mutt, but there was some sight-hound in her.  She never used her nose to find me, which let to my best hiding spot ever. 

When parked in the garage, my truck bumper only had about six inches of clearance between the rear bumper and the door.  I found that if I stood on the rear bumper and leaned against the tailgate and cap, she would never find me.  She could run right under the bumper and not know I was there.  I would let her run through the house and check behind the couch a couple of times.  The next time she took off back outside, I would climb down, run inside the house, and hide behind the couch.  After a few minutes, she would come in and check behind the couch again, and there I was.  Maybe not so exciting, except for the look on her face.  I swear, she got this really irritated look as if to say, "What are you doing there??  I already checked, and you weren't there!".  Of course, I would just laugh, and say to her, "yeah, well if you knew I wasn't here, then why are you looking here again?".  

Desert Trips

As best as I can remember, my desert holidays started in 1991.  Mookie did not come with me that first year.  I was worried enough that I was not going to survive, so I thought I better leave her at home for that one.  Obviously, I lived to tell the tale that first year, and it was pretty apparent that the desert would be a fun place for a dog, so Mookie started coming herself in 1992.  Anyway, I remember that her first year down was in my old RX-7.  I took the passenger seat out for extra room to pack stuff.  She would ride shotgun, standing behind me with her head over my left shoulder.  Predictably, she like to stick her head out the window.

One thing about Mookie was that she didn't like anyone to watch her when she had to "do her business".  While not a problem at home, it was a bigger problem when we were on a 13 hour driving trip down to the desert.  She just didn't like to pee on a leash.  Finally, around hour 12, she gave in and had a big pee in a vacant lot by a gas station in Brawley, CA.  After that, she was better about relieving herself when on a leash, but she definitely preferred to go off behind a bush by herself.

The long car rides also helped to cure her car-sickness.  In the early days, she would invariably end up puking in the car before we got to our destination.  There is nothing like a 13 hour ride to convince a dog to just curl up and sleep.  Over time, Mookie became a great Interstate traveler.  She could be in a deep sleep, but if the car ever took an off-ramp, she would instantly wake up to see what was going to happen next.

Anyway, we got to the desert, and she discovered all kinds of cool things.  First off, complete freedom.  No fences, no leashes.  Plenty of food to scavenge off the ground, and trash to dig through when no one was looking. 

We always had some fireworks for entertainment, and it turned out that Mookie loved to chase the bottle rockets.  All of the other dogs were panicked by the fireworks, but Mookie was the opposite.  I'm not sure that they were the best play toys, but she loved it if you would fire them along the ground.  She would tear after them and try to bite them.  One year, she came home with no whiskers.

Before she lost her whiskers, she lost a few pieces of her ear.  On that first trip in 1992, Mookie always wanted to play, but the other dogs in the desert were far less interested in playing than she was.  Finally, Bob's dog "Flo" had enough of being bothered by Mookie, and bit the end of her ear off.  I didn't realize how bad it was until she came into the tent and shook her head back and forth painting large bloody stripes all over the inside of the tent.  We patched her up with gauze, and she spent the rest of the trip looking like she was wearing a teabag on her head.  Little did I know it would be the first of a few times that she would wear a teabag over the years.  On the right, you can see the extent of her notched ear as she naps with her pal Ember.

Mookie loved going to the desert.  She knew when it was desert time when I started packing.  When I would load her bed, she would go crazy because she knew for sure that she was going.  Some times she would just hang out in the truck for hours on end while I was packing, just to make sure that I would not forget her.  She knew the desert was a special place, even if it meant getting Cholla cactus spines being pulled out of her pads.  As with most dogs, they learn the hard way about Cholla barbs: they step on a cactus ball, or brush against a standing cactus, and then they try to get it off them by biting it.  When Mookie did that (and she was a smart girl: she only ever bit a cholla ball once), I happened to be out of camp.  Glen was good enough to get his pliers and remove all the barbs from her mouth.  That had to hurt.

The desert could get pretty cold.  A couple of times, her water bowl would freeze overnight.  Her hair was short, and the cold nights would get her shivering.  The only time she was a lap dog was when it was really cold.  If she was cold enough, she would find me by the fire pit and climb into my lap.  She would fall asleep being warmed by the fire.  I thought it was the greatest.  I think she did, too.

I got her a couple of jackets to keep her warm.  She never liked them much, but they did help some.  Here she is at the "new" desert location in 2000 sporting her flashy red fleece-lined windbreaker.  Definitely a little more grey around the muzzle.
 

Little Runaway

Every day, I would come home from work and open the big garage door to come inside.  Like clockwork, as soon as the door would get about six inches off the ground, Mookie would wriggle under and then shoot outside to greet me.  This was the ritual, and we did it every workday. 

So one day, I came home and opened the door, and there was no dog.  Unusual, it was.  Not only that, but there was a dead squirrel laid out on the floor where I was going to park the truck.  Mookie was pretty fast, and I always worried a bit that she might actually catch a squirrel one day, and maybe this was the day.  Maybe it was.  I would have asked her, but she was missing.  The gates were closed, and the yard was fenced on all sides with a six-foot fence, but no dog.  I walked all around the neighbourhood, but couldn't find her.  I gave up and went home and watched T.V. with the front door left open, just in case she came back by herself.  And in fact, that is what happened.  Around 11PM, she cruised in the front door, headed over to her water bowl and drank the entire contents in one go.  She laid down on the couch panting heavily, but with what appeared to be a giant smile on her face.  After a couple of minutes, she excused herself and went to bed. 

I never did ask her about the dead squirrel.

That was the start of Mookie's exploring phase, which lasted pretty much until the end of her days.  No fence could hold her, and there were places to go and things to see.  A got a number of phone calls from my buddy Bill who lived about a mile and a half away to tell me that he had a visitor.  Some times, she would find out that he wasn't at home, so she would just walk home again.

Over time, she started wandering farther from home.  She set her distance record when I got a call from the Dog Catcher, saying that they had picked her up and were bringing her home.  She was pretty humbled to arrive home in the dog catcher van.  On the other hand, I was amazed.  The Dog Catcher lady said that she had busted Mookie for chasing squirrels on the campus of the College of Notre Dame, up in Belmont.  That would be about six or seven miles as the crow files, across some of the busiest roads in the Bay Area.  I have no idea how she didn't get squashed.

I never did figure out how she was getting out, or how to keep her in.

CHP K9 For A Day

Back in the 1994 timeframe, I lived in the low-rent district of Redwood City, down near Middlefield and 2nd Ave.  It was actually a pretty nice neighbourhood except around midnight on New Year's Eve, when there would be so much gunfire that it would sound like a giant popcorn popper going off for about half an hour straight. 

In any case, I used to go on a lot of motorbike rides up in the hills behind the Bay Area back then.  Whenever a fellow rider would come visit from out of town, I would lend them a bike and we would go for a ride.  Afterwards, we would hang out in the shade of the garage with the door open, relaxing and having a beer.  Invariably, while we would be taking in the action in the 'hood, the cops would bust someone right in front of the house.  Some days, it would be a traffic ticket.  Other days, the handcuffs would come out, and the car would get towed off.  It was common enough that we thought nothing of it, except to treat it like entertainment.

So my friend Karolyn came down for a visit, and we went biking.  We were relaxing over a post-ride beer, when the requisite traffic stop occurred.  I remember that there were a few cop cars taking part in this one.  Finally, the driver left in the back of one of the units, and their car left on the back of a flatbed.  As it was all winding down, a lady CHP officer who had been a participant in all of the action, crossed the street heading our way.  This was an unusual turn of events.  Also, potentially troublesome.  Mookie was very protective, and didn't like strangers on the property.  I had visions of her biting a cop, and getting myself hauled off in the back of another unit.  I started to call Mookie back, but instead of putting her hair up and barking like she would normally do, she acted all happy to see the officer.  This was getting distinctly unusual.  The officer lady talked to Mookie for a while and then came over to talk to us.

It would seem that a few weeks prior, I had been on vacation, and had not taken Mookie.  In my absence, I had a pair of friends watching for her.  Chris would doing the dog-watching during the work week up to Friday morning, and then Mary was going to take over on Friday evening for the weekend.  It was a great plan, and it had worked perfectly, or so we thought.  Talking with the officer, we found out that she had been on patrol over by the Redwood City Post Office on Broadway when she spotted a dog running down Broadway towards the extremely busy 5-way intersection at Broadway and Highway 84.  In her own words, the officer said that she had radioed to her dispatcher that "she was in hot pursuit of a speeding dog that was ignoring her requests to pull over".  As they neared the Highway 84 intersection, she said that she clocked Mookie at 35 MPH.  I knew Mookie was fast, but that was smokin!  Anyway, the officer knew that if Mookie ran across 84, she would be done for.  To protect the dog, she said that she turned on her lights and siren.  Together, they blew through the intersection.  After a few more blocks, Mookie finally wore out, and stopped at the side of the road to surrender.  The officer loaded her in the back seat and off they went.  Mookie had tags on with her phone number, but I was out of town, so they had no luck in that department.  In the meantime, Mookie was deputized as a semi-official CHP K9 unit for the day, meaning that she got to ride around in the cruiser and go on calls and everything.  I am sure that Mookie loved the entire time, and was suitably fierce when required, barked at the bad guys and did all kinds of fun cop stuff.  It took some time, but the CHP finally located my address using their reverse phone directory (hey, this was before the internet).  Late that afternoon, the officer drove over to my house, opened the gate, and put Mookie into the back yard.  At that point, Mookie was too worn out to run away again. 

And that explains why Chris had a dog in the morning, and Mary had a dog in the evening, I had a dog after I got back from my vacation, and Mookie had a good friend in the CHP. 

Bee Slayer

I had a great lemon tree at my house in Redwood City.  It had blossoms and fruit on it year round, which made for good cooking and perfect gin&tonics.  The other thing it had was bees due to all the blossoms.  As it turned out, if there was one thing in the world that needed to be dominated more than squirrels, it would have to be the bees.  Mookie would spend hours standing beside the tree waiting for a bee to come into range.  When that happened, she would bite it.  The ground around the lemon tree always had dead bees scattered around.  It wasn't all one-sided though.  Once, I saw her bite a bee that bit her back.  She yelped and then went over to the edge of the lawn and wiped her face on the grass a couple of times. Then, it was right back over to the lemon tree to bite more bees.  Maybe not the smartest hobby, but she was good at it and tough to boot.

Emergency Vets

I think that Mookie's first trip to the emergency vet was in 1994 when one of her doggie pals (either Flo or Ember) ripped a 1/4 inch by 1 inch strip off the leading edge of one of her ears.  The vet bandaged her up but it was a pretty messy wound.  As I recall, it took me and Bill about an hour to soak the bandages off her ear when it was time to change them.  But that was just the start of a grand tradition.

Mookie's next trip to the 24-hour emergency vet was on Christmas Eve, 1994.  Mary and I went out to some Christmas event, and when we came home, we discovered that Mookie had taken a present from under the tree, opened it, and eaten the contents.  Unfortunately, the contents turned out to be a pound of chocolate.  

That hydrogen peroxide thing was going to be pretty handy advice, let me tell you.  But even so, Mookie got to visit lots of emergency vets.  I had been getting so much practice at bandaging Mookie up that the emergency vet in Grass Valley looked at my bandage job and proclaimed that he could do no better.  There were times when it was not a do-it-yourself situation though:

Another time, Mookie got jumped by two dogs running wild in the neighbourhood.  She ended up with a hole in her back and had to wear a cone for a couple of weeks. 

She wasn't that big, but she never backed down from any situation.  I should be so tough.

Revenge of the Turkey Baster

Some times things don't work out quite how you plan:

The End

In truth, this whole thing feels lame right now. 

Mookie is gone. 

Now, I miss her doggy kisses and her tough-girl attitude and the way she loved to go on walks and play ball and chase squirrels.  But it turns out that our existence is fleeting, and these stories and memories and pictures are all that is left.  That's just how it goes.  The best decision I ever made was to take her home from the dog pound.  I hope that my pupster felt the same.

Bye, bye pup.  Thanks for everything.  You were the best.   It will always be worth it.

Random Links:

For what they are worth...

Home Hall Of Lame Etc.  • B17 Flight  • The Life Of Mookie  • Breakfast at the Grand Hyatt, Taipei  • Taiwan Taxi Ride

Random Image:

Wright Cyclone in full song.

Random Wisdom:

"Don't Drink and Drill."

  - Al D.