The Dogs in my Life
Posted: Thursday, September 07, 2006
by Mike Fak
http://mikefak.com
My first dog was a mutt. Actually all my dogs were mutts, but since I am Croatian and Irish with a smidgeon of Polish ancestry in me, I suppose I also am a mutt. I don’t find any necessity in having purebred dogs as pets. I’m not against that practice. I just don’t see any requirement for a dog to have a parent’s lineage on a piece of paper in order to be a great friend.
The dog was named Sparky. I know that isn’t a very original name but considering the other two dogs in my life were named Skipper and Rusty shows my family never got caught up in fancy names for pets.
In fact, one of the only pictures to have survived of my grandma, Louisa Fak, is a 1930 picture of her on a stairway with a huge German shepherd next to her. The note on the back of the picture denotes grandma is sitting with King, another non original name to be sure. I suppose the message was to help viewers understand the shaggy looking individual next to grandma wasn’t the then missing Grandpa Tony who bore a remarkable resemblance to a German Shepherd.
Like I was saying, my first dog was Sparky and that is all I can tell you about him. Sparky was only a member of the family for a few months and then he was gone.
I do recall being frantic, looking for Sparky as a call out to the yard on Sheffield was met with silence and no dog in the back yard.
I remember dad coming home from work and walking the neighborhood with me looking for Sparky and getting nowhere.
One night, soon after Sparky disappeared, dad showed me an article in the newspaper about some wealthy family telling how their dog was kidnapped and held for ransom. Dad didn’t fool me into thinking Sparky had been kidnapped since I knew we didn’t have enough money for a new Wilson baseball mitt, let alone pay off kidnappers to get a mutt back.
Nonetheless, I remember getting excited and then saddened every time the phone rang for the next few weeks. It was always Grandma Treacy and never the head of an international pooch theft ring wanting to make a deal to give Sparky back.
I recall dad telling me the apartment wasn’t a good place for a dog anyway, and with his plans for the family to buy a house heating up in his mind, he promised that as soon as we moved we would get another dog.
When we moved to Waveland Avenue, dad kept his promise and got us a mixed Lab, which we named Skipper.
I don’t have many fond memories of Skipper either, as he came into my life, ate all the furniture, and then abruptly left almost as quickly as Sparky.
I do remember that Skipper loved to jump when he wasn’t eating the legs off of the dining room furniture.
The dog would go flying out the back door and start jumping over the cyclone fence that marked the boundaries of our yard with our neighbors. Back and forth Skipper would jump, easily clearing the four foot tall cyclone fence until he stopped long enough to go to the bathroom and then he would start jumping again.
The neighbors never really liked Skipper since he always landed in the flower garden they had planted directly on their side of the fence. Every time Skipper did his little fence jumping foray into their garden, old man Westlake would have to come out and fix or pull a few of his favorite flowers that Skipper had demolished with his antics.
I remember the next spring that Westlake had planted a series of rose bushes along the fence line and that cured Skipper from jumping the fence on that side of the yard.
We didn’t have enough money to get Skipper fixed, but I think Skipper did the job on himself that first time he jumped into old man Westlake’s rose bushes.
I can understand now, looking back on it, that dad wasn’t as mean or tough as he pretended to be. Skipper was a chewer and in the few years he was with us, every leg of the dining room table as well as the chairs were gnawed into nothingness by that dog. Any other dad, would have killed Skipper or had him put down, but dad would just curse and yell at the dog and at mom and at me and that would be the end of it.
One day Skipper went outside, jumped over the fence adjoining the alley and never jumped back. I’m not sure where Skipper ended up but I think he decided he needed a new family to take care of him as ours was almost out of wood furniture.
For several years we had a dining room set with gnawed legs and a few of the chairs, damaged so badly, were thrown out after being considered unsafe to sit in.
I believe the dining room table had a brick, or block of wood under one of the gnawed off legs of the table until dad could afford to buy a new one. I don’t recall anyone who visited our home thought that was unusual. Maybe that was because Skipper was living with them.
I don’t know why, but in my mind, I kept seeing Skipper jump the back fence just as the garbage truck was pulling into the alley. I pictured Skip flying into the front of that truck and meeting his demise that way. There were no tell tale signs of this on the truck, which I checked the next time I saw it, but I have always had this notion in my mind that is how Skipper ended up. Maybe that really happened and I have repressed that portion of my life. I guess we will never know.
A trusty Irish Setter by the name of Rusty then entered the family’s life, and Rusty, who might actually have been a pedigree, would be a part of the family for 16 years.
Rusty was a classic Irish Setter, big and happy, full of love and loyalty. Rusty was everyone’s dog and he had so much affection, I’m sure every member of the continually growing Fak family thought for sure they were Rusty’s favorite.
Rusty didn’t eat furniture, wanted to be outside when it was time to go to the bathroom, and was content on sleeping at the foot of the bed without demanding any scratches or covers
With all those praises, Rusty did have his faults. Again, the family not being able to afford a Veterinarian’s bill meant Rusty was still “all there". This didn’t cause any problems for the family except when guests would come over, and sitting down in a chair or the sofa, they would have to fend off Rusty’s amorous endeavors. Rusty never saw a leg he didn’t love. A quick admonition would send Rusty sulking into the kitchen and mom would spend the rest of the visit apologizing to our guests.
When I got out of the service, I spent a few years living in the basement and often had the guys over for an evening. Rusty became a member of the group as we would all gather to eat a few burgers, drink some beer, and watch low budget, garbage movies on Channel 32 all night.
Rusty would of course mooch a chunk of food from each of us, but what the dog truly enjoyed was his beer time with the guys.
Rusty would have his bowl in the middle of the room and from time to time, one of us would pour a few ounces into it for him. The dog loved to just sit by the bowl, take a couple laps of the brew and then listen in on our conversations.
The dog truly savored his beer, lapping, then sitting, then lapping again until a look at one of us told us he needed a little more.
By the end of the night, it was time for Rusty to be let out in the yard and then he would stagger upstairs to find a place to pass out. I’m not sure how many times mom would yell down the steps that she was going to kill someone for getting the damn dog drunk again, but it was a lot.
In the later years, Rusty became such an integral part of the family that the dog food was replaced with a pound of ground beef that mom fried up for him every night. There were a lot of things the Fak family could have spent that money on, but like any other important member of a family, Rusty deserved this one simple recognition of his value and worth in the Fak household.
The truth be known, I think Rusty was dad’s dog more than any other Fak member. Dad used to think he was hiding his box of chocolate cream drops in his underwear drawer, but we all knew where they were and so did Rusty. When dad would go into the bedroom to watch his White Sox on the tiny television and to savor a few of his special treats without all the Fak kids clamoring for their share, Rusty would go quietly into the room with him.
I remember peeking in and seeing dad and Rusty on the bed, the two of them savoring another chocolate cream drop together as the Sox tried to win enough games to prevent my dad from getting mad at them.
As my dad started to decline in health, so did Rusty. Dad was dying from Alzheimer’s, the faithful dog from a full, loving life. In Rusty’s last days he stayed with my father faithfully and constantly. I’m sure he knew something was wrong with his old friend as well as himself and he had decided they would stay together till the end.
Rusty didn’t make it as long as dad, dying the year before. They say you meet everyone you knew and loved when you die and go to heaven. Under those conditions, I’m sure one of the first people dad saw was Rusty, no doubt with a box of chocolate cream drops in his mouth. I hope the White Sox were on.
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