Sunday morning, I sat on the edge of Vivi’s bed to wake her up.
“Hey, Vivi! Today’s Cowtail Day. You get to learn how to shoot your new bow!”
“Could you get these kids in their seats so WE CAN GO?”
Her eyes flew open and she chirped, “Huck gets to be a REAL DOG…all day long!” She threw back her covers to reveal some ratty blue sweats with a hole in the knee and an old t-shirt from Brasil. “I slept in this so I could wear it to Cowtail today! I’m ready to go!”
Cowtail is our family’s hunting camp–100 acres of forest land that has been in my grandfather’s family for over a hundred years. When I say “hunting camp,” I am not being coy. I once overheard my stepdaughter telling one of her friends that we were “going to Ashley’s family ranch for the weekend” and I corrected her by saying, “Ranch? Sweetie, it’s some woods with a shack and an outhouse. Let’s not blow things out of proportion.”
Keeping an eye on his babies.
For decades, the land was leased to some strangers for the hunting rights. Then it dawned on the six of us cousins, Pop’s grandchildren, that we could pay the taxes ourselves and keep the place in the family. But the real reason is that Cowtail gives us a place to get our kids dirty. Our kids are growing up on cul de sacs in tidy little neighborhoods. That is NOT the way we grew up. I still remember the Christmas when we got machetes (and a casual admonition to “be careful”) for playing in the woods. We’d build a fort one weekend in the pine woods around our house then by the next weekend forget where it was and build another one. Our same pack of six cousins rode our bikes miles into town, wandered around the cow pastures in search of arrowheads or built a dam over the creek just for something to do. My mom says I called dams “water makin’ machines.”
Now we’re all polished up and living in The City. Our dogs take baths, wear collars and mind their manners. At home, Huck has a nice yard but he has to peek out at the rest of the world through a hole in the fence. He’s only allowed to woof about five times in a row before he gets called back into the house. There’s a fence between him and the river.
“HU-UUUCCCKK!”
Huck loves going to Cowtail. For the first 10 minutes of our car trip, we kept hearing this strange sound like a church bell inside the car. Turned out it was Huck’s happy tail thumping against Carlos’ little metal shovel. We had to stop the car and rearrange the stuff to make the ding-dong stop. At Cowtail, he gets to roam free. He woofs at stuff. He chases squealing kids on four-wheelers down the muddy trails, never losing sight of them. He eats a lot of sandwiches and cookies that drop from little hands. His coat gets pieces of roasted marshmallow stuck in it when the kids use him like a napkin. He wanders across the archery range and eight kids yell, “Hu-uck!” in unison. He gets to be a real dog, all day long.
In the last five years, the boy cousins have made some serious improvements to the shack at Cowtail. It’s got windows and a rain barrel shower and built-in bunks. They called in a couple of favors and got some ‘lectricity strung up. There’s a firepit and a tire swing. This year, Joe added a trampoline some neighbors threw out. The outhouse even has a seat now! They’s even a radio that plays both kinds of music–country AND western!
My kids get so delightfully dirty there. They play in the rain and the mud and the leaves. When Vivi finds a smooth piece of old blue glass, it’s probably from a medicine jar that her great grandmother threw in a trash pile when Teddy Roosevelt was president. Here’s Vivi trying to get marshmallow out of her eyebrow.
Just like Huck, I love going to Cowtail because I get to be real, all day long. Wear my ratty sweats. Shoot arrows at a target without worrying that I might be breaking an ordinance. Pee in an outhouse while a mockingbird yammers at me to get out of her space. Laugh with the same cousins I’ve been laughing with my whole life. Throw logs on the fire. Push the kids up towards the sky on a tractor tire until they scream. Eat sandwiches and roast marshmallows and wipe my hands on my pants. Drink wine out of a cup with my name written on it in Sharpie. Hoot. Holler. Woof at stuff.
Then we load the kids and the dog and the dirty shoes and the leftovers and the leaf collection and the special rocks and the bows and arrows and shovels and really nice sticks. We hug a bunch of necks and talk about when we’re going to do it again. By sundown, we drive a slow mile on a dirt road then bump up onto the paved county road so we can make our way back to The City.
Carlos played so hard this Sunday that this was him FIVE MILES away from Cowtail. That boy done wore hisself plumb out! That’s Huck right behind him in the back of the car. Can’t see him? Yeah, that’s because he was dog tired, too.
Oh, Sweetie…
I can’t think of any dating site where this picture is going to get you the right kind of attention.
Down, Boy!
Now if you thought that was funny, hit the Share button and pass a laugh along to your tacky or tasteless friends!
When a dog is working the door, you better straighten up.
Huck had a tough Fourth of July. He ran head-on into a world of mixed messages and shifting expectations. If you haven’t met Huck before, he’s my 70lb Greater Pike Hound. He looks like a cross between a white German Shepherd and Mrs. Doubtfire.
Here’s what went down from my perspective:
It’s 4pm. Raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock. I’m working on some baked beans on the kitchen counter. I hear a car pull up, a door slam then a loud knock on the kitchen door. I look over my shoulder to see Ed, my friend Jill’s husband, and I smile. He throws the door open and comes busting through, dripping water and shouting a hello.
Here’s how Huck interpreted the same scene:
Loud noise. Man at door. Man opens door and comes towards my Mama. He’s yelling.
Huckleberry-1, Ed-0uch. Before I could tell Huck that it was OK, he came roaring out of the den, straight at Ed. Backed him out the door and bit him on the hip. DAMN! What a way to kick off a pool party.
I smacked Huck twice on the nose and reaffirmed my role as pack master. He cowered and skulked over to his crate. Poor thing was really confused. Ed was OK and cool with it. Hey, that’s the dog’s job. A little Neosporin and a cigarette and it was all jake.
Huck spent the rest of the afternoon apologizing to Ed with snuzzles and a lot of puppy dog eyes. To his credit, he had only met Ed one time before, over a year ago. Huck didn’t know that I had given a nonverbal cue that it was OK for Ed to come in.
This is the same dog I got after Richard died because I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to be able to go for a walk by myself and not worry that someone was going to bother me. I wanted a loud bark so that if anyone tried to sneak up on this house, I would know. Guns give some people the same sense of security, but they don’t snuggle up to you when it thunders.
When we brought Vivi home from the hospital, Huck sniffed her foot and decided that she was HIS baby. He sat by her swing in the den and whined at us if she fussed for too long. When Carlos was about three weeks old, a drug dealer trying to outrun the cops crashed his car through our front yard and into the neighbor’s yard then fled on foot. I let Huck out in the back yard. He worked the perimeter before returning to me. I assured the cops that NOBODY was hiding inside our fence. (This makes our neighborhood sound so…exciting!) My brother once came over while I was out. Huck was penned up in the kitchen. Joe came in through the back gate, up the basement stairs and busted in on Huck. He about got his ass handed to him! Huck snapped and snarled as Joe yelled, “HUCK! It’s your Uncle Joe! It’s OK, Buddy! Your mom’s at Kroger! Huck! YOU KNOW ME!” Joe decided to wait outside until I got back.
At our house, you ring the doorbell, alright?
So in the final analysis of the situation, part of me was saying “BAD DOG!” for him biting Ed, but the other part of me knows he was a dog doing his job.
And not five minutes after Huck and Ed made up, my friend Jean came over with her dog, Scout…who played nice for a while but then Huck got too close to HER mama…He got his ass handed to him. By a GIRL. Who weighs 20lbs less than he does and had just had her coat shaved.
He retired to his crate with a “I am DONE with this day. Peace out.”
I haven’t lost a single iota of love for my children, but I certainly seem to be lacking in mothering energy this weekend. Here’s a little vignette that illustrates what I’m getting at.
Vivi has a stomachache, so she didn’t touch her waffle this morning. I dropped it in the dog’s bowl as I was cleaning up breakfast…about 4:30pm. About an hour later, I hear G ask the baby, “Where’d you get that waffle, Buddy?” and in a split-second glance, I assess that:
CONCLUSION: I didn’t say a word. Just went on about m’business.
Well, until now. Hey, G! Carlos got the waffle out of Huck’s bowl and he’s FINE! Look how his eyes sparkle! And isn’t his coat thick and glossy?
“In Our Fair City’s war on feral panties, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Canine Investigations Squad. These are their stories.”
THUNK-THUNK!
Day Four, 9:00am. Special Agent Huckleberry is on the case.
OK, seriously…I am trying to write but that expression on Huck’s face cracks me up so bad that I can’t think straight. So that means it’s time for a CAPTION CONTEST!!! What would you caption that photo of the world’s silliest Greater Pike Hound on the case of the feral panties? Leave your answer in the comments!
![By Kris Krug at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/491716195/) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i1.wp.com/baddestmotherever.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/iggy_pop__south_by_southwest_2007_shot_by_kris_krug-1.jpg?resize=240%2C160)
By Kris Krug, via Wikimedia Commons
She asks at least 100 questions a day and sometimes they go like this:
“Mama? Is ‘dammit’ a bad word?”
“Yes, sweetie, that’s a grown up word.”
“So only grownups are allowed to say dammit? Kids are NOT allowed to say dammit, right? If I said dammit I would get in trouble. Dammit is not a word…”
“Yes, and stop trying to find ways to say it.”
Then 30 minutes later, she grows frustrated with a toy and brings it to me. She plops it in my lap and says, “Mama? Will you say dammit for me?”
She’s what we call a handful. My Pop would have called her a sport model (and they would have gotten along famously). Every time my dad looks at her, he starts to squalling because she reminds him so much of me at this age. For this very reason, I have apologized to both of my parents in the last month, because if I was just like this at the age of five….DAMMIT.
{As I was typing that, she stalked out to the den for the third time since lights out and complained that she can’t sleep.}
It’s been a combative evening because she sassed Daddy and lost her bedtime story. Even though that consequence was made very clear at several junctures, she was devastated when the punishment was pronounced. While G was in there trying to calm her, she started hollering and moaning and whining. That’s when I swooped in with some careful parenting words (courtesy of 12 years of therapy). I said, “Sweetie, I understand that you are upset and that makes you want to cry. But you cannot scream because it wakes up Carlos. It’s quiet time now. I love you and good night.” I choose my words carefully with her because I never want to tell her how to FEEL, only how to ACT. I can’t stand hearing things like “don’t be mad,” or “don’t get upset” or the like. Go on and feel however you feel, but sometimes you gotta curb how you act.
There are two important “A” words that our children learn: “appropriate” and “authentic.” Appropriate is all about how to act, all that stuff we teach them that boils down to “behave yourself.” I was so obsessed with appropriate when I was a kid that I checked out etiquette books from the library. I may have only been in the fifth grade, but I knew how to identify a fish fork and address the Pope in written correspondence (Your Eminence). In second grade, Mrs. Angley made us write sentences if she heard us say “ain’t.” By the end of the year, I got worried that I hadn’t had to write sentences, so I intentionally said ain’t in order to fit in. Appropriate is about living up to what other people expect of you–whether it’s the Pope or the second grade. Appropriate has its place and proves very useful as you navigate the wider world. It’s good to know how to act…as long as it doesn’t become an act.
That leads to “authentic.” I wish I had read more library books on authentic but I wouldn’t have been sure where to begin. Authenticity is rooted in knowing your feelings, valuing them just as much as the feelings of others, and expressing them…appropriately. Unfortunately, I got so wrapped up in being appropriate that it never dawned on me that I had a right to be authentic, too. When I first started going to therapy, my therapist asked what I wanted to accomplish. I hemmed and hawed and namby-pambyed, but then I said, “You know what? I want to learn how to say ‘F*ck You’ if that’s what I’m thinking!” She assured me that was a specialty of hers. Let’s just say we’ve made great progress in that area.
I had a telling authentic experience a few weeks ago when I took Vivi and Carlos and Huck to the dog park. A rambunctious little dog jumped up on Vivi. She squealed and turned her back. I told the dog, “No!” He jumped on her again so I got between the dog and her and said “No!” with more force. When the dog jumped again, I grabbed its collar, pulled it down and shouted “NO!” in its face (just like an alpha dog would do–sharp and immediate correction). Its owner came flying over–I assumed to apologize and retrieve her dog–then started yelling at me for touching her dog! Oh, it was ON. Somebody hold my baby and somebody hold my earrings. Toe to toe, necks a-poppin’, hands flapping and HOLLERING. We were yelling so loudly that everyone in the dog park stopped to listen. Even some of the dogs. Even G’s ex-wife who was there with her dog and husband. Ahem.
I won. By god, I WON. I may be the same woman who tells Vivi to watch her tone and speak quietly in a restaurant and raise her hand in class…but DAMMIT. Don’t get up in my face with your crazy little dog or I will take my fish fork and I will cut you.
It’s a delicate balance–to teach our children to speak kindly and respectfully…but to be kind and respectful to themselves, too. It’s important to be appropriate, but it’s essential to be authentic. If I teach Vivi anything, I hope she learns to be authentic first and appropriate second.
Oh, and about the lady at the dog park? The next week, Vivi and I took Huck (and he didn’t eat a single duck). As we were walking back to the car, Huck lumbered over to another leashed dog and sniffed hello. I let him and the other owner let her dog…and we looked up and realized it was HER! I gave her a big ole smile and kept walking. Nice as pie.
A few weeks ago, a certain blogger (in the post “Sometimes, You Just Gotta Say, What the HUCK!”) leveled numerous allegations of a slanderous nature towards myself. The raft of unfounded charges evinced my proclivities towards misbehavior, canine debauchery and generalized shenanigans. Charges included:
To wit, I, Mr. Huck L. Berry, Esq. would like to submit for your perusal this photograph, taken on a recent trip to the park, wherein I am pictured obeying–concurrently–both the “Place” and “Sit” commands atop a bench whilst my young charge, one Vivirootie Miss Patootie, distributes a mélange of stale cereals to a flock of ducks.
Unperturbed ducks.
I bid you ‘Good Day,’ Baddest Mother Ever….’GOOD DAY!’
“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”–W. H. Auden
Oh, Huck. Huckleberry. Huck L. Berry, Esquire. Huckabuckabucka. Hucklebeezer. Beezypeezy. Beezer. Chuckleberry. Huckleberry Finn. M’Boy.
Dear readers, if you are asking yourself what breed of dog this fine specimen is, he is a Greater Pike Hound. That’s because he’s from Pike County, Georgia and he’s kind of big (as compared to the Lesser Pike Hound). We made that up.
I adopted him from my dad’s vet clinic. The staff pounced on me while I was in a weakened state–just having held my dachshund Katie while she got “the pink shot.” Katie had been foisted on me three years earlier when Daddy called and said, “I’ve got this dachshund that some people abandoned because they didn’t want to pay the bill. She’s got all kinds of heart problems, probably won’t live more than six weeks.” I took her in as a hospice dog. That dog lived for THREE fart-filled silly years. One night, she was up under the covers in my bed (with the other two dachsies) and I said, “Dang it Katie, if I had wanted all this farting and snoring, I would have stayed married!” Katie lived a long full life and on her last day, Daddy’s assistant comes up to me and says, “Ohhhhh….you should go look at that dog we have in the kennel. Cute puppy.”
The kennel was ahowl with dogs and I made my way slowly down the row, saying hello to each guest and calling them by the names written on their kennel cards. In the next to the last run, I find a beautifully groomed collie, sitting calmly on her pallet with a welcoming expression in her golden eyes. Her card read “Free to a Good Home.” I should have stopped there and yelled, “SOLD!” but I made the mistake of looking in the last run. There sat a wiggly whitish dog, covered in red mange, skinned up nose pressed into the chain link, otter tail thumping on the concrete. His card says, “Free to a Good Home. TOWEL CHEWER.” Aw, maaaaaan.
I have a soft spot for the unadoptable ones. The hard luck cases. The scabbier, the better. I had had a good streak of dachshunds, but it was time for a big dog with a bit more bark and maybe some bite. My husband had died a year earlier and I thought I would feel safer if I had a big barking dog. My dachsies were plenty fierce, but they weren’t exactly intimidating. Daddy called them “Death from the ankles down.” So the towel chewer found a home.
It took me a while to name him. He was almost Cletus (after the Roman emperor and the guy on The Simpsons). He was almost Buster (but I decided to save that for a smaller dog, maybe a three-legged one). I wanted a literary allusion–what better choice than Huckleberry Finn, the orphan with a heart of gold and NO manners.
What day did I get him? April Fool’s Day. Of course.
After about a month, my brother-in-law said, “Huck’s starting to look like a real dog. No, what I mean is, Huck’s starting to look like somebody’s dog.” The mange was gone. He had filled out and his brittle coat was growing in thick thanks to a better diet. That was the day my nephew said, “I think Chuck likes me!” while patting him on the head and Huckleberry got his first nickname.
Huck is a big galoot of a dog and he doesn’t always fit in with the dainty pack of Yorkies, Italian Greyhounds, Schnoodles, and whippets in the rest of the family. He was like the big white eye of a hurricane of boiling dogs when I took him to my dad and stepmother’s house. He thundered through the boxwood hedges and thwacked his tail against the antiques. He was goofy, but welcome….until the day Huck killed Oprah.
It was the day before Thanksgiving and I needed to get to Atlanta for my first half-marathon. I didn’t have a key to the clinic so I went by Daddy’s house. They weren’t home, so I turned Huck out in the backyard and locked the gate. They’d be home soon and all would be fine. I didn’t know that Oprah, my stepmother’s favorite little hen, was free-ranging it that day. The next day at Thanksgiving dinner, my stepmother came up and whispered, “Huck killed Oprah.” Wahuh??? Oh. Ohhhhhhh. Errrrr. I felt so bad for poor Oprah and for my stepmother. I made a donation to Heifer International in Oprah’s memory. It was enough to buy a flock of chickens for a family in need. Huck’s never been back.
See that little white diamond on his head? That’s Huck’s lucky star.
He’s a sweet boy, really, he is. He has watched over both of my babies and would give G and me the stink eye if we let them fuss for too long. He hasn’t eaten a dog bed in years. He barks whenever a car pulls up then hushes. But he’s still a dog. Given the opportunity, he will sneak food off the kitchen counter. Like Tuesday, he ate half of a homemade red velvet cake and only a small part of the cardboard box it was in. And I guess he hasn’t learned from the Oprah incident because last weekend at the park he dove into the lake and started swimming after the geese. It was the first time in seven years I’ve seen him touch the water voluntarily. When it gets rainy, he digs holes under the fence and roams the neighborhood looking for other dogs. He’s made a new friend up the street and last week he dug a hole INTO their backyard.
Life with Huck can be frustrating. Especially yesterday. We all woke up 40 minutes late because the baby had turned down the volume on my clock radio. Vivi refused to get dressed and was hiding under the coffee table. I looked around and NO HUCK in the den. No Huck on the deck. No Huck in the yard. WHAT THE HUCK. I jumped in the car, rolled the windows down and drove slowly up and down our street screaming, “HUUUUUUCK! HUCK! HUCKHUCKHUCK!!! HUUUUUUUUUCK!” It’s cathartic. But I was careful to enunciate. Very careful.
My friend’s dog is named Axel. Gotta be careful yelling that one, too.