Tag Archives: Huckleberry Finn

Law and Order FPU: K9 Division

Episode Three

 “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!

904446_10200380527228800_407350337_oDay 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!

Teaching My Daughter the “A” Word

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

By Kris Krug, via Wikimedia Commons

Vivi came to the dinner table tonight dressed like Iggy Pop, except her shoes have built in disco lights and her skinny jeans were bright pink.  Topless as Iggy in his heyday.  Okeydoke, don’t forget to put your napkin in your lap, dear.  (And if you are too young to know who Iggy Pop is, he’s that grizzled punk in the pic.  Abs of Steel…and heroin.)

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 Rebuttal on Behalf of Mr. Huck L. Berry, Esquire

Huck

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:

  • Cake stealing
  • Oprah killing
  • Hole digging
  • Fence busting
  • Duck chasing
  • Excessive woofery

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!’

Sometimes, You Just Gotta Say, “What the Huck!”

“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.

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.