To a good dog (Part 3, Cheese and Gremlins)

Wesley grew up with us, its truly difficult for me to imagine home without including him. I live in a house with pink brick and birch trees, I have a sister, a mom, a dad, and a westie. The sound of his chain clanking blended with the common sounds of my home until the day they became so normal I could no longer even hear them.

The thing about Westies is that they don't look like westies without the special haircut, otherwise they look like muts. Wesley was always to big to be a normal westie, he was the husky kind of dog with broad shoulders and a big face, the character of his face reflecting his emotions. To get him to look more like the breed he was born my Mom decided to shave him to help not only with his look but also so he wouldn't get overheated in the hot Georgia summers.

She did it all right, she got the special dog shaving kit with eight different adjustable electric razors, brushs and nail clippers. His grooming supplies outnumbered mine at the time. Setting a blanket out on the deck she gave him his first at home hair cut. I was not there to see the process because I had other things to do than watch my dog get a haircut...but when I got home I wished I had been there to see the process.

He had huge patches of missing fur down his back. Tufts shot up along his sides. One side of his face was cut closer than the other. He looked ridiculas. He looked content.

My family called him Swiss Cheese until his hair grew back, uneven but it did help to cover up the horror of my mother's butchered hair cut. But the thing with being a dog is that he had no idea just how rediculas he looked, he did notice that we were happier when he walked into the room and so he had a special lightness in his step of a creature that knows his existence causes happiness. Once his hair grew out my Mom got his hair cut by a professional and she gave the shaving kit to a neighbor who broke the razor in a matter of weeks. This was probably for the best.



As years passed we remained a one dog family. Then my 16th birthday everything changed.

Waiting for my Mom and sister to get home from the school where my mom worked and my sister attended I noticed they were late and assumed they were getting me a freaking awesome birthday gift. I could not have been more wrong.

When my sister, Haley, finally burst into the door she yelled: "WE HAVE A NEW DOG!!!"

"What?!"

"Mom got a new dog from someone in the school! Her name is Rhea! Come see her!" And with that she darted back out of the door and I followed.

What I saw hesitantly creeping along the yard was not a dog. It was not even pet material. "Mom, It's a gremlin!" I said pointing at the creature who had just darted back into her beige carrying case, "Why did you get it? Is it supposed to be mine? Cause I do NOT want it." (I had hoped for photoshop or camera lenses)

"No. She is not yours. She is the family dog. She's a Pappion," Mom cooed, apparently I was the only one who thought the new addition was totally bizarre looking.

"Tell me you didn't pay for that."

"We saved her." Later I found out that Rhea had belonged to a teacher's father and because the teacher moved in with the parents with her three children under the age of seven and the dog bites they could no longer keep her. So. My mother had adopted without telling anyone a stupid biting gremlin on my birthday.

When my Dad got home he immediately noticed the small crate in the middle of the living room. Wesley took refuge from the creature on the top of the couch. Rhea would not come more than a few feet from the mouth of her cage and that was just to bite our ankles if we got to close to her. My Mom swore the dog was friendly when they were at the teacher's house.

"What the hell is that?" he asked as soon as he walked in.

"Its our new dog!" the three of us said in unison, my voice considerably less exuberant than my mother's and sister's.

"No it isn't," he said, "it's just a dog we're watching for the weekend. When is it getting picked up Sunday?" He sounded worried and unbelieving at the same time.

"No, Dad, they're serious. It's our new dog. Don't worry, I didn't know anything about it either and its my BIRTHDAY!" I was sure everyone had forgotten. To this day I'm still unsure they remembered that little detail.

"What the f*** is it?"

"It's a pappion."

"A what?!"

"A small dog."

"We are not keeping it."

I wish I could say Rhea and Wesley became friends but truth be told they never really liked each other. Wesley tried his best to ignore her and she tried her best to be unignorable. If someone picked Wesley up Rhea would freak out and nip at his hanging ankles and our elbows. Many of Wesley's toys became Rhea's toys, which she would literally pile on our laps before we had even noticed her squirming presence.

There was never a question in my mind that Wesley was by far the superior pet.