Good Dogs...

My sister-in-law posted a picture this morning from 1980-1981. It's me, my mother, my father's mother, my nephew, my sister-in-law and our dog Mitzi. 

Mitzi was my first dog. My family had had dogs before I was born, but up until that point we'd only had fish and a turtle that I could remember. They had a cat when I was born but the cat did not care for me. My sister never forgave them that they kept me over the cat, after all they had the cat first. But even though they had had a lot of dogs before I was born they hadn't had any after. Now I can look back and see that it was because we were living in rental houses and apartments and the house on Burton was probably the first rental that allowed dogs. Also could have been my mom and dad both worked and they wanted to make sure I was old enough to take care of a dog along with my siblings before they got one. 

Either way...Mitzi was my first dog. 

I can remember the day we got her. It was me and my dad. I kept looking at these fluffy, round, playful pups. Spitzapoos. They normally sold cockapoos but somebody's Spitz helped out. This had to have been the start of the whole designer dog craziness. When we stopped calling them mutts and made cute names out of the multiple dog breeds they were that was the end of "Free to a Good Home" and the beginning of $1000 for a mutt. 

Anyway...

I'm in love with these roly poly fluff balls and Dad says..."what about this one?" and reaches into the back of the dog house and pulls out the littlest ball of fluff. The runt of the litter. And she doesn't look like the others. They are peach and white patched dogs with apricot round ears. She was all white with pointed ears. "She's the runt and came out the most Spitz like" the lady who owned the dogs told us. I kept looking at the other dogs for a bit, they were much rowdier and so held my attention and dad kept sort of pushing this little baby forward. 

And then I looked at her and she looked at me and it was all over. This little baby was ours. 

(Now here is where memory is funny, I have two competing memories in my head over that day, the other one is me crawling into the back of the doghouse and pulling out Mitzi. Dad showing me the bigger girls that were a little sturdier and me insisting that the little one was the one we should get. I don't know any more which one is the way it actually happened. But the basics are the same, her sisters were much bigger, but she was ours)

On the drive home we were going over names and dad said, "Mitzi. Mitzi the Witsy Spitzi."  I loved it! 

Found out later that my family had owned a Spitz before I was born that they had named Mitzi. I'm not sure if Dad just loved the word play, loved the name, or thought I've had a lot of kids and a lot of pets and I'm not remembering one more name, but either way the name stuck and she was Mitzi.

And she was the smartest dog I've ever seen. Learned new tricks at record speed. She knew how to whisper. Dad worked nights and if you told her to speak she'd bark (like a normal dog) but if you said, "Shh, Daddy's sleeping" she would whisper woof sort of just blow out air with barely a sound. It was great. She also rang a bell to go outside. Learned that one over Christmas one year. We had bells hanging on the front door handle and they would ring as the door opened. She figured out if she rang them we'd let her out. And then when we got Sunshine she taught Sunshine to ring the bell when she wanted to go out. 

Ah, Sunshine... I am not sure where Susan found her, I think she came home with her from college. But Sunshine was a little black ball of floof who was...well. Not bright. 

Talking to the vet about her and Mitzi and he said, "Dogs are like people. Just like some people aren't very bright, some dogs aren't either." But she was very sweet. 

My folks were never without at least one dog from that point forward. And my brother and sister-in-law always have had dogs. And my niece has had dogs. 

We are cat people. We tried a dog once, it did not work out with the cat we had at the time. We've thought about getting a dog again but always talking ourselves out of it. It rains a lot in Portland and if we could make it past the warm summer months and into the rain of Fall it was easy to think, Yeah, no. We don't need dog. 

And then Katie let us know she does not like dogs (she's been bitten more than once in her life, her dislike comes honestly) and wouldn't be comfortable visiting if we got a dog so...

We'll stick with cats. 

But it was still nice to see the picture of Mitzi the Witsy Spitzi, the world's smartest dog.