A Dog Named Charlie Bob

Sweet Good Boy, Mean Bad Girls If you had to describe Charlie’s personality, I believe it is accurate to say that one of his most outstanding features is that always, without exception, he wants to please. He is a very sensitive guy too. Now that characteristic, I must say, he had to have gotten from me, right? After all, I am the poster boy for males who are in touch with their feminine side. So much so, that I am self-termed as pitiful when it comes to keeping a lid on my emotions. Charlie’s sensitivity though stemmed from desiring to make you happy, to keep you adoring him. So if he ever screwed up, like an accident in the house, you didn’t have to find the boo-boo to know it had happened. His whole behavior would change. He would be so embarrassed he could not face you. Then you would go looking for the mishap and sure enough there would be one. Such events were few and far between, no matter how long he had to hold it. I have known him to hold his pee for as many as 12 hours. He was so good like that it was amazing. Too bad Rexann or the girls couldn’t match up with that. We would NEVER have to have any pit stops on our trips! Charlie is just sweet, through and through. The basic, “not a mean bone” in his body kind. As a dog, he meets any and all standards one could want or expect. Trustworthy and loyal to a fault. His innocence he maintains to this day. One thing he isn’t though is a fighter. Definitely he is a lover, not fighter. For as long as I have had him, which at this point is 14 years and approximately 10 months, I have never known him to engage another dog in a fight. That is not to say that he has not been engaged, or better said, attacked, by any other dog. Oh yeah, you better believe he has been attacked. Even beat up. And always by a girl. That’s right, Charlie has a problem with females that like to beat him up. The first time was shortly after we moved to our newly constructed house in North Little Rock. You know the one that replaced the perfect bachelor house in Park Hill. Our next-door neighbors, John and Kathy, had a not so nice female Dalmation named inappropriately Minnie. There was nothing mini about her. She was big, a little overweight maybe, but just plain big. I estimate eighty plus pounds. Her bark was big, real loud and never nice. Her personality was largely lousy: cocky and self-absorbed. She was no spring chicken either, but as she proved one day, could really motor. At that time there was no fence between our house and John and Kathy’s. Their house was close to ours as well. They had two dogs, Minnie the Dalmation, and Girl (how creative) a female (surprise) something or other. She was longhaired, similar to a Lhasa Apso, but bigger, probably would go a good 30 plus pounds. Girl was never allowed to just go out and do her thing. Seems she had the straight-line-to-the-next-county gene in her, so John, the ever so creative type that he was, placed a stake in the ground about 30 feet away from the patio sliding glass door through which he took the dogs out. From the stake he tied and extended a 33 foot piece of rope with a hook on the end of it, to which he would fastened to Girl, open the door, and let her go do her thing. Pretty smart I thought. Minnie, not prone to escaping, would simply be allowed to go out, untethered, to do her thing. Her really BIG thing. Seems she didn’t understand the concept of A) Neighbors B) her yard vs. the neighbors yard C) Plats or even D) Title insurance. Clueless, was she, ergo, not so bright. Of course one has to put oneself in her paws. She was there long before we were, and there never was a problem with her laying one of her small oak trees on the lot next door, so why should she worry about it now. Therefore, with the knowledge that Minnie, a known aggressive behaving individual, at any time could be out in her back yard, I would tentatively let Charlie Bob out our patio sliding glass door to go into his unfenced backyard to do his business. I wasn’t so creative, like John, to have a rope staked 30 feet away. So I would always be right behind him. He may have slowed down on the jailbreak thing, but I did not trust him. And I did not trust Minnie, feeling that she might want a piece of her new neighbor at some point so she could set the record straight regarding the local pecking order. The first close call occurred on Christmas Day which was just a few days after we had moved in, and provided not only a scare for Charlie but most likely a thoroughly shocking/sickening experience for Kathy. Rexann had let Charlie out the sliding glass door to go do his thing while I was trying one of my much needed and very nice Christmas gifts, a pair of long johns aka insulated underwear. All of a sudden there was a commotion at the sliding glass door, as Minnie had come bolting over to get a piece of Charlie Bob. Fortunately Rexann had picked up him up out of harms way and had just returned inside with him in her arms. I came bolting from the living room to the den area to see what was going on and just as I appeared at the sliding glass door, so did Kathy who had come over to retrieve her sweet puppy. Face to face we were, with me in my nice new pair of insulated underwear and with Kathy and Minnie and a look on both of their faces like “OH MY GOD what does he have on?!?!” I don’t know who turned the brighter shade of red but I do know I made a swift U-turn and headed back upstairs. Kathy did the same to return to her abode. “Meet your new neighbor Buddy!” Somehow I did not feel that the Minnie situation was over, but I did know that I next time I would be a bit more appropriately dressed in order when surveying the scene. Sure enough one afternoon a few weeks later, I opened our patio sliding glass door to let Charlie Bob out, without first checking to see if John or Kathy might have already opened their patio sliding glass door to let Minnie the Menace out. Sure enough, they had. Charlie had already trotted out into the yard a good ten yards or so, and had assumed the position for Number Two, when Minnie spotted Charlie. At about the same time Charlie, right in the middle of making his deposit, spotted Minnie. I will never forget that look on his face. It was the universal “Aw Shit!!!” look. It only took 2.3 seconds for Minnie to cross the some 40 yards of flat land between her and Charlie. No way Charlie could pinch and run that fast, so it was not looking good. He braced for impact. I estimate Minnie contacted Charlie going somewhere between 20 and 25 miles per hour, directly smashing him with her large barrel-like dog chest. I was more or less frozen in space, but just knew Minnie would be going in for the kill as soon as Charlie stopped doing somersaults. After 4 or 5 complete rolls he stopped, stood up and appeared, rightfully so, very stunned. As was I. Instead of pouncing on him to finish him off though, Minnie, in ultimate prima-donna-queen-bitch fashion, just kind of strutted around him, sticking out her barrel chest, while letting out some of those obnoxious woofs. Kathy came running over, as I ran to Charlie, to make sure he was ok. Physically, he was fine. Emotionally, I am sure he was suffering. We were both were, and were happy to get the heck back inside the den through that damn patio sliding glass door.