A new baby and a story….

Back when I was a fairly newly married young women, my father, who was an alcoholic, went through rehab for the 44th time (at least) and one of the revelations that he discovered was that a large part of his problems stemmed from my mother, who was crazy as a bat, but very good at functioning with her insanity. He made a decision to leave her once and for all. Now, please understand, all the time I was growing up, my mother left my father at least a dozen times, but she always went back. My father had NEVER been the one to do the leaving, and especially not when he was stone cold sober. So, I actually believed that he was actually going to do it. Start his life over, maybe stay sober. That seemed like a good thing for him, though I loved my mother very much, I certainly recognized by then, that they were incredibly dysfunctional together.

But there was one problem. This left ME to handle my mother. She was alternately angry and hurt, but in some part of her brain, she also recognized that maybe this was a good thing and begin to try and restart her life without my father. She was actually making an effort, as was he and I actually had hope that maybe they would get their acts together, separately, but at least ending the pain that they repeatedly caused each other. My Dad was functioning just fine. He was living in a community of recovering alcoholics (where I worked, so I saw him frequently) and my mother was actually doing pretty well, with one exception. She was VERY lonely. Hence, she made many demands on MY time…my 20 something year old, not that stably married time, that I did not want to give beyond a certain point. She had friends, but they weren’t me or my father and she needed constant attention. So, I wracked my 20 something brain, and since her birthday was coming up, I searched out a reputable breeder and bought her a puppy. A poodle puppy. I figured this would solve her need for constant attention and relieve me a bit of the chore of being that constant source of her attention. This was actually a great sacrifice on my part…I wasn’t making a lot of money and neither was my husband and I spent 200.00 on this dog. Let me tell you, it bit! At that time, that was only 50 bucks less than our rent on a 2 bedroom 2 bath, nice apt. in a nice section of Metairie, La. the nicer suburb of New Orleans. But, it was worth it to me, if it got my mother off my back! And amazingly enough, it actually worked!! She became obsessed with the dog. She named him Pepe’…actually, his registered name was Pierre Whipped Cream (don’t ask me where the HELL that came from) but she called him Pepe. She trained him, lavished love, attention and discipline on him, and was happy as a clam. Until…

Fast forward 2 months. I go to work one morning, and there is a note on my desk with my usual list of who had not returned to the facility without a pass and in big red pen, my father’s name was circled. I figured he had fallen off the wagon, and hesitantly called my mother to tell her, since despite everything, I knew she cared. Guess who answered the phone? My father…somehow, in the space of a few days, without my knowledge, they had patched things up and gotten back together. Whether I thought this was a good idea or not, he was sober and with my Mom, and for them, life was good. I basically figured "Oh well, here we go again" and my only real thought on the matter was "why in the HELL did I spend 200 bucks on a dog?"

So, within a few days, I stopped by to see how things were going, only to find that Pepe’ had transferred his affection, and for the next 16 years, he was my father’s constant companion. If he could not take Pepe’ with him, he didn’t go. When, a few years later, he had both a stroke and a heart attack within a few days of each other and it became apparent that they could not live alone at the time, and my mother could not take care of him by herself, we moved them in with us. I was 5 months pregnant with my oldest at the time, and it was not a great situation, but we made it work and Pepe was as much a part of the package as anyone else. It took 18 months, but my father recovered and they moved to Alabama where they lived until my Mom died in 1993 and my father had Pepe, who I think kept him sane during that loss. He had pepe for many more years, and though he was old and not in great health, it was a HUGE blow to my Dad when Pepe was hit by a van in a bizarre accident. The bottom line was I visibly saw my Dad start to go downhill after Pepe died. He only lived another year.

Fast forward to today. For years, my husband always said that once Zeke died, there would be no more dogs. He was a cat person, and he never liked Zeke. He tolerated him. When he died, that was one of the first "independent" decisions I made. I said, even when my kids were still here for the funeral, that there WOULD be another dog when Zeke went. And it has been on my mind a lot ever since then. I have debated the merits, not of getting a dog, but of what KIND of dog I wanted to get. I have ALWAYS loved big dogs…I debated the idea of Mastiff’s , Great Danes and a few other breeds, but at some point, my rational mind took over and I realized that a really big dog was probably not a good idea, since who knows where I might someday be living. So, I began to think about smaller dogs, and my mind turned to the likes of dachsands, beagles, and other non-yappy, but smaller breeds. So, today my sister in law and I had lunch together, and she needed to go out to our local shelter and pick up her cat carrier that had been left out there when she took an injured cat she found on the road in town out there. We chatted about my desire to "AT SOME POINT" get another dog….probably after Zeke was gone, because, though he tolerates my son’s dogs, he is not terribly fond of others encroaching on his territory. While we were there, we decided to take a stroll through the dogs in the back. Boy was that a mistake! Or maybe a blessing…because the FIRST dog I ran across was an apricot poodle with a sob story a mile long, who’s name was….Pepe. Other than the fact that my parents poodle was a miniature and this Pepe is a teacup, they look just alike and he looked at me with those sad eyes, skinny as a rail because his owner had died and their kids put him outside and only occasionally remembered to come by and feed him. It got so bad that the neighbor called animal control and they picked him up a week ago. He has been given his shots, and was neutered yesterday…and I’m sure it is no surprise that before the day was over, he came home with me.

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He is 2 years old (approximately) and is obviously very undernourished. He was so matted that they shaved him and he is, at this moment, asleep in the cat carrier my sister in law went to pick up. Zeke seems to be not the least bit disturbed by him, and the cats think he is one of them, since he is actually smaller than most of them! He appears to be housebroken, as there have been no accidents in the house and when I took him out back both when we first came home and after he ate his dinner, he seemed to know the appropriate behavior, but was not interested in staying outside once he finished his business. He has whined a bit and my biggest problem is that he follows me EVERYWHERE, and I’m afraid I’ll step on him. He seems a bit needy. Quite a bit needy. Not too surprising. He has also only barked when someone came to the front door and when Hannah came home from work. For that, I am truly grateful. I wasn’t looking forward to having to get the spray bottle after him this soon for barking. I told my oldest son that if need be, when I came to Cali for Thanksgiving…he was carryon size!! He laughed…I’m not sure my daughter in law will…(I’m quite sure that Hannah and my sister in law will take care of him…but I was making a point on how small he was…So, our life begins…I now have my very own Pepe!! We shall see what it brings….