Category: Books

We lived on a nice two acre rectangle of land in rural New Jersey. The house had a large front yard that bordered the street along the front edge and the mailbox was in the middle of the yard along the road. I really wanted the mailbox to be by the driveway, but years ago I gave up trying to move it because four inches under the soil was some sort of material impervious to any of tool I could legally attain. Logically, I imagined this to be some sort of buried alien spacecraft, the discovery of which would cement my name in the annals of human history forever. Digging is hard, though, so I just tried not to think about it. The unfortunate mailbox position forced us to get off our lazy butts and walk to the mailbox every day, or at least on the days we felt like it. (more…)

Here in rural NJ we have always had a bit of a deer problem. Often herds of ten or more would wander through, destroying carefully tended gardens and trees in the process. They also brought with them disease ridden parasites aptly named deer ticks. My friend Bill, an avid hunter, once told me of harvested deer so covered with the parasites that the skin was hidden under huge patches of bumpy engorged ticks. Delicious.

There are two common types of ticks in New Jersey; the dog tick and the deer tick. I have no idea if those are their scientific names, but that’s what they’re known as ’round these parts. The dog tick is what we used to call a tick when I was a kid since none of us had ever heard of deer ticks back then. They were about a quarter inch in size normally with a dark brown flat body and icky arachnid legs. They were easy to spot and easy to grab, though they were notoriously difficult to kill. If you found an engorged one it could be an inch long or more and swollen to the point of bursting like a juicy blood-filled grape. As a kid I remember throwing engorged dog ticks into the fire and waiting to hear the pop of them exploding. Farm life is filled with myriad other delightful memories of a similar type. (more…)

Cozy adored me, and though she also loved Lauren, with Lauren it was different. Cozy’s love for me was multiplied by an additional layer of respect. With Lauren, well, let’s just say that they didn’t see eye to eye on the whole female hierarchy thing.

Through our research we had learned that dogs live in a strict hierarchical society in which there was, in every pack, an alpha male and an alpha female. The alpha male and female are like the king and queen of the pack, and with rank comes certain privileges. Alphas expect to be obeyed, and they don’t take insubordination from inferiors. We learned that if a dog thinks that it has alpha status over its owner, then the owner may have problems ranging from the dog not obeying commands to aggression issues to the owner being downright afraid of his or her own dog. We weren’t afraid of Cozy, but we were starting to have some issues.  (more…)

A Newf puppy, like any giant breed dog, grows like a weed for the first eight months or so. At 14 weeks of age, Cozy weighed in at forty pounds which meant she had grown those 40 pounds in just over three months. Given the opportunity she would eat anything that looked like food and, being a puppy, many things that did not. She would routinely grab things that she shouldn’t have and trot away with her head and tail held high as if to say look at me! I bet you can’t catch me! As soon as you’d take a step towards her she’d bolt just out of reach, then turn to face you with her whole body wagging and her treasure hanging from her mouth. She was fond of any type of laundry, but it was the underwear that really enticed her. She would often be found trotting through the house with bras, socks and anything else that would mortify the average young person. The constant public display of our inappropriate unmentionables was an inconvenience at most. Water, we quickly learned, was a much bigger problem. (more…)

After eight long weeks, we received a call from Linda saying that we could come pick up our Cozy. We found her just inside the front door of Linda’s house, all puffed up from being freshly washed and blown dry. There is nothing quite like a Newf puppy, especially as we would soon discover, a fluffy clean one. She looked like a stuffed animal magically brought to life that easily seemed twice as big as she had been the week before. She still had her silver-grey eyes and her mischievous little face just seem to scream Play with me!, while also showing just a hint of nervousness. She still had blue around her neck and was living proof that the word adorable is an inadequate representation of the truth where puppies are concerned. (more…)