Random musings

Rick was kind enough to send this pic along, in reference to Murphy, of course.

And yeah, Muphy is like that. He's proven it several times at neighborhood picnics and barbecues as he's walked right up to people, looked them in the eye, and taken burgers or hot dogs right off of their plates.

Oliver, my first Shepherd, used to do that sort of thing too, but he only targeted little kids. When I lived in New Orleans with him, I had to constantly watch him as he'd walk up to any little kid holding a hot dog and when the kid would reach out to pet him with one hand, Oliver would grab the hot dog from his other hand. Funny, but dammit, those Lucky Dog hot dogs were expensive to replace.

Lagniappe was good for it, too, only his vice was ice cream. Let him see any child with an ice cream cone and that cone was as good as snatched. At least when he did it in Harpers Ferry, the owner of the local ice cream shop, herself a big fan of Lagniappe, replaced the cones free of charge.

But Murphy...he doesn't waste his time on kids. He'll rip a burger out of an adult male's hand in a New York minute and eat it in front of the guy. No shame, that one.


The heavy rains two nights ago completely overwhelmed the flood control barriers at the Lair and gave me and Murphy an indoor pool yesterday. This hasn't happened in a while since I re-landscaped the back of the house so I'd gotten a bit lax on keeping things off the floor, to my detriment. Ah well...I just figure that a basement flood is God's way of telling you that you've got too much stuff. The garbage man is gonna need a bigger truck this week, methinks.

As to Ed Rasimus again, I'd enjoyed his books, particulary When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam , for years. So when I posted a blog post about an aviation museum that I'd found in Florida and got a comment from a reader about their F-105 that I'd photographed, I was surprised and pleased to see the name of the author and pilot whose tales of flying still make me jealous today. We'd corresponded about flying and dogs and politics, both on our blogs and via e-mail, and I'm sorry to say that I never made it out to meet him the last time that he was at Wright Patterson AFB for a reunion of his Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association. Frankly, I didn't want to be a bother at his reunion. I now wish that I had. Among other things, I would have loved to thank him for convincing me that a Cessna 172 is not an aerobatic stunt plane (especially the clapped-put rental birds I was flying back then) and really, really should not be looped or do aileron rolls no matter what a few posters on the internet say. (I'd casually asked him about control inputs for such maneuvers--for academic purposes only, of course--but he saw through my request and set me straight in a discussion punctuated with multiple exclamation points.) I may be here today because I took his advice and I'll always remember it. I'll miss ya, Ed.

Travels With Charley a probable fraud...(sigh)

According to writer/researcher Bill Steigerwald, John Steinbeck, one of my favorite authors, apparently took considerable liberties with his supposedly autobiographical book, Travels With Charley.

In fact, he calls it a fraud.

This saddens me, in particular because it was the first Steinbeck book I ever read, and it made me want to read the rest once I discovered and came to admire his unique style.

I was actually introduced to the book--and to John Steinbeck--when I was a traveling graduate student, taking summer courses at an ultra-liberal school in Boulder, Colorado.

That summer I was living in my camper, a former ambulance which, because I lacked the time and money to repaint it, still bore the orange-and-white paint scheme and blue stars of life on it's sides and back. It had been upgraded with a bed, a TV, a cooler and a few other creature comforts but still resembled an operational emergency vehicle closely enough to keep me from getting pulled over several times as I journeyed around the country in it with my first German Shepherd, Oliver. It even got me flagged to a couple of accident scenes, and as I was also a licensed paramedic at that time, I always stopped to help out. In one instance this almost got me in a fair bit of trouble as I was assisting at the scene of a roll-over crash with minor injuries.

I was the first one there, and I got things stabilized until the Fire Department and their real ambulance arrived on scene--one which coincidentally bore a pretty close resemblance to mine, except for the fact that it actually was an ambulance, of course. Soon that crew was treating the driver of the crashed car and I was talking to a couple of people prior to departing when the first State Trooper arrived on scene. The Trooper saw that the crashed car was empty and rightly figured that the driver that he needed to talk to was already in the ambulance. So, squaring his Smokey-the-Bear hat on his head, he walked over to the first orange and white truck with flashing rear red lights that he saw.

(Yeah, I really should have disconnected those...and I eventually did, partly as a result of what happened next.)

The Trooper opened the rear door and took a step up onto the back bumper to enter the truck...and came face-to-face with one angry German Shepherd who was not at all shy when it came to protesting boundary violations into his house on wheels. I heard the loud "RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR!" and turned to see the Trooper stumble backwards off the step bumper and land on his butt on the road shoulder. Fortunately for him, as he fell back, he'd managed to reflexively slam the door shut, a move which had kept Oliver from pursuing but which did not prevent him from standing up on his hind legs and continuing to bark out of the rear window at the person who'd just invaded his domain.

The Trooper got to his feet and began to brush the dust off of his formerly clean uniform as I rushed up to apologize and quiet Oliver. But this Trooper, he was not amused.

"What the HELL is a DOG doing in an AMBULANCE?!"

"Sorry," I said. "But this isn't an ambulance any more. It's my camper."

"Why the HELL is it still painted like an AMBULANCE?! And why the HELL does it have FLASHING RED LIGHTS ON IT?!"

To say that he was mad would be quite the understatement. And of course the more he yelled at or near me, the more Oliver raged and hit at the inside of the door. I did my best to explain that while I did plan to repaint it, I didn't have time to do it before embarking on this trip. However the laws in the state where it was registered only required that I remove the word "AMBULANCE" from it and take the rotating strobe light off the cab roof, both of which I had done, making it technically legal. Since there was basic first-aid equipment in the vehicle, it could lawfully display the star of life.

The Trooper, still angry, did not want to hear any of this though, and I was only saved by one of the fire department responders intervening and telling him how helpful I'd been prior to their arrival. I didn't stick around to be thanked, however. I got while the getting was still good. And as I drove away, Oliver barked at the Trooper out the window for as long as he could still see him.

But back to Steinbeck...

I learned about him one day when the dean at the school came and found me as I was leaving class one day. He introduced himself and said that he wanted to meet "the modern-day Steinbeck."

I did not know who he was talking about, so I promised that if I ran into this Steinbeck fellow, I'd tell him that the dean was looking for him.

"No, I mean YOU, " the Dean said. "Traveling the country in a truck with a dog... Just like Steinbeck did in Travels With Charley."

I told him that I had never read the book, so he invited me back to his office and loaned me his own copy, telling me that he'd appreciate it greatly if, when I'd read it, I sat down with him and gave him my thoughts on it. He wanted to know how life on the road today compared to life on the road in Steinbeck's day.

So I read the book, and I enjoyed it. Obviously some things have changed. One no longer picks up hitchhikers casually or camps on the land of any old farmer or rancher today, but, as it turns out, Steinbeck probably did not do these things either, at least not as he wrote about them. But he'd captured a few things that I could well relate to, from over-packing insanely at the beginning of a trip, to the fatigue felt towards the end of a trip that makes you just push on for home regardless of where you'd planned to stop when mapping the trip out. Those things were real to me, more so than the description of all of the people that he'd met and talked to, people who seemed real enough to the reader until you considered that the odds of him meeting so many stereotypically-colorful people on one trip were high indeed.

But I did like that book. And I enjoyed talking to the dean repeatedly about my adventures during the summer as I traveled the state on week-ends with Oliver. we climbed mountains, explored old mines, slept in fields, rode on tour boats and trains, and just had a grand time together. And being in Boulder, a quirky place on a slow day, we fit in and were accepted, by the faculty and my peers, if not always by the campus police. In fact we met them our first night there.

Arriving late in the afternoon the day before class was to begin, I'd registered and gotten my university parking permit but I had no idea where to spend the night. Then is dawned on me: I've got a university parking permit. I'm golden! So I pulled my truck in next to the building in which my classes were going to be and settled in for the night. And there I was, a short time later, watching TV, drinking coffee, and flipping through my school books, when suddenly there was a loud banging on the side of the truck. "WHAT THE HELL..?" I yelled as Oliver began to bark furiously.
"POLICE!" a voice outside yelled back. "Come out of there!"

I opened the side door and exited to see five police officers standing there.

Now me being from a big city, I was not used to seeing that many police officers unless something very bad had happened.

"Um...what's going on?" I asked, puzzled but eager to help.

"What are you doing here?" one asked.

"I'm a new student here, and my classes start in the morning," I said, naively thinking that this explanation would be sufficient. I was even friendly to the point of offering them all coffee from the pot that I had on provided that they brought cups, because I did not have five extra coffee cups. But another cop stepped forward and grabbed the extension cord that was running from my truck's power coupling over to an outlet on the side of the building. He yanked it from the socket and my truck's interior instantly went dark. "Hey man..."

Oliver barked at him.

In the next couple of minutes, it was explained to me that I:

1. could not be on campus after hours, parking pass or no,
2. was not authorized to plug into the campus power grid,
3. had to get local dog tags for Oliver.

And just to be sure that I got it, they gave me a list of the campus rules, with each of these items highlighted. They helpfully highlighted a couple of other things that they obviously suspected that I might violate later, too. In fact, about the only one that they did not highlight was the one that said that firearms were prohibited on campus and that the possession of a firearm was grounds for arrest and expulsion from the university, even if the bearer had a permit from Colorado or any other state (which I did). Fortunately, probably because all of the lights were out in the back, they did not see the Smith and Wesson Model 66 that was in plain view on the shelf at the head of my bed, nor did they see the gun locker that I'd installed--the one containing a few more long guns. Silly me, I'd just figured that Colorado, being all mountains and outdoorsy, would be the place for backcountry hiking and shooting. Turned out that it is...almost anywhere other than Denver or liberal Boulder.

But not seeing the handgun sitting there, they just gave me a verbal ass-chewing and a few written warning infraction notices and sent me, my dog and my guns on our way. And I drove off into the darkness to find a new camping spot, only to be rousted again from that spot a few hours later by a county deputy.

This never happened to Steinbeck.

Fortunately, the deputy was more sympathetic than the campus toy cops were and he was kind enough to tell me of some places where I actually could park and camp for the night. And after that night I figured out how the game was played and had no more troubles when it came to hiding my truck and bedding down. I camped in a different spot almost every night over the next two and a half months and never once drew the attentions of The Man. And life was good that summer.

How he did it

I've had a few people ask me how Oliver the Shepherd scored so many beads down in New Orleans.
Well the night in question, it was St. Patricks Day and he and I had just walked in the French Quarter's parade. Beads were everywhere that night so he did well. But truth be told, that dog was always getting beads from some hot gal or another. Several times a night, it seemed that some pretty young thing would come up and want to put some beads around his neck, or else beads would rain down from some balcony with feminine instruction to me to "give those to the cute dog!"

That dog got all the loving, let me tell you. Girls always wanted to pet him, talk to him, or feed him something. Strippers and sidewalk bartenders were forever giving him water or ice cubes, and many of them called him by name, although few if any of them ever bothered to learn my name.

One day, even Sandra Bullock walked off from a film set and came over to me. For a minute, I thought that she was accepting my psychic marriage proposal, but all she said to me was: "Excuse me, can I pet your dog?"
Of course I said yes, whereupon she crouched down and began tousling him and baby-talking him. "Oooh, you're such a sweet puppy, aren't you? Yes, you're so sweet, I could just eat you up, I could."

Then she gave him a big kiss, stood up, thanked me, and walked back to her filming before I could tell her that I was with the dog.

Jealousy is an ugly thing, but I hated him like I've never hated a dog that day as he pranced along, occasionally throwing me smug looks.

Of course not everyone loved Oliver. On another film set, he barked at Melanie Griffith--just one "woof" after she gave him a look that he apparently didn't like--and about thirty seconds later, two NOPD officers who were working the set came up and told me that Oliver and I had to leave.

I asked why, and one of the officers told me that "Miss Griffith wants that dog gone, right now."

I protested and stated that this was a public street and I lived here and she did not, but all that got me was an apologetic look coupled with the promise of an arrest if I didn't take off.

"For what it's worth," the other officer said, "we don't like her either. She's a bitch."

No argument from me. I used to think that she was pretty hot, but that assessment changed right then and there. And yes, we left. It's never wise to argue with NOPD, even when you're right.

And Oliver had his detractors on other nights, too. One evening, some gals were up on a balcony baring their assets for the world to enjoy. A guy not too far from Oliver and I tossed one gal a pretty nice bead necklace--it wasn't one of the cheap ones. She caught it, then said "Give this to the dog!" and tossed them to me. I took them and put them around Oliver's neck, and just as I stood back up, the guy who through them shoved his way through the crowd and drunkenly confronted me.
"I didn't throw those beads up there for no dog to have them," he stated.
I looked down to see Oliver starting intently up at him, the hair on the back of his neck starting to bristle.
"Well that's between you and the dog," I said, stepping back a step and pointing to Oliver. I figured that the guy would see that Oliver wasn't amused and just go away, but he stupidly reached out for Oliver's neck as if to take the beads. With a loud bark, Oliver lunged at the guy, snapping his jaws shut just a fraction of an inch from his hand as I quickly hauled him back. The crowd parted as Oliver barked at the guy again.

"I think he likes his beads," I told the guy. "You should probably move along."

The guy disappeared into the crowd, and I dragged Oliver the other way very quickly, before the police could make an appearance. But we left with his honor and his beads intact.

Oliver was a French Quarter dog off and on for a number of years. Whether it was patrolling on Bourbon Street at night, lying in the shade while sharing my lunch in Jackson Square, joining in any number of second-line parades or shadowing me off-leash and watching my back as I roamed both St. Louis #1 and #2 cemeteries taking photographs (back when both were considered dangerous places), he's part of most of the memories that I have of that disgusting yet magical place. We had good times.

My buddy.

More on Oliver

Yes, he was, as people have inferred, quite a character. He was probably my most free-spirited and mischievious dog I ever had, and the only Shepherd that I raised from a puppy.

And he was really good at getting me into trouble.

Take the time that we lived in New Orleans when I was a college student there. It all began as I walked him down Bourbon Street one summer evening.

Normally Oliver was very well-behaved and he handled himself well in the crowds. He was actually beneficial in that regard, because when the crowds were heavy, I just had to let him have a little lead and he'd get out in front of me. People would look down, see him, and usually move back, creating a pathway through which I could move without spilling my drink. He was also handy in that many of the Bourbon Street dancers would see him and come out of the bars in which they worked to pet him and give him ice cubes or water, thus allowing me to enjoy the view up close and personal for a few minutes without having to buy a ridiculously-priced drink. (Hey, I'm a guy...what do you expect?)

Now after a while, Oliver got to be very well known on Bourbon Street, to the point where if I showed up without him, everyone asked where he was. And as I said, he was well-behaved...usually.

This night in question, however, we were down near the Tropical Isle bar at Bourbon and Orleans. This bar was and is famous for it's signature drink, the Hand Grenade, which is a God-awful concoction of various rums designed only to be more potent then the New Orleans standard pathway to quick intoxication, the Hurricane.

And to promote their Hand Grenade drink, the bar has long had some guy out front dressed up like a huge hand grenade. The costume has gone through a few evolutions over the years but it typically looks like this---->

Oliver was typically a mild-mannered dog, but this night, he took one look at the hand grenade guy--a guy that he's seen countless times before--and barked at it, causing the hand grenade guy to visibly recoil several feet. Well Oliver just decided that he was going to have himself a piece of that, and to that end, he began trying to pull me over towards the seven-foot tall grenade that was starting to back down the street away from him. Naturally I told him "No!" and pulled back on his leash. At this point, he turned to face me and ducked his head, sliding right out of his collar. He was loose.
He looked at me for a second, his eyes conveying a silent "HA!", and then he spun around and went right for the hand grenade guy.

The grenade guy saw Oliver coming and did what any hand grenade with a fear of big, barking, charging dogs would do: He screamed like a schoolgirl and began running up Orleans street, knocking people aside. Oliver, with his prey drive fully engaged, happily chased him, barking and having a great time, all while making no attempt to actually bite him. (He was just enjoying the game with the big, green screaming ball.)

I called him a couple of times, but he wasn't listening to me. And then as I went to follow after him, I found my way blocked by two big New Orleans police officers, something that no one familiar with NOPD wants to have happen to them.

"Is that your dog?" one of them asked, pointing to Oliver, who was now leaping up against a door through which the hand grenade had run and slammed in his face.

And I did what comes natural to any semi-intoxicated New Orleans resident when asked a question by NOPD--I quickly concocted a lie.

"Why, no, Officer. I never saw that dog before in my life. I have no idea whose dog that is."

Both officers gave me a look that told me that they weren't buying it for a second; a look of total amused disdain that caused me to look down and see that I was still holding his leash and empty collar.

"Oh, but I, uh...found this leash on the ground, and, ummm....I was just gonna go find that stray dog and see if I could put this on him and get him out of here."

And of course as I was fumbling with this half-assed excuse, Oliver ran right back, squeezed in between us and sat down in front of me, staring up at his collar.

The officers were actually finding some humor here as I did my best to keep spinning.

"Why, this must belong to the dog," I said as I quickly slipped the collar back over his head. "Yeah, look...he likes it. I'll tell you what--I'll take this dog and I'll find out who he belongs to, and I'll make sure that you don't see him back here tonight!"

The officers just smiled that smile--the kind that makes you wonder if they're laughing at the joke or are about ready to snatch you up and commence to beating.
"I don't want to see either of you again tonight," the one officer said.

Well what could I say, except: "Yes, SIR!" I knew when I was catching a break so Oliver and I got out of Dodge as quick as we could.

We were back the next night, of course. And front then on, I made sure that his collar was properly snug.
Oliver on St. Patrick's Day, following the St. Paddy's Day parade through the French Quarter.

Busted, K-9 style.

Some years ago, I was traveling with Oliver, my first German Shepherd. Back then, few motels allowed dogs, and those that did charged extra. So naturally, me being the rebel on a budget, on those nights when I just had to stay in a motel, I snuck him in.

Usually this worked out fine, because Oliver was a very quiet dog. But one evening, not long after having settled into my room in some third-rate motel, I stepped out my door and found the hotel manager walking up the sidewalk, almost to my room. I quickly closed the door behind me so that he might not notice my "roommate".

"How are you?" I asked.

"I'm fine, sir. Is everything all right?"

"Oh, everything's fine," I replied.

Suddenly, before he could move on, the vertical blinds inside my room moved, and a dog's face came into full view on the other side of the glass as Oliver pushed the blinds aside to look out and see who I was talking to.
"Great," he said, without missing a beat. "I also wanted to let you know that there's a $25.00 pet fee, payable back at the office when you register your dog."

Damn dog.

So now when I call Murphy a "Damn dog", I have to remember that he's not the first. There have been plenty of "damn dogs" before him. And I'm thankful for every one of them, even when they do stupid stuff like that.

Oliver burned me another time, too. It was in Denver, Colorado. There's a mall there that's half open-air and half indoors. It's a two-level mall, and for some reason, I found myself there with Oliver on leash. So I was walking him around in the open-air part when I was accosted by two puffed-chest security guards, complete with Smokey-the-Bear hats and mirrored sunglasses.

"You can't have a dog in here," one told me, speaking as if he had absolute authority over all things.

"Sure I can," I replied, thinking fast. "He's a service dog."

"You're not blind," the other one told me, stating the obvious.

"I don't have to be," I retorted. "There are all sorts of service dogs."

"Well what kind is that?"

"I don't have to answer that," I said as smugly as a only third-year law student could. (And that's pretty smug. Third-years know everything...just ask one.)
I then bid them good day and walked off as they pondered this matter.

Ducking around a corner, I found an elevator and quickly took Oliver up to the second level, trying to put some distance between us and the toy cops. We walked around for a bit more, browsing and people-watching, and Oliver was in his glory as every kid wanted to pet him and every pretty lass wanted to fawn over him. And all was well with the world until...

I decided to talk us downstairs to go to a book store that I'd spotted. The quickest way was an escalator next to a big food court on the first floor. So I stepped onto the escalator, never once thinking about the fact that Oliver, worldly as he was, had never encountered an escalator before. And he quickly decided that he didn't care for this one.

I was already descending when he tried to avoid his destiny by digging his feet in and pulling back on the leash. Of course, me already heading down and the floor beneath him being metal, there wasn't much he could do to stop it. So like a big, tough German Shepherd does when faced with something new and scary, he began to cry.
And he didn't just whimper. No, he yelped, he wailed, he screamed, and everyone in the food court, and I suspect, much of downtown Denver, turned to look at the dog being dragged onto the escalator steps while going "Yiiiiiiiii! Yiiiiiiii! Yiiiiiiii!"

I've never heard a dog scream like that before or since.

Quickly, I ran back up the moving escalator and grabbed him, sweeping him up into my arms. But he continued to shriek, even though I held him cradled in my arms, paws in the air, like a 65lb. baby. And all the way down the escalator, that's all he did.
"Yiiiiiiiiii!"
"Yiiiiiiiiii!"
"Yiiiiiiiiii!"
"Yiiiiiiiiii!"

All the way down. As everyone in the food court watched, and as people were leaning over the upper rails to see.
And there, at the bottom of the escalator, was the two security guards, waiting for me with their arms crossed and scowls on their faces right below their mirrored sun glasses. They were both right at the foot of the escalator as I stepped off, still cradling Oliver.
"yiiiiii...."

"You and that so-called service dog need to hit the road," one said, pointing a finger at my chest.

"We were just leaving," I said. The jig was clearly up and now the goal was to get out of here before things got worse.

And Oliver, now that he'd determined that he was safely away from the escalator monster, reached up and began licking my face, taking away what little dignity that I had left.

Damn dog.

I sure do miss him.

How a thirsty dog gets a drink when there are no dog bowls around

Just found this old picture of my first German Shepherd, Oliver.

He routinely drank from water fountains like that when he was thirsty. What a character. I still miss that dog.

My date with an anti-gunner

Yeah, we all do stupid things sometimes.

My stupid thing was dating a gal who turned out to be anti-gun. Now this wasn't recently--I know better now--it was back in my law school days. And this gal was one that I'd met at school and she was pretty hot so I was willing to overlook her basically liberal outlook on things. Now at the time, I did not know that she was a hoplophobe (gun hater) but she was liberal so it was pretty much assumed that she wouldn't have been impressed by my uber-cool Springfield Armory 1911. Hey--it was law school--98% of the women in law school are to the left of Marx on most issues so you've got to learn to accept this if you ever want some female company. And on this date, I was doing very well at managing to steer our conversations away from all things political and as a result, the date was going quite well. It was going so well in fact that we wound up back at my apartment after dinner and I had little doubt as to how this evening was going to end as she was sitting on my sofa playing with Oliver, my German Shepherd who pre-dated Lagniappe.

As she looked around, something--I forget what--caused her to frown and ask, "You're not a hunter, are you?" And she asked it in such a way that I knew what the answer had to be if we were ever going to get to where I was planning this night to go. So of course I immediately denied it and told her that I was a big-time animal lover, which was all technically true. I do like animals and I have not been hunting in a long, long time. I of course did not tell her that I was a competitive shooter with rifle, pistol and shotgun or that I was at that time a lobbyist and legislative drafter working on behalf of the gun industry. I knew instinctively that such news would not go over well, and this was confirmed when she smiled and told me that she was relieved because she was very much against hunting and gun ownership. She went on to tell me that she was actually one of the leaders of a campus anti-gun movement that was tied in quite closely with what what then known as Handgun Control, Incorporated--Sarah Brady's group. She told me that she didn't believe in guns or think that anyone should own one.

I was smiling pleasantly on the outside, but on the inside, my mind was laughing hysterically at it imagined the conversation that we were likely to have over breakfast in the morning.

Now let my cut into this tale briefly to describe my apartment at that time. I was living in a fairly upscale complex in a rather liberal college town and I had a two-bedroom apartment. I also had roughly seventy or eighty guns and a large quantity of ammunition and accessories for them. Because I knew that the management here also frowned on guns in the apartments, especially in that quantity, I had turned the second bedroom, the one at the far end of the hallway, into my gun room. In that room, all of my guns resided on display racks and all of my gun books, shooting awards and pictures, and other things associated with my shooting lifestyle adorned the walls or occupied space on shelves devoted to displaying them. It was quite the "man room" to say the least. But that room was closed off from the rest of the apartment by a door, and when that door was closed, as it was at this time, there was no indication at all that a gun owner lived there.

So after I managed to get the conversation back away from those evil guns that clearly haunted her so badly, things were progressing quite well again. A couple of bottles of wine had been consumed and we were starting to get quite comfortable and cozy. Yeah, she was clearly nuts, but she was also smoking hot and about ready to surrender her virtue. Confidence was high as she excused herself to use the bathroom down the hall.

But then Oliver had to get into the act.

You see, Oliver was one of those driven dogs who was positively obsessive about playing fetch. Once you touched his ball as she had done when she first came in, you would have to throw it for him over and over and over again. He never tired of it, so while he'd been outside on my deck as we got to know each other, I'd taken his ball and tossed it into the gun room so that he'd quit pestering her to throw it for him when I finally let him back in. And as she was in the bathroom, I let him in, with the expectation that he would go lay in his spot by the door while she and I took our party down the hall to the other bedroom. However, Oliver went down the hall and met her just as she walked out of the bathroom.

"Hi, Sweetie," she said to him. "Where's your ball?"

Hearing this--and knowing where his ball was--Oliver walked over to the gun room door and jumped up against it, knocking it open. The door swung aside to reveal an arsenal that would have made many police departments and a few small nation-states jealous. All I head was a shocked voice exclaim "OH...MY...GOD!!!" and suddenly she was storming back down the hall. Without another word, she grabbed her jacket and went straight for the door. I tried to stop her, but she wasn't having anything that I had to say. She wouldn't even let me drive her back to her car--she told me that she'd call for a ride. Then she was out the door and gone, leaving me alone with Oliver, his ball, and all my guns.

Ah well...it would never have worked out. I knew that. But I'd still have preferred it if this scene had played itself out the next morning. Thanks, dog. Thanks for nothing.

More on Oliver

Hell of a dog, and a great traveler.

I went to school out in Colorado one summer and Oliver came along of course. Now trying to find an apartment in Boulder, Colorado just for two and a half months at anything close to an affordable price was virtually impossible, so I acquired an old ambulance from a company that I worked for and I outfitted it as a camper.


It had electricity in the back for TV and a coffee maker, or at least it did until I tried to use them both at once and blew up the inverter...thank God that it also came with a fire extinguisher. I put in a Coleman gas stove for cooking and a cooler for cold drinks and off we went. Notice that it still has all the markings except the light bar and the words "Ambulance". By law it couldn't have those, but as I was a paramedic myself and had a medical kit on board, I could keep the Star of Life symbols on it. I originally got the truck in the middle of winter and the decal-stripper spray was useless in cold weather but by the time warm weather came, I'd realized that the paint scheme was great for keeping me from getting pulled over for speeding, HOV lane violations and other little things, plus I didn't have the money to repaint it decently so I kept it as it was.

It was a solid truck and fast courtesy of a 460 V-8, but the gas mileage was predictably horrible. Still it was cheaper than an apartment or a motel for the summer and it was nice to be able to just roam around Colorado over every three-day school week-end. And Oliver adapted fine. He rode shotgun in the passenger seat or napped on the rear bench which I'd turned into a cot.

When I got out to Colorado, Oliver stayed in the truck while I was in class and then we went hiking or exploring for the rest of the day before bedding down somewhere up in the mountains just above Boulder. Of course this was not without it's moments. Frequently people went to the office at school and reported this "poor dog trapped in a hot van". The first time this happened, campus police came and got me out of class. I was able to demonstrate that due to the insulation of the truck box and the screened windows, it was actually cooler inside than outside. Oliver also had a bowl of water and if he wanted to he could open the cooler and drink from it or take ice out. Soon the school office people learned to calm worry-warts who rushed in to report this "poor dog" but this happened constantly around Boulder and twice that I know of, animal lovers tried to break Oliver out of the truck--once while I was actually sleeping in the back. Fortunately Oliver was protective of his home and he held the invaders off with much barking and snapping.

One day my Environmental Law class supposed to go on a field trip to the Rocky Flats nuclear site. My professor asked if I'd drive as she figured my truck would carry most of the clas. I agreed with the understanding that any riders would have to accept my 4-legged co-pilot and six of my nine fellow students rode with me, the rest riding with the professor in her little car. All the way there, Oliver sat between the driver's and passenger seat just glaring at the fellow who rode up front. The guy finally asked me why the dog was looking at him like that and it dawned on me right away what was up. "You're in his seat," I told him. Oliver was pissed that he'd been put out and he was showing it.
On the way back to school, no one would sit up front despite my assertions that the dog would get over it and all six classmates shoehorned into the back. Oliver rode in his usual seat on the way back, head up and looking proud.

Together Oliver and I climbed to the top of Seven Falls, roamed Garden of the Gods, crossed Royal Gorge, and hiked in Rocky Mountain National Park, where Oliver chased and caught a baby elk twice his own size. Naturally this had me more than a little worried that Mama elk was going to show up and as I ran over to pull Oliver away from the poor scared elkling that was cowering and bawling for it's mother, I was anticipating a charge from an enraged 1500 pound cow elk, followed by a necessary trip to the dog store for a new dog. Fortunately Mom was a no-show and I hustled Oliver away without further incident.

We backpacked for half a week above Leadville and did a lot of hill climbing around Central City and Cripple Creek. Me and that dog saw and did a lot that summer and before we were home he'd ridden on steam engine tour trains and paddle-wheel steamboats on the Mississippi.

And there was more--so much more--that we did. We swam together in warm lakes in Texas and the frigid waters of Lake Superior. He barked at horses from Nashville to New Orleans and back up to Mackinac Island. He never did like horses. He'd play ball for hours with anyone willing to throw one for him. He even used to chase golf balls for me and bring them back for me to hit again. And he was a great babysiter for my nephew, The Spud. He watched over little Spud like a hawk and would herd Spud away from the street when Spud was learning to ride his tricycle. One time Spud got past him and into the street and I was alerted by the loudest, most ferocious barking I'd ever heard from him. I went out front and there sat Spud on his trike in the street and Oliver was standing between him a car that had stopped and he barking fiercely at that car. He may not have been a physics major but he was going to defend that kid with his life before allowing that car to get near. You don't get many dogs like that.

Sadly Oliver's life was cut short in the Fall of 2002 when he chased a deer into traffic and was struck by a car. I can honestly say that nothing has ever hit me as hard as losing that dog that way. It still hurts and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish you hadn't left, boy. We weren't near done having fun yet.

A benefit from the flooding...and a post about one of the best dogs ever

Not long after I moved in here, the first really heavy that came along flooded my basement and damaged many boxes of items that I had moved here but not yet unpacked.

The other day I was going through a box of some damaged goods that had survived when I found some old film negatives from a few years ago. I looked at them for a few seconds and rushed them right over to CVS photo to see if they could save the images and put them on a disk. They did--for an outrageous price which I still gladly paid--and I now have the only computer pictures of Lagniappe's predecessor and half-brother, Oliver Jackson Hatfield Dog.



Oliver was my first German Shepherd dog. I got him shortly after my first year of law school, back when he was just a little black fuzzy creature that was scared of everything. He grew to become a fantastic dog and we traveled the country together. In fact these pictures of him were taken back when we lived in New Orleans.


One of my first and favorite memories of Oliver was of the time right after I got him when he taught me that little dogs need to be in crates when left home alone. I knew this of course but did not have a crate so I had taken to puting him in my bathroom with the door shut when I went to night classes for a few hours. That worked fine once or twice, but then I came home one night to the sound of a puppy shrieking and ywoling in terror. I hurriedly opened my door and rushed to the bathroom without even bothering to turn on the hall light. And as soon as I opened the door, a small fuzzy black and WET rocket shot past my feet on the curl of a tidal wave of water several inches high that flowed down my hallway and into my living room.

It took me a few seconds to grasp what had just happened.

Apparently Oliver had climbed into the bath tub for some reason. In doing so--or while trying to get out--he kicked the drain lever shut and he spun the tap and turned the water on. (Fortunately it was the cold water.) The water filled the tub and overflowed onto the floor. Now that house sat on a concrete slab and it had no floor drain in the bathroom. Owing to the molding at the base of the door--and a rug that had been pushed up against it--the bathroom slowly began to fill with water. Yes, some had leaked under the door but I hadn't seen that because I didn't turn the lights on first. So when I opened the door....Wooosh!

I was hours cleaning up the water after I calmed and dried the traumatized pup. And first thing the next morning we went to the local feed store and bought him a nice new crate.


Oliver grew on me quickly and we were inseparable. He traveled with me to over 24 states.

We lived in New Orleans for a bit and he partied with the best of them on Bourbon Street. Here he is taking a break on St. Patrick's Day. Note that he's got more beads than I ever got. The chicks just loved to give him beads. One night a shapely young thing was up on a balcony showing off her attributes when a guy standing near me threw her some beads. She looked down and said "give these to that adorable dog!" and threw them to me. I put them around Oliver's neck just as the guy who'd thrown them up came over to me.
"I didn't throw those beads up there for no dog to have them," he exclaimed. Realizing that he was drunk enough to get stupid, I stepped back and said "Hey, take them back if you want them."
He reached down for them and Oliver let out a loud growl and bared his teeth in a menacing warning challenge that stopped the guy in his tracks. The guy looked to me and I shrugged and said "I should warn you that he really likes his beads."
The guy wisely gave up and stormed off and Oliver kept his beads.



Here he is hanging out in Jackson Square with Shawna.



Shawna was a Cherokee tarot reader who worked the Square and held a part-time gig at House of Blues on Decatur Street. She was one of my good friends back in the day and she used to watch Oliver when I had to go somewhere that dogs weren't allowed. She used to shamelessly tout him as a "half wolf" and she'd tell the gullible tourists that he channeled the spirit of an indian warrior and medicine man. And he loved to stay by her because he loved the attention and also because she was forever giving him bits of food.



And here he is with Delilah, another one of those fabulous creatures of the night that inhabited the French Quarter back in my day. And yes, Oliver and I were also accepted members of the Quarter Creature community--that eclectic and colorful band of people who are drawn to the Crescent City and who gave it so much character and color back before Hurricane Katrina and City Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson scattered them to the four corners of the country. Alas, hurricanes do what hurricanes do but Clarkson has been a relentless foe of the Quarter Creatures for years as she fights to drive out anyone not wealthy enough to afford any of the real estate that she speculates in. But I'll get back to her another time. This is Oliver's post and I know he'd resent sharing it with Jackie Clarkson.


Oliver used to hang out and pose with Silver and Goldie too. Mel and D. were staples of the Quarter for many years and I'm proud to call them friends to this day. Shortly before Katrina hit, they were working for a pizza place in the Quarter because the city council passed an odrinance barring performers from wearing masks or face paint. But of all my memories of New Orleans, I'll always relish the times when Goldie and I used to drink beer on the sidewalk and talk about life. (Yeah, usually I bought, but on his his good nights when the tips were rolling he'd reciprocate.) And Oliver hated mimes and other masked people with a passion (hey--who doesn't) and he usually lunged at every one he saw, but he truly loved Mel (Silver) and ran to her every time he saw them.

When Oliver and I moved away, we left lots of good people behind--Lisa, Kricket, Pops, Montana Rose, Flame, Skip, Debbie and a few others that we used to spend our time with every day and/or night. All were basically people of the streets and once they accepted Oliver and I as fellow travelers I found them to be some of the least pretentious and most trustworthy people I've ever known. Ironically a few years later a background investigator for a government job that I was applying for had to go try to find some of them to satisfy the inflexible requirement for three character references in ever place that I'd ever lived. I didn't have addresses for most of them and none of them were the sort of people to have telephones so I had to send the investigator to various Bourbon Street bars to find them. That investigator later told my that my background check was probably the most interesting investigation he's ever done. And my Quarter Creature compadres all remembered me and Oliver and gave me exemplary references. (Hmmm... Positive character references from street hustlers, topless dancers and a self-proclaimed vampire... Only in N'awlins!)