Childhood pets

During the years I was growing up in eastern Oregon, we had a family dog named Red. I do not know what breed he was. Like most dogs, however, he loved to chase after balls or sticks and bring them back to be thrown again. We could tell when it was about to rain because Red would eat grass before an approaching storm. By the time we moved to Idaho in 1959, Red was getting pretty old in dog years. On one of several trips to the new house, he jumped out of the back of the pickup and was never seen again.

I think we had other dogs in later years, but I do not particularly remember any of them.

I am not particularly a dog person. That stems, I suppose, from having been bit by dogs during my growing up years in the Nampa area. The two incidents I recall both stem from when I used to go door to door trying to sell greeting cards. One was from a yappy little dog that bit me on my heel. So much for my mother's oft-repeated adage that a barking dog doesn't bite. The other bite came from a large dog, a German shepherd I believe, that quietly slipped up behind me and bit my buttocks before I even knew he was there. Not a warning bark or growl. Nothing. Maybe these incidents also explain why I've never been interested in being a door-to-door salesman.

Once on my mission in Brazil I had also had an encounter with another small yapping dog that tried to bite me and would have succeeded had not the owner right at that precise moment yanked him by the tail away from me. The dog got my pants but fortunately not my leg.

Claudia's family, during the years she was growing up in southern California, had a beagle named Sunny Boy. Knowing that healthy dogs have wet noses, she felt his nose once and, finding it dry, poured water on it to make sure he would stay healthy.

Her family also had goldfish, which once upon a time she killed by pouring milk into the fish bowl. She reasoned that if milk were good for her it must also be good for fish. Wrong.

In later years the Langes also had a German shepherd named Gunther. He was the family's dog at the time Claudia and I were married in November 1972. Just a month after we were married, we drove to southern California to spend our first Christmas with the Langes in San Gabriel. Claudia's younger brother upstaged Christmas morning as we were first gathering around the Christmas tree. David came into the living room, staff in hand, dressed in a robe, with Gunther at his side playing the part of a humble sheep, as David proclaimed in comedic voice, "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night" (Luke 2:8). The comic moment was unforgettable, classic David, the stuff of happy memories.