Jasper

A couple of months ago, we lost our dog Bud, an oversized black Lab trying somewhat successfully to impersonate a Great Dane. He was huge, all legs and 140 lbs. Bud was my wife Maggie's dog and as he got older, he followed her around with an attachment that bordered on obsessive. Despite his hip displacia and the pain it caused him, if she moved, he got up and followed her.

Bud never grew up. He grew big but he never grew up emotionally. He was like a small child; gentle for his size, affectionate, dumb as a post and lived for four things in his life: Maggie, pooping, sleeping and food. The dog looked on food the way an addict looks on the next fix and was the only dog I ever knew who  got an erection every time he was being fed. He was fixed and never noticed female dogs but when food appeared, he'd sit with a glazed far-away look in his eyes, mouth open and drooling and his equipment fully erect. It wasn't pretty so we were careful never to feed him in front of guests.

Maggie was devastated when he died, so I found Jasper to try and ease her sadness.

Jasper is an 8-year old Springer Spaniel, less than half Bud's size. Where Bud tended to amble along sort of the way I do, Jasper is so full of energy that he reminds me of my grandson who I nicknamed the freight train for the way he runs everywhere. Jasper is affectionate, sometimes a little clingy, playful and always keeps his equipment tucked in and out of sight. He's also smart as a whip, sometimes too smart.

He knows all the basic commands like sit, stay, lay down and go vacuum the living room but has trouble with some of them when he gets excited. What excites him? He doesn't like being home alone and gets very excited when we return. He races around the house with his tongue flapping in the breeze and jumps up and down like a ball bouncing down the street. If you mention going for a walk, he's at the door, trying to sit on his wiggling butt, while he waits for you to put on his leash. He loves walks but it's the car that drives him out of his mind.

Ask him if he wants to go in the car and it's like giving an ad account exec more cocaine. The eyes glaze over, the tongue comes out, his tiny little tail wags so hard that it gets his entire butt moving and he begins to tremble and shake. If he could talk, it would be coming out in an unitelligible torrent. When you open the door, he rushes through the garage out to the driveway, barking and whimpering, tears around the car like Sitting Bull around Custer at Little Big Horn, stopping on every revolution by the car door to see if it's time to open it yet. Strangely, once he's in the car, he simply jumps in the back and lays down. It always makes me wonder what all the fuss was about when all he does in the car is the same thing he was just doing in the house. He never asks to drive and doesn't even sit up front. He just gets himself all worked up so that he can lay down on the back seat while I chauffeur him around town. He doesn't notice or even care where we're going. In that way, he's like Maggie when she's shopping. She doesn't care if she actually buys anything, she's just so damned happy to be there.

When he's excited, Jasper is like a kid with ADD but when he's calm, he's sharp and can be a tad condescending. I've tried teaching him to fetch but while he'll run after the ball, there is no way he's giving it back to me. After the first couple of times, it didn't take Jasper long to figure out that if he gave the ball to me, I was just going to throw it again and that didn't seem to make much sense to him. So, he goes and picks up the ball, runs around the yard and then lays down about ten feet from me with the ball between his feet. He looks at me and says with his eyes, "I dare you to come and get it!" I've tried but as soon as I get close, he snatches up the ball and tears off. He knows I can't run as fast as he can. (Actually, he has figured out that I don't run at all, so he sometimes slows his pace just to bait me)

Unlike Bud who found food to be a sexual experience, Jasper eats because he needs too and only when he's hungry. The only exception is a dried pig's ear. He will do just about anything (except fetch) for a dried pig's ear and even offered to vote PC in the last provincial election if I would give him two ears.

He's a funny little dog and Maggie adores him and he her. Strangely, even though it's Maggie who is most affectionate with him and takes him for the power walks he loves, it's me he follows around. If I'm working in my office/studio, he tries to crawl under my computer desk to sit between my legs. Besides the fact that there is no room for him I don't really want anything (or anyone for that matter) with big sharp teeth sitting between my legs and I make him go and lay down on the other side of the room. Depending on his mood he either shoots me an annoyed or a hurt look.

He has two comfort toys, a duck and a goose (although he thinks the goose is also a duck). They're soft, stuffed animals and we keep finding them all over the house as he moves them around. He doesn't chew them, he hugs them, carries them, licks them (you don't want to be picking one of them up right after that) and kneads them like a cat sometimes kneads a pillow.

We decided when we first brought Jasper home that we would let him sleep on the floor in our room and were concerned to see how he would make out his first night with us. Maggie got him to lay down beside the bed, gave him one of his ducks and patted him before crawling into bed beside me to read. We live in the country and it's dark and quiet at night, something that is very pleasant and conducive to sleeping. Maggie turned out the light, snuggled up beside me and we both started to drift off to sleep. That's when we first heard it. "Quack."....."Quack"......"Quack". It was Jasper and his bloody duck. The damn thing had a noise maker in it that Jasper knew how to make work. Now it's part of life at home. I speak English. Maggie speaks English, French and Dutch, Jasper woofs and his bloody duck quacks. Thank God my daughter taught my grandson sign language before he turned a year old or I'd never get any peace and quiet (although he's starting to talk a blue streak, in both official languages, now that he's turned two so it looks like it will be awhile before the talking and the quacking slow down)

Jasper is part of us now and even if he is a little quirky and his duck quacks at all the wrong times, even if he is sometimes too excitable and annoys me at times, even if he tries to crawl between my legs under my desk, I love him because he's cute, he's affectionate and because he aggravates the hell out of our two cats.

The cats ruled the roost for a long time. Even Bud was submissive with them when he was alive but Jasper isn't having any of that. Quite frankly, I didn't think the fat one could run that fast but apparently she can when she has an eight year old springer spaniel on her ass. For that moment alone, I love Jasper and will always have a dried pig's ear for him. The cats were long overdue for a lesson in humility and along with everything else he's brought to the home, he's brought some humility to Skye and Opal (I didn't name the cats. I would have called them Bitch and Fat Ass but  Maggie thought those names would be too difficult to remember or at least that's what she said at the time).

What it comes down to for me is that Jasper is a pretty good dog all things considered. Not perfect but close enough and he makes Maggie happy and when it's all said and done, that's all that really matters to me. I'll even tolerate a few quacks in the middle of the night just to see her smile.

Not much of a rant, I appreciate but even I can't be annoyed all the time......no matter how hard I try.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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