A Salute to a Great Mutt

Today is August 1. This is the birthday of my family dog of my youth, Stroodle. I don't think most people know the exact day of their dog's birth, especially a mixed breed like ole Stroody. Amazingly, we got the dog from a breeder. I'm guessing it was around 1977 or 1978. Some friends of my brother raised standard poodles. Stroodle's mother had apparently gotten sick of her partner and decided to water down the gene pool a bit. The result was our dog and a sibling. They were quickly dispatched. Long before there were "labradoodles" and "goldendoodles" and all, we knew the value of a poodle mix. With father undetermined, Stroodle's exact heritage remains a mystery -- but whatever it was it was a great mix. I remember the puppy when we first got him being barely a handful. One of his first nights in the house, he escaped from the kitchen, somehow getting around the baby-gate, climbed up to the second floor of the house and then just began to cry. He was a good spirit -- I remember him desperately scrambling across the linoleum trying to make it to the newspaper when he was being paper-trained.

The family decided not to get Stroodle neutered, and as a result, he went wandering at times. Losing him on Windham Mountain in the Catskills was such a crisis that our hosts never invited us back. On another occasion, Stroodle disappeared for three days once when I was 12 years old. In those days I walked home for lunch. After two days of searching for him, my mother had spotted him that morning trying to cross a busy street and brought him home. When I came home to eat, I hugged him continuously and was just short of euphoric. I walked back to school and sat at my desk -- but something wasn't right. I slowly began to realize that hugging a dog who had been wandering the streets and eating garbage for several days was a really bad idea. I went out to my locker and put on my t-shirt that I wore to gym class. Amazingly, that shirt smelled better.

In his prime, Stroodle was the perfect family pet. He was a good watch dog -- sometimes too good. I was home one day when the local police came to tell us that some of the commuters walking to the train station in the morning had found him to be "menacing." My father and sister had taught him some tricks, so he was always good for some entertainment. The most entertaining moments for me as a kid were unintended, however. I remember him going crazy when my grandmother's friend came into the house wearing a hat worthy of Carmen Miranda; not pleased with his reaction to her hat, she looked down at him sneering and called him "Scoundrel." Perhaps my favorite moment was when Stroodle, during one of my parents' legendary cocktail parties, decided one of the party guest's legs was a fire hydrant.

Stroodle lived with my parents for about 14 years years, I think. Towards the end the old guy had gone blind and was incontinent. My sister speaks wistfully of walking an elderly Stroodle down the street and watching him walk straight into a sign post barely three inches wide. One his last summers with us, we rented a house with a pool. A little unsteady on his legs, the old guy fell into the water and my brother had to jump in and save him. I remember bringing him to the vet one day in his later years and the vet looked at me and told me he had such a strong heart and lungs, but everything else was failing. Well, there was no doubt about that -- the old guy had a strong heart. Happy Stroodle Day.