Pet Peeves, by Phillip Hoyle

The home my wife and I made included kids and several pets. When the kids were out of elementary school there were three notable additions to the household: a terrapin that loved fresh strawberries, a white rat that doubled its size from nine inches to a nine inch body plus a nine inch tail, and a white rabbit I told my daughter and her boyfriend who gave it to her for Christmas, “How nice. It will be fully grown for Easter dinner.” Long before that rabbit ran away and procreated with the cottontails that lived in the woods, we had Marcie, a mostly black miniature French poodle one of the support staff at the church gave us. Myrna and I brought Marcie to our Wichita, Kansas, home to provide a pet for our children, then ages three and five.

Marcie was a hit. The kids adored her as did Myrna and I. She had an outgoing, enthusiastic personality and loved to play. We had a fenced-in back yard where she could run and where the kids could chase her or encourage her to chase them. She was a fine complement to the family. Myrna, though, was a little more conservative than the rest of us about the prospect of an animal in the house. She’d grown up on a farm where dogs and cats lived out of doors, helped bring in livestock, and controlled the ever-plentiful pest population. But when the weather was bad little Marcie wanted to be indoors. She was allowed to stay in the back entryway. We closed the door to the office, but the opening to the kitchen had no door. We were amused at how she’d come up to the threshold, wag her tail, and look like an under-privileged child. (Well, you know how pet owners so often attribute human qualities to pets.) She’d look happy. She started lying on the floor with her head resting on the threshold. So cute. A day or two later she put her front paws on the threshold and laid her head on them. She’d look sad. Then she rested the front half of her friendly little body on the threshold. So hard to resist. Then she begin sitting on the threshold looking adorable. I laughed at her antics, somewhat like an American version of the Arab story about the camel that during a storm first stuck its head into the tent and eventually, due to the Arab’s empathy over weather and his camel’s needs, took over the tent, the man sitting outside in the weather. Marcie entertained me with her astute training of us humans to be humane toward her, that tiny fluff ball of doggie wisdom and energy.

She hadn’t yet made it to the point of sharing our beds, but nearly so when we knew we were going to move to Texas. We took her to Colorado to give her to some of Myrna’s in-laws before we had to pack and leave. She moved in with a family that was even more responsive to her educational ways. Had she been a writer, she surely would have written to say, “See, I made a perfectly fine house dog.” She did seem to be in charge of the whole place in her new home.

We moved into a Texas apartment that allowed no pets. Still we visited Marcie over the years, saw her hair turn silver, and eventually heard of her death at the end of good life entertaining her owners. No peeves on my part, just fond memories of a few pets.

© 7 May 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com