Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
he had the best friend in the world, the kind of dog that every boy dreams about, King, a gigantic tri-color collie, often called Kingcat (who knows why, but Dougie had a nickname for everything) or "Duzzy," which began when Dougie asked King the question: "Does he love me?" (to which Duzzy always responded: "No!" in a high squeaky voice).
(Of course, to be fully honest, not everyone could hear Duzzy's high squeaky voice, and also, so that you understand that Duzzy wasn't being unloving when he was queried about loving his loving master, Duzzy replied the same way when Dougie asked him: "Do you want to eat some cheese?" [hint: Duzzy adored cheese, maybe even more than he loved Dougie] or "Wanna go for a walk?" [hint: Duzzy went spastic when queried about taking a walk, such was his delight in "getting walked"] or "Want me to pet you some more?" [hint: as all dogs do, Duzzy adored his master's touch] So unlike women, when Duzzy said "No!" it could be interpreted literally as "Oh yes indeedy do! Whoop-de-doo, lay it on me Bro!")Beloved "Doug's Tricolor King"
All through Dougie's childhood there had been ample pets, or to put it more plainly: there were dogs and cats, galore! Dougie doesn't remember Pepper, but even from his earliest age he remembers seeing pictures of Pepper. But he remembers very clearly Ginger, who was a beautiful foxy-looking dog, who somehow became "with child" and gave birth to Teddy Bear (who, very sadly would be run over right there in front of our house on Avenue L-8, in Quartz Hill) and Black Bull, a jet-black version of Teddy Bear, who would die much earlier than Teddy Bear, also from being run over, and Trixy who would go to live with Grandma Larsen in Bakersfield, and Freddy (and Frieda, who didn't survive long), who would be Aunt Linda's dog but live out his years with Grandma and Grandpa Medvee, and he would be the oldest survivor of the siblings, but he too, as all dogs do, would die, at about the age of 14 years -- Freddy was one of the only dogs that Cocoa, Grandma and Grandpa's mean-tempered Siamese cat could ever stand or stomach.And Mama had this...um, well, a, let's see...well, she kind of had an Animal Evangelism thing going, she absolutely loves and has a way with animals, and time after time, all through the years, she rescued this dog wandering along the road. You know that woman who is out there stopping traffic, to rescue a puppy? That would be Dougie's Mama. She would bring home stray dogs and cats, to Dada's dismay, and place free ads in the newspaper, and closely watch the lost and found column. If no one ever came forward to claim the dog, it would generally become our family pet (at certain times the family might have twelve dogs running amuck in the small backyard), but more often Mama would dump her children in front of Gemco (it was Wal-Mart before there was such a thing as Wal-Mart) where they would sit for sometimes hours until someone coming out of the store would volunteer to relieve them of the pooch, or cat. Mama saved the lives of literally hundreds of animals throughout the years.Varied pets, through the years included, a massive raven, several tortoises (several which were hefty 25+ pounders), a rat named Hercules (but whom Mama called Ratikins, and the name eventually took precedence), MANY outdoor cats and a few indoor ones as well, a California Glossy snake named Slicker (but when it came time to feed him and they placed him in the bathtub with a mouse, as soon as the snake, a constrictor, seized the mouse and squeezed it to death, Dougie began to cry, and was soon joined in loud tears by both sisters, Mama, and eventually even Dada! That week Dougie sold Slicker to a kid at school for $5.00), a variety of horses and ponies (Squirt will figure in one Little Papa Story), a few livestock type animals the family took care of for Dada's cousin Sonny (including cattle and pigs, both of which had to be dewormed one day, and literally thousands of three-foot long worms came SCREAMING out of the anuses of the poor animals -- Dougie is not too sure if they were literally screaming, but he remembers it that way! The worms came out ALIVE, and they writhed about in the manure until they slowly perished like starving snakes). Pammy had an assortment of birds, one white parakeet she with great imagination named "Snowbird," plus a variety of birds she rescued and nursed back to health. Plus they had a variety of fish, both fresh-water bug-eyed black goldfish, as well as the typical goldfish, and the warm-water cousin exotic fish. Plus chickens.One thing Dougie always wanted but his parents always refused, was a monkey. (Apparently, they thought he was much too much like a monkey already.)One of Dougie's all-time favorite movies was Lassie Come Home, by Eric Knight (Dougie read the book in the third grade, as well as many other wonderful dog stories such as Beautiful Joe by Margaret Marshall Saunders and in the fifth grade he discovered Jack London, which will be touched on later), which made him weep several times during the tour de force that was the movie. He loved dogs, Dougie did, all his life long, but his most favorite kind of dog in the world (aside from a wolf, of course), was a COLLIE. He even watched various Lassie television series, but they all seemed to be about a little boy falling down a well or almost getting eaten by a cougar, and Lassie barking "her" distinctive bark and chasing the bad animal away, or calling the boy's parents to the boy in the well, or everything else that Dougie was already getting up to in his own life, except he never had a collie to get him out of his jams and so always ended up landing on his head, and so Dougie was never a big fan of the TV series as he was of the Roddy McDowell/Elizabeth Taylor movie, which he watched every time it broadcast.Another author that made a great impression, was Albert Payson Terhune, who wrote a whole lot of books about collies (the Sunnybank collies, which exist even to this day). It seems that Mama had a lot of books left over from when she was a little girl, and a few of these were Terhune's books (probably Lad, and perhaps Gray Dawn and Wolf, all of which Dougie read quite a few times, before the age of ten). For some reason, Dougie would get it in his head (over a progression of years) that Albert Payson Terhune and Eric Knight (the author of Lassie Come Home) were somehow in fact the same author, and that Lad was the son of Lassie (the confusion probably had something to do with the movie versions of Lad and Lassie and Son of Lassie, and various actors criss-crossing between the various movies).In September a few months after Dougie turned 13 years of age (and he was having a very difficult time dropping the name "Dougie," as everyone was in the habit of calling him that, and his parent only called him "Douglas" when they were angry at him and a spanking loomed on the horizon!) Mama and Dada brought him home a surprise that he had purchased, a three-month-old collie whose head was about the same size as his body! They had purchased him for the whopping price of $35 from a breeder of champion collies who could not get rid of poor little Duzzy, because he was the "lug of the lot," the oaf, the biggest collie from two very big parents, and everyone seemed to want much, much smaller collies than Duzzy promised to be (he might have grown heavier than the heaviest Dougie ever weighed him at, but when Dougie was about nineteen years of age, and ONLY called "Dougie" by his Grandma and Grandpa Medvee, and on occasion his sisters Donna and Pam) he lifted Duzzy up in his arms and stood on the bathroom scale which promptly leapt to 265 pounds, and when he stood on the scale by himself it read 125 dead-on pounds (he always had trouble with holding meat on his bones, Dougie did, that is until about the age of 32 years when he crossed over the 200-pound zone and kept climbing) which meant King, at that time weighed 140 pounds. The wondrous collie grew much bigger with time, but his master never again attempted the double weigh-in, but Doug always figured that King must have finished between 150 pounds and possibly as high as 175 pounds (which is pretty big for a collie, and admittedly, Mr. Duzzy was a FAT collie in the end).Love at first sight, a dream romance come true, bosom pals from the beginning, soul mates, and boy's best friend, Dougie and King bonded instantly. It was even more significant that it was Dougie that actually purchased King with that great sum of $35, as Mama knew that he had just received his last paycheckin his last gig as a lawnmowing entrepreneur (the guy who hired Dougie for several months to mow both his huge and backyard finally determined that Dougie's imaginative patterns of cutting the lawns in all manner of words and geometrical shapes -- pretty much looking like the intricate doodles he had been doing in school when he was supposed to be listening to the teachers, interconnecting lines and mazelike shapes, that all finally fell to the lethal blade of the pushmower, and Dougie figured it made for a much better looking lawn, he imagined that the grass was thankful for such a unique cut and grew back even thicker -- be that as it may, the man oftened watched Dougie mowing the lawns, Dougie's tongue sticking out of his mouth and he made his artistic lawn doodles, and though the man found the patterns interesting, he preferred the traditional line-by-line cut that his neighbors received, and felt he was the object of gossip, and feared to make the tattletale newspapers in nearby LA, which was just "down below" (which is how people in Lancaster and Quartz Hill and Palmdale used to call one-hour away Los Angeles).So Mama purchased King with Doug's final paycheck by explaining to the breeder that Dougie always wanted a collie, from when he was about three years of age to this ancient days of thirteen years, and the man caved in, realizing his puppy would be going to a boy who would adore the glorified sheepdog (most of King's siblings sold for over $150, as there were many champions in the line). And Doug, overwhelmed with such a lifelong boon, bobbled the AKC papers and officially named Duzzy by the oddball: "Doug's Tri-Colo King" (perhaps it was a coincidence that he would someday move to Colorado, but that would be a stupid coincidence as who in the world would ever do a short-version of Colorado as "Colo" -- what in the world is "colo" anyway? Oh well, Dougie is long gone in space and time, and Douglas could hardly explain why in the world Dougie named his prized friend such a name as "Doug's Tri-Colo King"). But officially naming him did not happen until months and months later.The puppy was smooth haired, at least for the first many months, mostly black, with a white collar around his neck that became a glorious white cravat upon his long neck. He had the tan pin-striping that tri-color dogs have, but he was mostly black with a minority of white. His eyes were deepset almonds with the most human expression, and his tail was long and extremely thin. As a puppy, King hardly resembled the dog he would become: massively deep chest with long feathers of white erupting from his cravat, and a fully mane of lion-like hair, and deep-set flanks, powerful, long legs, and a long bushy tail, with a thick coat of hair that Dougie spent hours and hours grooming, sometimes removing what appeared to be bushels of gray fluffy steel wool. That first day, he was just King. And Dougie made up a bed right alongside his own bed, a nest of all his dirty clothes. When Mama argued with such a scheme Dougie assured her that this was the official way to bond with your puppy, as the dog had to pick up your own private stink just like you were sure to pick up his own private stink. Dogs and boys stink, that's why they like each other so much. King happily lay down beside Dougie's bed, in his own stinky nest of Dougie's sweaty, dirty clothes. And Dougie trailed his hand over the side of the bed so King could sniff him, and lick him with his warm, long collie tongue.In the morning, King was snuggled up with Dougie, beneath the blankets, his 32-inch collie nose poking up out of the covers, his nose against Dougie's nose, one of Dougie's arms beneath his neck, the other encircling the dog's waist. And thus true love was sealed. And if you are wondering, King set the record for being housebroken. He had about three "accidents," which Dougie showed him, markedly, and said: "No." Firmly. But not yelling. There was no spanking involved (Dougie had developed a strong dislike to spanking through the years, and it would never be a prominent tool in his arsenal of teaching methods). Then Dougie purposefully marched King outside, and put him in the dirt and said, pointing: "Here. Do it HERE."And King got the point. After Dougie patiently showed him the doggy door and how it worked, King began using it, with his smaller compatriot poodles (Mama had switched over by this time from Chihuahuas to Poodles, much to everyone's dismay). The small dogs never quite learned the way King did, and they would have "accident" after "accident," where King had very few over the ten years of his short life, and those only when he was very ill.An amazing thing about King was that he had truly deep and surprising vocabulary of English words he understood very well. This without any formalized training, other than Dougie talking to him as if he were as smart as Dougie (and the fact is, if doggy IQ points could be converted over, King would probably have a much, much higher IQ than Dougie's own modest 145-150 IQ) (editorial note: Dougie probably began with a much higher IQ, but after landing on his head so many times, and all the probable brain damage that must have occurred throughout his dives off of cliffs and crashes in cars, motorcycles, bicycles, skateboards and lawnmowers, he has had to mentally limp through life with the wreckage of the remaining scattered IQ points, and probably would never be cherished by Mensa, as his discombobulated intelligence seems to be focused on creativity and thinking, and rarely on parlor tricks, or any kind of mathematics, which are the only acceptable forms of intelligence in any club of significance). Nobody believed King understood words until they witnessed the phenomenon.If they were sitting in the "big room" and Dougie said: "King, go to the kitchen." King would trot to the very other side of the house and lay down in the kitchen. If, while lying in the kitchen, King heard his master shout from the big room: "King, now go outside." King would rise from his blanket in the kitchen and trot into the garage and exit the house via the small doggy door. Dougie would tell King to go get the tennis ball, and King would bring it back. The exact same thing would occur if Dougie told King to go get the tennis racket, he would come King, surprise, surprise, carrying the tennis ball (that is an example of the joke Dougie and King would play on people, who never quite seemed to get it, they'd think: what a dumb dog, doesn't know the difference between a racket and a ball!).The rest of the family did not quite like the relationship that Dougie and King shared, as generally all the animals liked Mama best, and then cascaded down to liking everyone else in their proper order (with Dada always coming up last), and often they would put King's devotion to the test. Dougie would command: "King? Stay." And King would obediently lie down next to Dougie."Come on King!" the family would shout. "Wanna go outside?" and "Wanna go for a walk?" and "Want some food?" And King would always remain lying next to Dougie, trembling violently, as he wanted to go to these tempting devils, and yet wished passionately to remain true and loyal blue to his darling master, Dougie. Sometimes, when the family grew excessive in their demands, commands, pleas and shouts and squeals, King would rise up to a sitting position, and keep throwing nervous glances over his shoulder at Dougie. Only occasionally would Dougie say, very softly: "King? You stay." To which he complied.But King adored everyone in the family, including Dada -- and apparently because King was so huge and intelligent, Dada rarely teased him as he did the other dogs. Next to Dougie, King probably loved Mama second, as she is the kind of person that people instinctively love, and since animals primarily act upon instinct, and dogs are primarily human, they rarely gave loving Mama a second thought. They just did.When Doug was 14 and decidedly not "Dougie" and King was well over a year old and in his full power of adult colliehood, Doug would often visit his best friend Mike McIntosh. They shared the same birthday, June 13, only one year apart with Michael being the older. Doug would fasten a short leash to King's collar and hop on his skateboard, and King, without any kind of prod or whip, would RUN. He ran like the Dickens. He ran like cheap stockings. With wind rushing in their hair, Doug crouched next to King's powerful shoulders, his left arm holding the short leash, and his right arm thrown over King's back, his hand gripping King's massive mane of pure white hair, and King ran for joy of running, and he could charge at full blast for four blocks. But when his great tongue began to loll, Doug would ride his skateboard with King running loose on ahead and dashing back to encourage his slowpoke master to push that stupid little fiberglass board on bearingless wheels faster, faster, but King could always outrun Doug, and even keep up with him when the master was riding his Schwinn single-speed bicycle, and then his funky three-speed bike, and finally King could keep up, just barely, with Doug on his ten-speed bike.King was almost as trouble-prone as his master. While still young it became obvious that King was ill, as he drooled incessantly (generally he only drooled when food was to be found somewhere on the planet) and his gas ejectors were operating on overtime. When they took him to the vet and x-rays were taken, it became obvious that King had swallowed a large rubber ball the size of a tennis ball, which had to be removed via surgery. The vet claimed never to have heard of such a thing (and he was an old, battle-hardened vet).Once the family went out close to Tehachapi where the miraculous burning hills in California poppies, shining in vivid orange, light up the mountains and hills, with a fire that is not consumed (at least not for a couple of months). Doug walked with King to the top of a hill and told the faithfully obedient collie: "Sit! Stay." King obeyed.Then Doug ran far down the hill, one hundred yards, two hundred yards, until King was a tiny spec of black and white fire-break in the wildflowers (there were actually a lot more wildflowers than just the poppies, it is just that the poppies were the most dominant, and possibly the most pure in color and shape and size). Then Doug yelled, as loud as he could: "Come on King!" And he turn and ran as fast as his sixteen-year-old legs could carry him (and at a recent growth burst which shot him up to six-foot two, and at one hundred and twenty pounds, Doug thought perhaps he had a chance in getting away from King), and Doug could run pretty fast (at least for a short period of time -- he had, but didn't know what to call it at that age, asthma; Doug always thought that everyone got a thick syrupy puddle of white bubbles in their mouth after running two hundred yards, and that everyone had a hard time breathing and had to spit to clear their mouths, and cough up the same white bubbles to clear their throat, and would only learn about fifteen years later what to call the condition).It took King about twenty seconds to catch up to his master, leap like a lion, and strike Doug in the back and take him to the ground, and then put on a serious display of carnivorous frenzy, seizing Doug's throat and ripping and tearing. Anyone watching would be certain that King was a crazed bear, or even a greater wild animal, and that the poor skinny gypsy would soon perish beneath the white, flashing fangs.But it was Duzzy. And he did love Doug. And the throat display was a game they played that looked much more serious than it was. King, although his teeth were on Doug's neck, never as much as scratched his master, or left a solitary mark upon that throat;however, one time, by accident, as King whipped his head away from Doug's throat, his great snout slammed into Doug's arm, striking it so hard as to sprain his wrist, causing severe pain. The blow didn't so much as faze Kingcat, who knew he'd struck his master too hard, and ceased his rambunctious show of savagery.Even when Doug was twenty years old, and King a mighty seven years of age, they would do this act, with King attacking his throat, ripping and tearing, and onlookers -- either friends or strangers -- would stand bug-eyed, in terror that they were observing the death of a skinny gypsy. It would be difficult to say who enjoyed this game more, King or Doug.They were separated for many years for weeks at a time when Doug went away to boarding school, first at San Pasqual Academy down by San Diego and Escondido, California (which is when he made his leap from 5'6" to 6'2" in a single summer) and then when he went away to Newbury Park Academy in Thousand Oaks, California, but there at least Doug was able to drive home about every three weekends or so in his old 1956 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 that his Grandpa Medvee gave him on his 17th birthday. And when the master came home poor King would go into peals of ecstasy, barking and spinning about and throwing his great body against his master's body (who for a time actually weighed less than his dog!). Between breaks Doug would call home and talk to King on the telephone. As soon as King heard his master's voice against his ear, his body quivered, he shook and whined, and ultimately began to bark uncontrollably, dashing about the house, going to the front window and watching for his master's approach.Always the master asked the same question: "Duzzy love me?" Always the collie answered the same way: "No!" in his squeaky high voice.When Doug lived in his own little apartment at the age of nineteen, King came to live with him there. And when Doug was married, despite many disastrous omens of doom, King was there as well (he didn't make it for the wedding, alas). And it was just barely two months after the wedding, that King did something he had not done in years, he had an accident in the house (with an unimpeded doggy door at close hand). His master could not believe it, it was such an unlikely event. Doug, to his everlasting shame, even yelled at King for dropping a big collie log on the carpet.King, as he always did when scolded, trembled and shook, his great tail tucked between his legs, his head down in humility. This monstrous collie who probably weighed over 150 pounds, stood shaking like a lamb while Doug scolded him loudly.And then Doug thought about it. The only times King had ever done such a thing, was when he was sick. It would prove that this was the case with poor King. The veterinarian, after taking x-rays, grimly informed Doug that "the prognosis did not look good." King's body was riddled with cancer. In an attempt to comfort the grieving master, the vet told him that such a large collie was very fortunate to have lived to such a great age as ten years, as most dogs that size probably would not have made it beyond the age of seven or eight. Is there nothing that can be done? The vet said the only thing was to put King to sleep, as he probably would not live through the week.That can be a shocking moment, when everything seems to be going fine (except for your new marriage, barely two months old, which does not look like it is going to work out, and your job outlook when you are twenty-three years old and struggling to be a writer and artist) to learn that BAM, someone who has been with you through so many stages of your life, your first year as a teenager, all the hormonal shifts and explosion in height, girlfriends, ups and downs of unrequited love, motorcycle accidents and car accidents, and King is going to die, he won't even live out the week). But Doug couldn't just kill his soul mate friend like that, his pal, his beloved Duzzy (even sick Duzzy would cry out with all the love he could muster: "No!" in his high-pitched funny voice).So Doug took him home and showing the first signs of sickness on a Thursday, King could barely walk on Friday. But Doug made him comfortable and fed him water, and forced Vitamin C pills down the dog's throat hoping to somehow fight the cancer. And Doug prayed, even though this was the period he was willfully choosing to walk away from God. Doug had to carry King outside for bathroom breaks, King always letting him know with a whine when he needed to make the trip (soundingly hauntingly like Lassie in the movie Lassie Come Home when Lassie senses that it is time for the boy to get out of school). And by Sunday King's lungs were full of water and Doug sat with him for many hours propping King's head up so that he could breathe.Sunday night Doug would have terrible dreams. He dreamed he saw the Space Shuttle come tumbling out of the sky, crashing in the middle of Palmdale. For whatever reason, Doug was driving Galadriel (what he called his Olds Rocket 88) in Palmdale right where the old drive-in used to be off the Sierra Highway, and there he saw the Space Shuttle, lying upside down. Doug jumped out of his car and looked in the windshield of the spacecraft. All the astronauts were hanging upside-down, dead. That morning, Monday, January 28, 1986 Doug would lie in bed as he heard King take one last labored, coughing breath, and he would crawl out of bed to be with his beloved collie, and King was gone in a matter of seconds. Just minutes later Doug would be told by Pammy that the Space Shuttle Challenger had just exploded mid-flight, killing all seven astronauts. He thought about the fact that he had dreamed about the space shuttle crashing in Palmdale, but in truth, it was hard for him to think beyond King.He wrapped King in his favorite blanket and manfully carried him out the front door, deep into the far backyard (it was a hard journey, chiefly because King was very, very heavy, and in death his body was limp and seemed even heavier, it seemed like 300 pounds), and Doug did not want to take breaks in getting his collie to his final resting place, so he trudged, and wept, trudged, and wept, until he had made it all the way to back of the quarter-acre lot, where he lay King down, and collapsed on top of him, completely worn to the quick, gasping for breath, weeping all the while.And then Doug began to dig. He dug down deep in the hard desert ground. This was where the beloved Teddy Bear was buried many years before. This was ground a few feet removed from where Doug had created his most elaborate fort, a deep hole in the ground with boards and dirt over the top, where he spent the night sleeping on an army cot. This is where the livestock was kept many years before, in the old horse corral. They had not had horses for many years. Long ago were the days of the pony Squirt.He made a very deep whole, spending four hours straight digging, without resting, weeping most of the while. And then he put King at the bottom of the hole, wrapped in his blanket, and then wrapped in an old tarp, and then covered with many rocks. Then Doug stood and broke glass bottles on top of the rocks, because he didn't like the thought of creatures burrowing down through four feet of dirt to get at King's corpse. Then he covered over Kingcat, Duzzy, Doug's Tri-Color King.People have asked Doug if he thinks that God will resurrect special pets to delight His children, His chosen ones, and Doug replies that he takes the scripture seriously where it says that people cannot even begin to imagine the special things God has in store for them. People are angered and start stammering about "immortal souls" and how animals don't have'em, all the while ignorant of the fact that people don't have them either, that the "immortal soul" is an invention of mankind, and found nowhere in the Bible. People are angered when they learn and read for themselves that "only God is immortal." Because everybody wants to live forever, and everybody has some kind of formula or theory they feel entitles them to their imagined "immortal soul."It is true, however, that one day God Himself will CHOOSE to make those who love Him live a life eternal, forever, to infinity and even beyond, and thus live throughout eternity, by God's good grace, finally immortal (but this ONLY after those beloved are changed into His likeness, at His coming, when those who sleep in Jesus are raised first). And if Kingcat is there, Doug certainly won't hold it against God.Seeing King again would be balm for his troubled, disquieted soul.And Doug believes, both when he was a child, and now as the man Douglas, that God is good. Better than Douglas can imagine Him, and Douglas is known far and wide for having a runaway imagination. And God is better than anything dreamed up in that land of dream. To this day, when he attempts to speak about King, Douglas' throat swells and grows deeper, and it is perhaps best not to speak of that great and good friend, as spoken words will just not flow. And as apparent herein, even written words cannot capture the true wonder and miracle of a friend and love such as King.All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
important - FIGHT THE FLU WITH HERBS - important
