The Place Where Wild McNuggets Grow

Our first dog was a Dalmatian, which is kind of like owning a sixty-pound, beatifully decorated, maniacally affectionate garbage disposal on four legs.

Pepper, as we called her, never met an object she wouldn't introduce to her digestive system. A wicker bed, bark from a plum tree, asbestos shingles off our first house, broken Coke bottles, five-dollar bills from my dresser... You name it, that dog ate it.

One day she ate an entire tube of A&D ointment, a vitamin-fortified vaseline. Why somebody found it necessary to develop and market vitamin-fortified vaseline is beyond my comprehension. We had a tube of it to apply to Our Daughter's nether regions during diaper changes, because we were told that's what parents do. Pepper snuck into the room and downed the contents, container and all, resulting in several days of suffering through an excessively greasy coat and extreme sphinctal clenching.

Our second dog, a poodle named Lily, is much less daring in her adventures. There have been a few blips on the radar. Chewed window blind cords, a few strands of carpet pile when she was a puppy, and a candy bowl raid one holiday season are the only blemishes to an otherwise squeaky clean record. Unlike her predecessor, if Lily heads for something she shouldn't eat, she actually obeys if you tell her to stop, which is why her behavior the other night came as such a surprise.

It happened so quickly, I didn't even realize she had found anything in the grass while we took one last stroll before bedtime. We were barely outside long enough for her to squeeze out an ounce of poodle piddle, so I don't know how she managed to track down this particular object and carry it back into the house on the sly, all the while avoiding the urge to wolf it down.

Just inside the door, Our Daughter looked oddly at the dog and asked "What is Lily eating?"

"Nothing," I said.

Yet when I checked the dog's mouth there it was, clenched between teeth locked tightly down like a steel trap on a wild animal: a McDonald's chicken McNugget.

With fingers pinching the protruding poultry, my brain retraced our steps. All we did was cross the street, she peed in the grass, and we walked straight back to the house. How could this dog -- the same dog that takes no notice of squirrels and rabbits darting across the road not ten feet in front of her, the same dog you have to forcibly lead to kitchen scraps that have fallen to the floor -- how could she possibly have managed to root out an errant McNugget like a crazed pig foraging for truffles?

"Drop it," I told her in that deep, trailing, serious tone we all adopt when instructing domesticated animals and children to stop doing whatever it is they shouldn't be doing.

All I got was a sneering sidelong glance from a poodle ready for a fried nuggety game of tug-of-war, but I wasn't letting go. She eventually relinquished her prize and followed me hopefully to the trash can where she spent the remainder of the evening mourning the loss of her splendid catch.

Ever since, even though I tried to make it up to her the following day with a few pieces of chicken Marsala, I still find her lingering when we pass that spot across the street where wild McNuggets grow.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Frilly Beds & Naked Midgets

Hand-me-downs are essential to the newly-married.

Back in the early 1990s, when My Lovely Wife and I set up house in a tiny shack halfway between her job in Southern Pines and mine in Raleigh, we had only 850 square feet to fill and nothing with which to fill it.

The house had five rooms: (1) a bedroom with a four-foot closet, the only closet in the entire house; (2) a kitchen with twelve square inches of usable counter space and an antique stove that sparked more than it cooked; (3) a former screened porch turned foyer that housed the clothes dryer; (4) a great room that served as both living room and dining room, in addition to housing the washing machine just under the pass-through between the kitchen and dining room; and (5) a bathroom that combined all of the worst qualities of every 1970s KOA campground bathroom I'd ever experienced.

We both brought to the house personal belongings that helped make it a home. In My Lovely Wife's case, that included a bedroom suite and a set of sidetable lamps from her parents' house.

If you overlook that her childhood bed held only a full-size mattress, or that it was of a frilly French Colonial style, or that it sported an equally frilly canopy that made me question my gender every morning when I woke beneath it, it was perfect. We didn't have much money back then, so we made it work, even after our 65-pound Dalmatian developed a habit of stretching herself lengthwise between us every night.

The sidetable lamps were another matter.

I'm not closed-minded, or at least I'd like to think I'm not, but our house growing up was not wantonly strewn with images of people in varying states of undress. The first time I set foot in my In-Laws' house and saw the number of statuettes of naked and half-naked people, I knew there would need to be a period of adjustment. Cherubs were my Mother-In-Law's favorite. You couldn't swing a cat in her house without knocking over a half dozen naked midgets.

Which brings me back to those lamps.

The stately shades matched the French Colonial bedroom suite perfectly. Unfortunately, so did the golden naked ladies who held the bulbs aloft in their upstretched arms. I not so lovingly, and not so creatively, referred to them as "the naked lady lamps."

Their presence alone did not offend or unnerve me, but there were many times I felt distinctly perverted groping around in the dark trying to the light on. It might have been worse if they were naked men, I suppose. Can you imagine the quantity of glue we would have used reattaching their members after a false turn of the wrong knob?

In time, and after encouragement from me, we purchasd a more conservative set of lamps to adorn our sidetables. Almost 20 years later, the French Colonial bedroom suite is mostly gone, a few pieces hidden under paint and serving out their final days in Our Daughter's room.

It is said we become more and more like our parents as we age. I've kept a close watch on My Lovely Wife for signs of it, but so far there isn't a single cherub in sight.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Poodle of Destiny!

The first baby my Lovely Wife and I had was our Dalmatian, Pepper.

While Pepper was a sweet dog -- and a lot smarter than we often gave her credit for being -- she was a complete menace. Because of her tireless energy we lost trees, books, bedding, our lawn, and an entire kitchen floor straight down to the plywood. And no matter what color you chose to wear, Pepper had a contrasting hair for it.

One year, Pepper developed a habit of nibbling the bark off a thirty-year-old plum tree in our backyard. I asked my brother for advice and he told me to dab the tree with hot sauce. When I explained how that hadn't worked when Pepper was chewing up her bed because she seemed to like the taste of Frank's Red Hot, he suggested I try ammonia. I had mixed feelings.

In my teens, I had accidentally taken a long sniff at a bottle of ammonia and it felt like someone was shoving hot pins and needles through my brain and into the back of my skull. I wasn't sure I could do that to Pepper. Then I looked out the window and saw her gnawing on the tree and decided to try it.

As I dabbed the ammonia onto the trunk of the old plum tree, Pepper walked casually up and started sniffing the rag. No reaction. In fact, she started chewing off another piece of bark, so I dropped the rag and poured the ammonia straight onto the tree. She lapped it up like water.

When Our Daughter came along in the late 1990s, months of ear infections and the prospect of inserting tubes in her ear canals resulted in the realization that she was allergic to the Dalmatian. After we transitioned Pepper from an inside/outside dog to strictly an outside dog, both my Lovely Wife and Our Daughter were literally breathing easier. When the twins were born a few years later, their systems proved even more delicate.

So, when it came time to welcome our second dog to the family, it was no surprise how limited our options would be if we wanted an inside dog. We could get a Chihuahua -- no thank you. We could get a Bichon Frise -- too expensive, plus it looks like an unshorn Poodle.

Then there are all the breeds that have been crossbred with Poodles. Apparently a lot of people have a lot of time to worry about mating every possible kind of canine with Poodles. These Poodle pimps have created a seemingly endless parade or Poodle-esque possibilities.

Among them are the Affenpoo, Airedoodle, Aussiedoodle, Bassetoodle, Bernedoodle, Bolonoodle, Bossi-Poo, Cavapoo, Cockapoo, Doodleman Pinscher, Double Doodle, Eskapoo, English Boodle, Foodle, Giant Schnoodle, Goldendoodle, Irish Troodle, Jack-a-Poo, Labradoodle, Malti-Poo, Papi-Poo, Pekepoo, Pinny-Poo, Poogle, Poo-Ton, Pugapoo, Pyredoodle, Rattle, Rottle, Saint Berdoodle, Schipper-Poo, Schnoodle, Scoodle, Shar-Poo, Sheepadoodle, Shih-Poo, Skypoo, Springerdoodle, Terri-Poo, Ttoodle, Weimardoodle, Whoodle, Yorkipoo, and my new favorite the Newfypoo.

The problem with all this Poo-ing around is it doesn't guarantee an allergen-free dog, just one that is moderately less irritating thanks to being diluted with Poodle DNA. The clear and reasonable choice was to forego the mixed breeds and head straight for the dander-free choice.

That year, Santa somehow managed to sneak a white puppy Poodle under our tree. He left a note for our three children telling them the elves had found her in the workshop and decided ours was the perfect family to care for her. They had already given her a name -- Lily.

Contrary to every notion I'd ever had of the Poodle being a useless, yip-yapping nuisance -- marginally better than a lizard for cuteness and no better than a rattlesnake for attitude -- Lily is quiet and timidly sweet-natured. She barks mostly for legitimate reasons and gets so excited when guests enter our house she often leaves behind what we call "happy pee." Fortunately, it's typically only a few drops, and much easier to cope with than the dreaded "poop finger" we used to get when changing the children's diapers.

Like every other member of our family, Lily has peculiarities that make her unique and interesting. When she needs water or food, she flips the empty bowl around with her paw to get your attention. If that doesn't work, she'll jump up on your leg, lean back, and punch you with both front feet.

When she needs to burn off some pent-up energy you'll see a little white blur tear through the house in circuits around the furniture, in and out of bedrooms, and up and down the stairs. These are great times to play hide-and-seek with her, or grab her rope toy and let her joyously pretend she's jerking the head off a squirrel.

And being a lifelong fan of cartoons, I never tire of hearing the clickety-clackety sound accompanying her delayed start when she tries breaking into a run from a full stop on our hardwood floors. It's a noise you'll hear several times a day in our house and it always makes me smile.

Lily will turn six in September, which will tie her with me for the oldest member of the household, unless Poodles don't follow the seven-to-one dog-year ratio. At middle age she is showing no signs of slowing down.

Just the other day while out for her morning walk, she spotted something in the grass ahead that sent her into red-alert jungle hunt mode. She crept cautiously up to the offending object, head down, butt in the air, until she was right up on the black plastic utility box at the street that housed the water shut-off for our neighbors house. Only when whe pressed her nose to it did she finally decide it posed no threat.

As the children have gotten older, especially the boys, I see them playing with her more and more. It's heartening to know they will have memories of their family dog similar to the ones my Lovely Wife and I have of ours. I kind of feel she was destined from the start to be our dog.