A Tribute Da Hoov: 1993-2008

The day I got him, I was buying cat food for Pip, the (then) family cat, in the Burien (WA) days. In one of the pet store bins was a splitting image of the puppy version of the Thorndike-Barnhart Junior Dictionary entry illustration -- that I recalled from second grade -- for "Spaniel". I then remembered that I always wanted a Spaniel. He had no papers, but his markings were good enough to argue that he was far from the Heinz 57 variety (a point groomers over the years had galvanized). So I was curious as to the behind-the-scenes story.

The shop owner said that little guy had been the pick of the litter to carry on the legacy for the previous owner, who initially chose to keep him along with the mother. But when the previous owner's new landlord allowed only one dog, s/he had to make a concession. The puppy drew the short straw.

So with the benefit of a dog with no papers and good markings, and knowing what a pedigreed dog can fetch, I figured I wouldn't pay a cent more than $200 -- about half of which I didn't have with me at the time and would have a tough time getting (ah, the salad days...or the day before payday in these times). You could imagine my relief and the ease of my decision to purchase the puppy when the pet shop owner said $75.

‘Hoover’, like the vacuum cleaner

One little known fact about Hoover: the name I first gave him was "Chucky". Sounded appropriate, the scrappy little fellow he was. But in the house-breaking phase, the (then) step-daughter left a Nike tennis shoe in the breaking area. And in one of Chucky's subsequent #2's, there was the orange-and-white sole in parts, all in all resembling the innards of a vacuum cleaner bag. (Plus, every time he would go walking and sniff the ground, he'd raise his tail, thereby resembling an upright vacuum cleaner with legs.) From then on, it was “Hoover”. And over the years, he has taken on variations of his name.

‘Chew-ver’

The Chew-ver days were the toughest because he, an 8-month-old puppy, and I, divorcing, settled in a one-bedroom apartment on east Lake Union in Seattle -- and he needed 2 acres somewhere outside of King County. And when boredom overtook him -- as it frequently did -- he took to the furniture. Then the queen mattress. Then his cedar-filled bed. Then carpet seams. At one point I swore he was trying to tear an outline of "SOS" from the carpet.

Any thoughts of breaking his will in this destructive phase were cast away when after the mattress episode, I sent him and his cedar-filled bed to the balcony for the night and drew the blinds. I slept on what was left of the sofa just in case he started whining. I woke up the next morning at 6 am, pleased that he didn't whine or bark or draw attention to his plight.

Seemed a bit uncharacteristic of him, but he had other plans. My biggest fear is that he grew thumbs and tore and tied his bed shell fabric into knots and slid down the third-floor balcony and into the night. Not quite. Seems he decided to coat the entire balcony floor with cedar chips. The part I was most impressed with is that he did such a neat job because there was no sign of the chips falling through the iron balustrade and off the balcony. Needless to say it was time to look for a rental with a yard.

‘Hoo-dini’

The Hoov wasn't much for staying in place, especially parked cars. Rather, he would hone his disappearing act. (In his defense, I'd say it was his burning desire to be reunited with his mother.)

The best parking lot story was the time I met a potential client at a local diner in Seattle, and -- for reasons stated above (see Chew-ver section) -- couldn't leave him home. So I started driving all of the streets within a three-block perimeter of the diner, asking people along the way if they saw him. No dice. Then came the hard part. I had to do the same perimeter search on foot, peering into side yards and walking through apartment complexes, parking lots, fields of vacant properties. In what I had deemed the last place I would look before starting on "Lost Dog" signs, I meandered between the buildings of an apartment complex on the other side of the diner's parking lot with a sense of desperation and fear of what poor, lonely, scared Hoover must be going through. Until I saw him resting in the arms of an 8-year-old girl swinging gently in a hammock, rubbing his ears and stroking his back. "I think that's my dog," I said. To which the little girl replied, "Oh. We were going to keep him."


Translated, I think that meant they would check with the City, look for signs of a lost dog and any of the usual search/research tactics. But from what I saw, it seemed she wasn't going to start looking actively any time soon, nor encourage her family to do the same. And given her comment and what I had allowed Da Hoov to put me through for the last several months at the time, I really considered leaving him with the girl and moving on. But it just wasn't in me.

A less hectic, yet epic, Hoover moment was at the Northgate Mall parking lot in Seattle, where I was surprised to find him in the car as I returned. A note on the windshield read how Hoover was trying desperately to squeeze out of the open window crack (now reduced to about 3 inches, given the diner episode) and how the person opened the door, let Hoover back in and closed the window to about 2 inches.

It was about this time that I started calling him "Junior" after the main character in the movie "Problem Child".

A few years later, I lost him for about four hours when I left the back door of the Wallingford house open. All I could think of was angry postal workers and pepper spray (See Service people section). As I did the standard protocol -- the three-block perimeter search now widened to five blocks -- I found him walking with some nice guy who leashed him and walked him up/down N. 45th St. in anticipation of the owners finding them. He didn’t say he was going to keep him, but you’d wonder what he was going to do if he got tired walking up and down N. 45th.

The one time at 805 that he slipped away and forgot his way home, he found himself in "the joint" (Washoe County Animal Shelter), where the roommate went and got him -- and brought home a pup of his own (RIP, Jive). The two of them never strayed much, but they played well together and always got into some form of mischief. Oh, to have been them for just one day in '00 and '01.

And there were the near-miss escape attempts as well (aside from the countless almost-got-hit-by-a-car episodes, the one thing I thought would do him in prematurely). One time at the Cleopatra Ave. house (after the apartment and before Wallingford), Da Hoov decided that the .25-acre fenced yard was not enough and he had to do some urban exploration of his own. This time, as with his Burien days, he did the usual burrow under the gate routine and got out. Until he reached the end of the leash he was tied to. As I came home that day, I actually thought he was letting up on his anxiety a bit, as he sat there in front of the gate like some mellow, fiercely loyal Golden Retriever waiting for master to come home. Well, what with the leash, Da Hoov had no choice in this episode but to play that role.

Service people beware

Service people (cable guy, power company guy, plumber, electrician) must have given off something that Hoover didn't like. But the long-standing battle with postal carriers went far beyond the general contempt. (I feared for them the most whenever Hoover was lost.) I mean, there were at least three episodes over the years in which mail service was suspended due to some run-in. I witnessed two pepper spray episodes first-hand, so there must have been more. The first time (Wallingford) must have been the carrier's first time using the spray can, because Hoover was wearing it all over his coat. The second time (805), Hoover must have had some pent-up guilt; as he approached the carrier, the carrier put his bag in front of himself as a shield. And Da Hoov proceeded to lunge toward the carrier, bite into the bag and into the can of pepper spray which went off in Hoover's face. Classic.

On one (presumed) service person episode, Hoover even made the weighted bottom part of the vertical blinds into a battering ram that broke the window. Since I wasn't home to see this, I could only surmise that it was a service person or Latino male episode (see Latino males section). Plus, nothing was missing in the house, ruling out any female thief (see Latino males section). And if it truly was a service person, Latino male or cousin (see Latino males section) episode, I was surprised that Hoover didn't jump out the open window in hot pursuit.

Kids be-equally-ware

I think kids moved too fast for Hoover. He had it in for most any child under 8 years old. Friends, family and strangers were equal game. It generally involved a light growl, a snarl and a snap. Some snaps landed him in quarantine, but all yielded nothing more than, to borrow a Monty Python phrase, just a flesh wound. Fortunately, Hoover and Nic got along just fine.

Latino males be-even-more-ware

I celebrate diversity. Simply stated, Hoover didn't; he knew what he liked and what he didn't like. He didn't like men much, unless they were a friend of mine, a rommate or a true dog person. Even my own flesh-and-blood cousin, Rudy (a cat person), was on the sh-t list when he came over to water my yard (when I was out of town) and was greeted with a few puncture wounds on his ankle. (I'm still apologizing for that.) Any woman, however, could come in the house, stay a while, rummage through my stuff, steal things, build a bonfire on the living room floor, etc. But I digress.

Latino males had it the worst. They were subject to vicious barking fits as they passed the house. And if Hoover was on a leash, he'd still try to snap at their pant leg just to let them know he wasn't buying what they were selling. That snapping thing also applied to service people, whatever their heritage.

(Guess along with Border Collie and Springer Spaniel, he was also part cop dog.)

Women's undergarments be-most-ware

I don't even know how he got the fetish for ladies undergarments, but he was into them. (He must have smelled, uh, a cat or something.) And once he got a hold of them garments on the floor, he would shred 'em up. (It was as if I trained him to be my wing man to force a sleep-over.)

Cost vs. benefit

I had long said, tongue-in-cheek, that Hoover had a $500 veterinary threshold on any "incident". I said it primarily in hopes that it would never happen.

It was tested about five years ago in the Steamboat Ditch trail behind a neighbor's house (water runs through the trail trough in the summer). A team of raccoons ganged up on Hoover as he was taking a leisurely evening dip in the water and left puncture wounds all over his body. I don't know who started it, but I'm going to say it was the effing water feature fish-eating, nasty-assed, cocky, fat piece-of-sh-t raccoons. It all happened so fast and I didn't see any of it. Just heard strange noises.

Thoughts of the final scene of "Old Yeller" ran through my head as I took him to the animal hospital. Turns out it was not life-threatening, although a two-week quarantine was warranted even though he had his shots. And it was less than $500.

My little shepherd

I can say that if it weren't for Da Hoov, I wouldn't have what I enjoy today: my family, my home(s), my career, even my toys. He was there to help me make a number of critical choices that have yielded things both fulfilling and rewarding. In hindsight, life may have otherwise been fulfilling, but I don't think it would be as full.

And he was there to help me see through those times in which the future seemed very uncertain (1995-96), and the many ups and downs between then and now. (But he was part Border Collie, so it was in him.) Never asking for more than a little affection, a bone, and the occasional part of whatever is on my plate or the fair game that Nic's lunches in his room had become when the boy abandoned post.

Epilogue

In the end, it was the teeth that failed him. An abscess along the gum line caused infection and compromised his overall health. To take care of whatever dental issues he had, among any other issues not-yet-detected, we were looking at around $2,500. I gave myself a week or so to ponder my decision to go through with it -- "veterinary incident threshold" be damned this time around. My final answer was evident when three days later he lay on the ground in the backyard, after trying to keep down what little food we tried to feed him. And in his final act around 9 pm on June 26, 2008, even with the preparation for and implementation of the final shot, he didn't cross the incident threshold.

Suffice it to say, we can -- for evermore -- add Hoover's name to the growing list that answers the age-old question: "Who's a good boy?"

[Feel free to click on the “# COMMENTS” link at the end of this post to add your memory(ies) of Da Hoov (no registration required; just write away).]