Snoopy is no name for a chihuahua
A few days ago Kathy from the Junk Drawer was fighting bad blogging mojo so she wrote an entire post backwards. It was wild, but she said she hadn’t had a post idea for a week. And of course, you know I love a good challenge.
As I was commenting an idea occurred to me. I wanted to hear about her first pet as a kid. I was giving out major bonus points if the animal was a stray and if her mother allowed her to take it in.
Kathy put her game face on but said she only had a hermit crab (shudders violently) that died shortly after she got him. And that experience gave way to bad memories.
I, as you may recall, did not have a pet growing up until my sister brought a parakeet home from college when I was 12 or 13. While that technically fits the bill, I don’t consider that a real pet.
A real pet is a cat or a dog, possibly a rabbit. It needs to be an animal that will interact with you and one that won’t be crushed or suffer a horrible death if you pet it enthusiastically.
Since my mom was not down with another mouth to feed, I had surrogate pets via my friends.
The first pets I remember lived at the twins’ house around the corner.
There was Frisky the Dalmatian who was the sole canine in that house for a good long while. Frisky’s fur was not that fluffy as I recall, it was short and flat against her skin. Petting her was not much of a joy but I think her ears were sort of silky. She was a standard Dalmatian with lots of black dots.
She was also a chick that was not spayed.
I’m pretty sure she never had puppies, but I do know Frisky
taught
me that
female dogs go
into heat.
And they bleed.
That freaked me out but the twins hardly noticed. I seem to recall Frisky was hanging in the basement during that time — the basement that had tile floors.
After a few years Snoopy the Chihuahua burst onto the scene. That dog was male and it shook uncontrollably. I hated it. Seems like it bonded with the twins’ mom and the only time we could get near it was when it was sitting on their mother’s lap.
It was roughly 1974 and Mrs. S had seven children. In retrospect, I’m not surprised that she frequently sat zoned out on the couch smoking cigarette after cigarette with Snoopy on her lap.
I was always pissed at the twins for naming a fucking chihuahua Snoopy. I thought that was totally and completely bogus.
I’m a fan of Snoopy. Who isn’t?
That dog had different personalities. He was a writer who toiled away on his manual typewriter atop his red dog house. His story usually started out, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
There was the World War I airman fighting the Red Baron, Joe Cool, and your standard dog that hung out with Charlie Brown.
He wasn’t species-ist — his best friend was a yellow bird. He could whip up a Thanksgiving dinner and serve it on a ping pong table. And he slept on top of his red dog house. That’s one cool cat.
And naming a shivering Chihuahua Snoopy is a travesty. Gah, I’m still pissed off about that.
You know I want to hear about your first pet. And you still get major bonus points if you took in a stray.
Tags: Things that are jacked up, Things that get on my very last nerve
First pet? I think it was a dog, named Rex. He jumped out of our 2nd floor window. Next time I’m on the ledge I will not be asking for my brother as a source of comfort.
oh we did have a rabbit named oreo. she was black and white. rex was black and white. the cat i have now is black and white. maybe we’re the ones who can’t see in color.
my other cat was pepper color.
Isn’t that such a typical name for a dog? I’ve only met one Rex in my life which was a few years ago and even then I was skeptical about his name. I guess there’s also Rex Reed.
I have no idea why that dude is famous, but I recognize the name.
I had a black and white cat — Clive. I still love him. My other cat was almost all white with a rust-colored circle on one eye and a black circle on the other eye. You may recall she showed up in a doodle a while ago about the ladybug who almost gave us a heart attack.
I loved that cat, too.
Where do I begin? We had every kind of pet imaginable. Sorry, CG.
We had an ‘ol Tom cat, named Kitty, that would come home all beat up and missing an ear or something from fighting. Like the Flintstones, he was the type of cat that you put out at night–not bring in. I think he was a neighborhood stud or something.
We had Snoopy, a beagle that ran away at every opportunity. A guinea pig, named Bippi, 2 box turtles, a parakeet that flew away, numerous hamsters, too many cats to even count, and an endless stream of things that we found along the way–tadpoles, frogs, snakes, crayfish, little turtles, baby birds, etc. You could say we gave everything a home. Does that count as a “stray”? I think so.
To this day, I only adopt from the shelter, as I believe in giving the strays a life that they would otherwise not have. And according to Hobbes–it is a good life.
Man, that’s not fair — you’ve always lived a life with pets? The only pet I really wanted was a cat. First my mom said hell no and now my kid is allergic to cats.
Is there any justice in this world?
We also had a German Shepherd named Rex. I grew up on a farm, and he was our guard dog/pet. He loved kids, and allowed us to ride him like a pony and tie him to our wagon… but adults? Just let one of them try to touch us, and they were Rex’s lunch! Since I was the youngest, he was there when I arrived on the scene….
That would be awesome as a kid riding a German Shepherd as a pony! Or using him as a horse to pull your wagon. Sweet!
“My” first pet was a cat that my sister brought home for me, after she couldn’t keep it any longer. She was a tortoise-shell Persian named Bojo, and she came to me by car from Toronto to Teeny-Tiny Town – an 8 hour drive. She wailed and threw up at intervals for the entire trip. Not a happy traveler…
I like how it starts out sounding like your sister gave you this cat as a gift. But then, not really.
Bummer that the cat had to vomit and wail for eight hours. Was Bojo short for Bojangles?
Actually, no. It was short for “Boswell Johnson”. I’ve no idea, before you ask…
Whaat? Oh, right no questions.
We had constantly multiplying gerbils when we were growing up. The first two were named Herman and Lily, but after that I don’t think we even named them.
I think I loved dogs early on. When I was four we went to a church picnic and a woman gave me one of her tiny black lab puppies. (I still have an adorable photo of me with the kitten, but I couldn’t find it when I wanted to write a post about it.) I was smitten and sat in the car snuggling him while waiting for my parents to be ready to leave. Halfway home, they realized I had a dog on my lap and were convinced that I must have begged the woman to death for the thing, so they insisted that we take it back to her. My mother felt awful a few weeks later, when we learned that the woman had taken the puppy and left it by the side of the highway.
However, a year later, when I was five, we were at a craft fair in a big park. My mom was working at the craft booth while us kids sat on a blanket nearby. We were running around, as kids do, and a very large dog chased after me and bit me on my butt. It was a mortifying experience (made more so by the fact that my mother took me to the women’s restroom and pulled down my pants to examine my butt cheeks in front of all the women in the room). After that (and another large dog that used to bark wildly at me when I walked home from school), I never much wanted a dog again.
It seems like people are either dog people or cat people. For some reason, I’ve never met a dog I really, really liked. My brother had a dog that was sort of cool but he was still a dog, poor thing.
WHAT?! That woman got rid of the puppy by leaving it on the side of the highway?! Damn, that’s harsh. How did your parents find that out? Was there a witness who saw her drop him off. I can’t imagine ever admitting to another human being that I did something like that.
I’ve never been bitten but I’m terrified, as you know, of large dogs.
The lady went to our church and must have readily admitted it to my mother later on.
Aw, CG – I guess I’m just gonna have to kennel Harley Dog when you come to visit (even though, he is a sweetheart of a dawg).
ES gets mad when we pronounce it dawg. In his crazy teenage jargon, he likes to call it a doge (rhymes with vogue). He got in trouble one day when a neighbor dog was barking at his friend’s house. He kept yelling over there saying, “Stupid doge, stupid doge!” and then realized that the owner was standing nearby.
Did I write kitten? I meant a photo of me with the puppy. Where’s my brain – still in bed, I think.
I saw that and thought I read the story wrong. Yep, you wrote kitten, but I now know you meant puppy.
I’m on this one like white on rice.
We still had a couple of cats from when my mother was in college, but I consider Truly to be my first pet because she wandered up and I convinced Moma to let her stay and I got to name her. I named her Truly Scrumptious from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; it was my favorite movie at the time. I think I was around 6. She died a couple of years ago. She was solid black, an awesome huntress, a nice lap sitter and a good mother but she got extraordinarily ornery about a year before she died. Every month she’d pick the one food she would eat. One month it was American cheese, one month it was boiled eggs, one month it was soup, etc. or she would just grab something off your plate when you weren’t looking. How could you get all that mad at a cat that was at least 16 years old?
We’ve had dozens of other animals, but we lived in the country and no one cared about things like leash laws. Though we did end up with several litters of kittens and puppies.
I know I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and I do not remember that character. Sounds like Truly lived a super long time. My cats never enjoyed sitting in my lap. They sat next to me on the couch, but wouldn’t pop up on my lap.
I’m so surprised she ate human food. I can’t imagine a cat eating cheese or boiled eggs.
Truly was the character who was hanging out with Dick Van Dyke and the kids. Truly the cat did live a super long time. And she had phases with her habits. We moved to town once, and she was pissed until we moved again. No one got any lap sitting for two years.
Your cats never ate human food? I find that surprising.
You could get one of those hairless cat looking creatures. I hear they can be really adorable.
The only human food Chloe ate was chicken.
Clive did have a sweet tooth and he ate muffins but only blueberry. He sometimes thought the chocolate chip muffins were blueberry and after his first bite he walked away. Bummed out, no doubt, that he miscalculated.
Other than that they weren’t interested in our food.
I shall regale you with pet-a-palooza.
Grandparents 1: had a giant and stupid white thing called Patch that had the IQ of an egglant. Nice dog, but lumbering and thick.
Grandparents 2: always had 1 corgi and 1 labrador. There have been so many I won’t bother naming, but the corgis were always bad tempered and snappy and the labradors had a combined IQ of 2. They also had at times 2 cats and a donkey named Colleen that bit everyone.
Granparents 3: (get your head around that one) had a terrier and a dachshund. If you’d pressed them together with glue they’d only have made one medium to small dog!
Parents: had a cat called Pooh. As a child, having a pet named Pooh is a good way to get beaten at school on a regular basis. Also, our family generally dislikes cats, including both my parents, so why Pooh was ever our pet is largely a mystery.
After Pooh (when I was quite young and when the doctor told my parents I had asthma, when what I actually found out much later on was that I had a cat allergy) we had a black dog of unknown parentage called Rosie that kept sneaking into the Cathedral from my grandad’s shop and haowling along to the choir. She also used to tip coffee mugs to 45 degrees with her paw so she could drink the coffee. Clever dog.
After Rosie, we had a Pharaoh Hound called Jodie who was daft and short sighted, who regularly walked into doors end on and one caught fire, and a small black runty hungry thing called Gemma who would have eaten the sofa if we weren’t sitting on it. Both lovely.
After them, my parents got Mollie, a brown and white mixed runt of the litter, who is very clever, quite sweet and bionic, due to her titanium hips she’s had since she was 1! She’s still here.
And wifey and I have our two lurchers, Murphy and Seth. I shall say no more about them, but there’s stuff on my own blog about them, and perhaps I’ll repost some of my lost entries about them…
Nearly all of these (including the donkey) were rescue animals. Can I have a bonus point? Pleeeease? This comment is longer than my blog usually is!
Si you have earned the Gold Star of the Day! Congratulations.
As soon as I read “…a donkey named Colleen that bit everyone,” I knew you had it in the bag.
And then you introduced Pooh and that fact that you experienced a beat down at school every day because of his moniker.
And then Rosie burst onto the scene singin’ with the choir and drinkin’ coffee. Now that’s my kinda dog and I am not a dog person.
Before I run off to scour your blog, what are lurchers? Dogs? Cats? Lizards?
I am laughing so hard at Si! Pretty cool pets!
I’d have to seriously consider a dog that drank coffee. That is cool, isn’t it?
And now you’ve been over and read a page or two on the lurchers, I guess you know about them, but they’re basically a greyhound crossed with something else. In our boys’ case they’re greyhounds crossed with Saluki. Or possible greyhound crossed with baked potato, given their idiocy.
Based on the photos I found online it looked like the dominant genes came from the greyhound, although upon further investigation I did find some that lacked the narrow face and nose.
So they’re lithe and bumbling, eh?
My MIL’s chi is named Taco. I think Chis should only be given short, clippy names that are also the names of food. For example, a friend of mine has a chi mix named Biscuit.
The exception to this is if my MIL gets Taco a little girl friend (only FRIENDS since they will both technically be ITs) – my daughter has appropriately insisted that she be named Bell.
My first pet? The first one I remember was a cocker spaniel named Skippy (I named her) and she ran away. Oh, the trauma. The first of many pets to be lost under strange circumstances, but such is growing up in west Texas. Pets seldom die of old age.
I almost want to buy your MIL another chihuahua with the stipulation that it must be named Bell. I’m flexible, she could spell it Belle if she wanted to.
My first pets were a pair of cats my parents had rounded up before I was born. One, Pepper, was given to my mom from a lady who moved to Austrailia and didn’t want to make him sit through the 6-month quarantine. He was a big fluffy tabby that we had to put down when I was 4. The other one, Mitzi, had one yellow eye and was a black cat. She kept sitting outside my parents’ door in a record blizzard shortly before I was born, and finally got the cajones to run in the warm house. I don’t think she was feral, but just shy, since she wasn’t scared of my parents.
Since then, I’ve had two cats who reside at my parents’–both from the same garage-cat litter. They are excellent mousers! Also, my boyfriend and I got a kitten from the SPCA back in July and she’s a little huntress as well. I am allergic to dogs, so I think I will stick to cats for awhile–next time I want a Maine Coon!
I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who was allergic to dogs. It seems like cats are always the culprits.
Pepper is a popular name for a cat, I think. I’ve met a few Peppers in my life. Thankfully we don’t have mice in this house (that I know of) but we did have two cats in here for ten years and they never popped up with anything (that I know of.)
I never had a pet of my own till I had my own place. My dad and biological mother had a dog called Commander, though I don’t remember him. And my bio mom had a cat named Deztinee (not Destiny with a S, but Dezzzzztinee), who was a boy cat. Then when I went to live with my dad, my (step)mom had brought two cats to the family with her, Kalamazoo and Achoo, both of whom were rescued Maine Coons. My dad brought two kids, she brought two cats — seems even to me. I loved Kalamazoo so much. He used to sleep with me on the nights when my parents were too lazy to banish the cats to the basement. But the cats were still obviously my mom’s. Kalamazoo passed away at the age of 18; funnily enough, he and I were the same age.
Kurt’s and my first pet together was Koolit. Even now thinking about him makes me tear up. We just put him down this summer. He was a lhasa apso mix we got from the SPCA in Norfolk, VA. He was my baby before I had babies; he would sleep with me after Kurt left for work, and he always laid near me when he knew I was sad. He kept me company when Kurt was out to sea. So yeah, it’s a very sad thing he’s gone now. Not long after we got Koolit, my bio mom gave us Karla, our brown tabby, and later Kurt found a kitten in a storm drain who became our third pet, Storm. Currently Storm is asleep on the back of the couch behind me, and Karla is snoozing away in Grace’s butterfly chair that she’s claimed for her own. Lazy bums. They need to get jobs.
That’s a wild name for a cat — Deztinee. It sounds like a name for a 20-something singer ala Lady Gaga and Pink.
It’s so hard when a pet dies, isn’t it? I still miss Chloe (my first cat who I got soon after Mr. C and I were married.) She really was a part of our family and I do miss her and her finicky ways.
We had a cocker spaniel poodle (cockapoo) named Buffy. Small like a poodle, but with cocker spaniel ears. That dog ruled. She lived to be 18 or so and I was crushed when she died (when I was in college).
We got Buffy when I was five and she slept at the bottom of my bed with me until I left home for college.It’s funny how you project your emotions and feelings onto a pet, but I surely did that. She felt like she was family.
Anyhow, great tribute to Snoopy. I wish, just once, we could’ve gotten a glimpse at the inside of his doghouse, because I’m pretty sure it was awesome in there.
How funny! Her name was Buffy! My MIL had a dog named Betsy who passed on a few years after we were married. I think she was 15.
It sounds like so much fun having a pet that slept with you as a kid. I really did want a cat or a dog as a kid. Oh well.
Snoopy was da bomb.
We always had pets growing up. My earliest memory of a pet was our 18 year old dog that snapped at me one day. I was about three. Of course, I got the blame for teasing him, and I recall wondering why wee had such a miserable creature. The first pet I bonded with was the puppy we got when I was a child, called Toby. He was a rescue, not a stray.
I thought for sure you were going to say the dog snapped at you and was then brained by your mother.
I’m so impressed that so many people have adopted rescue animals.
My first real pet was a hamster named Mandy – she lasted a long time for a hamster, and I was devastated when she died. I went through 2 more hamsters, but then I rebelled.
My parents both had dogs as a kid, and dang nabbit, I wanted one, too!
So, long story short, we adopted a Scottish Terrier from the shelter. He was purebred, but he’d been abandoned, fostered out, given away, etc., etc., because he was the runt and had problems. He had a bum leg (it didn’t fully attach at the hip), a club foot (a great scratching machine), a cloudy eye, a hernia (which we could fix)… and I swear to god, not much brain.
But he was fuzzy and made of love. You have never met a sweeter dog – he just loved people (which is amazing, because he was most certainly abused as a small puppy). He’s long gone now (and it still hurts – it was right after my birthday and I had not seen him in some time, because he stayed with my mom after the divorce). But, oh, he was my Rags.
Sometimes I wonder if those cats and dogs that have some, uh, issues are even more devoted pets since they feel the extra love.
I had to quick Google the Scottish Terrier just to see if I was thinking of the right dog. I was. Do they only come in black or white? If so, that’s sort of an awesome feature right there.
Well, Rags was brindle. Which is to say, he was black with bits of gray to break up the black. Like salt and peppery. The white is a West Highland Terrier.
Pet peeve: People think the dog in The Wizard of Oz movie is a Scottie. It’s NOT. I don’t know what it is, but it is not a Scottie. In the books, Toto looks more like a Scottie, but in the movie, they did not use one. Don’t ask me why – I think they screwed the movie, anyway! (Oz is REAL in the books.)
Most Scotties are fairly clannish, actually. Rags was more open, and I think you’re right – he was “special”… and was so glad to be loved, he just spread it around to nearly everyone.
I always thought Toto was some sort of terrier. Thanks for the info on the Scotties. Just like anything there’s a lot of detailed and interesting information about most any topic out there.
Hey CG, I posted a comment, but your blog ate it. This isn’t that comment. :)
Found it! It’s up there.
We had a black and white cat named Mickey, who was killed by a car less than a year later. Then we got a white persian named Cotton Candy, Candy for short. She was as snooty as you would expect a white persian cat to be. She was around for several years, but we had to eventually get rid of her when we moved to an apartment that wouldn’t allow cats.
My boys (including my husband) are starting to push for a dog. No way am I having some dog crap in my nice landscaped backyard. Not going to happen. I want a cat, but hubby is not a cat fan and he says no way. I was thinking about a guinea pig, but I was told they stink. A lot. My sister-in-law told me to get the boys a rat (which her boys have). No flippin’ way. Hence, we have no pets.
I like pets who have a longer name but go by the shortened version most of the time.
I love the fact that you refuse to let a dog shit on your lawn. I’m right there with you and my lawn ain’t even close to manicured.
And I will have nightmares for a while, Michelle, now that I know your SIL has a RAT IN THE HOUSE BY CHOICE!!
The first family pet was a cat named Tinkerbell, not because she was a lesbian, but because she wore a bell on her collar so the birds had some advance notice of her presence. She was quite the hunter. My parents had to give her away when I was born because I liked to crawl around and pull her tail, at which point she liked to scratch me. My dad said it was a tough choice between me and the cat.
MY first pet was a cat as well, named Tiger. How original. He was not orange like a tiger but a Tiger striped cat – black and brown. I was so excited when I picked him out. I remember he was completely psycho and would climb the drapes – but I know now that is what all kittens do – not just Tiger. Then he got hit by a car in front of our house and I was the one to find him dead. I was traumatized at the age of 7. And then my pet hampster Chubby died a few months later. We buried him in a Quaker Oats container because he loved oatmeal flakes.
Reviewing the above it truly is a wonder I ever wanted another pet. Such trauma. Kids are resilient.
And as for taking in strays, our current 2 cats and the 1 we had before them were all rescued from the wild as kittens by my best friend. We are suckers.
Man Bumbles, that is traumatic — especially being the one to find your cat squashed in front of your house.
For a minute I thought your hamster was named Cindy. I love it when a pet has a person’s name. When my 9-year-old moves out of the house (she’s allergic to cats and has asthma) I’m getting another cat and naming him Gary.
Just like SpongeBob’s pet snail.