Thank You for Being My Boy - A Dog's Memoir

By georgia the well-heeled terrier-hound

My name is Georgia, stage name Ophelia. I'm a well-heeled terrier-hound with a taste for chicken, mozzarella, Chardonnay, and peanut butter-bacon biscotti. I've scaled Rocky Mountains, eaten fresh-caught fish on a Key West Christmas Eve Beach, been chased by Coyote and almost caught, and run over and dragged half a block by a Cadillac Coupe DeVille. I've wandered the New Mexican desert in search of ancient wisdoms, ambled Boston's Freedom Trail asking how a country with so much potential went so wrong in only two hundred and fifty years, been run out of Nashville's Grand-Ole Opry Ryman Auditorium, and visited the graves of Thelonious Monk, Judy Garland, James Baldwin, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jack Kerouac, Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin, Johnny Mercer, Stephen Foster, Stanley Turrentine, and Andy Warhol. I've wine-and-cheesed with a mayor, breakfasted with a Senator, kissed and cuddled a governor, and've been blessed by a Catholic priest, a Buddhist monk, and a Native American Medicine Man. I've braved raging Colorado river rapids, been bit on the face by a snake, marched in the 2008 Democratic National Convention and got placed on an FBI watch list for that, seen Niagara Falls, been almost arrested twice, walked through Times Square up to The Dakota where John Lennon lived and died and got run out of there, been photographed at his Central Park Strawberry-Fields Imagine Memorial, stood on the Dealey Plaza X in Dallas where Kennedy got perforated from all four directions, and have been where Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Martin Luther King made history, experiencing love, joy, adventure, tragedy, and death, and come through it all a better dog. This is my story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tenderbastard
• Release date: Dec 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386833901

georgia the well-heeled terrier-hound

Georgia is a well-heeled terrier-hound. Sometimes she'll tell people she''s also wolverine, dinosaur, and a smidge of Bernie Sanders Supporter. Near death, she was found wandering the streets. Rescued and almost taken to the pound, she and her boy have been together near-constantly twelve years. She is a dog-whisperer, possessing the ability to calm nervous, fearful, overly-excited animals. In her spare time, she likes to get out in nature and take in as much of the world as possible.

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Thank You for Being My Boy by Georgia the well-heeled terrier-hound

For Mungo, the Cat on the Stoop, Winter 2017

Author's Note – This memoir reflects my recollections and opinions of experiences over time. Some dialogue has been recreated. The song lyrics within are at – soundcloud.com/tender-bastard.

tenderbastard.com

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About the Author - Georgia is a well-heeled terrier-hound. Sometimes she'll tell people she''s also wolverine, dinosaur, and a smidge of Bernie Sanders Supporter. Near death, she was found wandering the streets of Denver. Colorado. Rescued and almost taken to the pound, she and her Boy have been together near-constantly twelve years. She is a dog-whisperer, possessing the ability to calm nervous, fearful, overly-excited animals. In her spare time, she likes to  get out in nature and take in as much of the world as possible.

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Prologue

My name is Georgia, stage name Ophelia. I'm a well-heeled terrier-hound with a taste for chicken, mozzarella, Chardonnay, and peanut butter-bacon biscotti. I've scaled Rocky Mountains, eaten fresh-caught fish on a Key West Christmas Eve Beach, been chased by Coyote and almost caught, and run over and dragged half a block by a Cadillac Coupe DeVille. I've wandered the New Mexican Desert in search of ancient wisdoms and ambled Boston's Freedom Trail, asking how a country with this much potential went so wrong in only two hundred and fifty years. Been run out of Nashville's Grand-Ole Opry Ryman Auditorium and visited the graves of Thelonious Monk, Judy Garland, James Baldwin, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jack Kerouac, Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin, Johnny Mercer, Stephen Foster, Stanley Turrentine, and Andy Warhol. I've wine-and-cheesed a mayor, breakfasted with a Senator, kissed and cuddled a governor, and been blessed by a Catholic priest, a Buddhist monk, and a Native American Medicine Man. I've braved Colorado River rapids, been bit on the face by a bull snake, marched in the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and got placed on an Eff-Bee-Eye watch list for that. Seen Niagara Falls, been almost arrested twice, walked through Times Square up to The Dakota where John Lennon lived and died and got run out of there. Been photographed at Lennon's Central Park Strawberry-Fields Memorial, stood on The Dealey Plaza X in Dallas where Kennedy got perforated from all directions, and walked where Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Martin Luther King made history, experiencing love, joy, adventure, tragedy, and death, coming through it all a better dog. This is my story.

CHAPTER ONE ~ CHARDONNAY AND SHRIMP LO MEIN BEGINNINGS

My name is Georgia. I came into this world blind and helpless, January 1, 2007. My brothers and sisters and I weren't planned. We just arrived. If any survived, I don't remember. I was very young when I born.

Beyond those odds, I stayed alive. It was rough. I was scrawny. By my third month no one looked after me anymore. That rainy March 17, 2007 Saturday afternoon, I remember the open door, brilliant light shining, everything silhouetted like going to Heaven is supposed to be. I thought, This is it. I'm walking through that door. Maybe I'll die. I was okay with that. I wasn't going to make it on my own. Everyone had given up on me, even me. I stepped into the light. I wasn't dead. I was outside, an entire world there. I had somewhere to go, but where, walking, looking for anything, anyone. What I really wanted was a piece of chicken. Whatever my fate, I had to make it happen. I took my chance, stumbled to the sidewalk and launched my broken spirit and wilting body down the street to I did not know what, maybe a patch of grass to lay down on, close my eyes, and let nature take my last breath. Someone would find my body, larva in my belly, flies in my eyes, ants having made a conga line from me back to their underground kingdom, appreciating I'd lived so they could say, Mmm...these eyeballs are delicious. Chinga-chinga-ching, boom. Chinga-chinga-ching, boom. That last boom was all hope exploding for anything good happening.

Like the poster child for El Dia de Muerte, without the big square teeth, my body had disposed of everything in its stomach, depleted all its fat, broken down its muscle, and was dissolving my organs. Malnourished eyes, brain dulled with disbelief, my anemic body was numbed beyond pain.

Tongue hanging like a torn rope, skin stretched like a ragged tarp, I dragged myself down the sidewalk, a dehydrated camel hoping water would be found. Desperate, my body shutting down, the world going away, I thought, If I make it through this day, night will take me. Was life to be so brief and brutal? Would I die unfulfilled? I was too good-looking to die so young. I wanted to be loved, looked after. In return I'd bring somebody all the joy anybody could want from a dog.

I'd fallen in with two older mongrels, a scruffy terrier with a Rod Stewart haircut and a Chihuahua that was as brainless as he was hairless, lugging myself behind them. Then I heard it.

Hey.

Rod Stewart and Hairless Harry could scamper home to the yard they'd shimmied under the fence from. I didn't have that option, or any other....until that moment.

I pivoted towards the sound, a man standing by his open driver's side car door. We locked eyes as my canine compatriots tore down the avenue. Hey, The man called again. I ratcheted my pinball head to this human. He was the El Paso Burger King and I was a Dreamer dashing across the Rio Grande, forgetting my hips hurt like a Volkswagen being shoved into a junkyard car-crusher. This someone had noticed me. I felt like a Hollywood starlet being called to Harvey Weinstein's hotel room. I wasn't invisible anymore. I'd broken through that murky veil that allows humans to ignore the suffering of other living things. I'd made my way back to the world. I was, ...ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. Maybe, just maybe, I had a shot at a real home, or maybe he'd say, Oh, poor puppy. Run along to where you came from. Somebody's waiting for you. I wasn't wearing a collar. Nobody was claiming me. I had to get to him, show him how pretty I was, how kind, how appreciative...how desperate to live I was.

It was raining. I was muddy. He picked me up and held me. I gazed into his eyes. I was almost there, almost inside his car and on the ride that would take me everywhere. I couldn't know he wanted a dog as much as I wanted a human, that he wished for a dog just like me. Well, almost like me. Then he said it.

Little puppy, you're so pretty, and you're emaciated, and you've got the pity factor going for you. I'll take you to the animal shelter. It's Saturday and your butt won't have time to warm the concrete. You'll be the next stray adopted. I want a dog, but an apricot poodle.

Poodle-schmoodle, crap, crap, crap. I was thinking we should by-pass the shelter and head directly to my new home, starvation and weariness overriding all other desires. Seated next to him on the passenger front seat, I tried to eat a cardboard box on the floor in front of me. I was so hungry, it tasted like chicken. After gnawing at it for thirty seconds, I dropped as if hit in the face by a boxer, the human kind, not the dog, legs knocked out from under me, the hardest thing to get when you're homeless being good sleep. I was in a self-imposed happy dreamland, counting biscuits jumping over a Great Dane.

My good luck, he forgot to go to the shelter. I woke in an apartment complex parking lot. He got out, I leaped across the seats, and bounded behind him, ready to be the best dog I could be, the dog he wanted. He'd forgotten I was there and I wasn't going to remind him until we were inside. We walked to his building, he put the key in, the door swung open. This was it, my new home. I hurled past him, straight for the couch, leaped onto it, hauled around, planted my butt like a cowboy dropping his weight on a young cow's hindquarters in a calf-roping contest, looked at him, and projected my best, most charming Elizabeth Taylor smile.

I was supposed to take you to the shelter. That wasn't what I wanted to hear. I gave a short, one-note, low-toned howl like Satchmo with a sinus infection. It worked. Well, let's see if we get along. B-i-n-g-o. I'd found my home. I had a boy to call my own. You must be hungry. Damn straight, amigo. That was like telling a gopher he had to dig. He opened the refrigerator. I was going to get to see The Wizard. I bounded after him and stuck my nose in that big, frosty food-storage appliance, sucking in the odors of everything inside. I'd seen this thing before, but when anybody had opened it, there wasn't much of anything savory inside, just a meth pipe, a coupla' cans of High Octane Malt Liquor, some Gummy Bears, a jar of mint jelly, and a box of baking soda. The shrimp lo mein Styrofoam container enticed me, saying, Come see what's inside, and I slobbed the cool dew on a bottle of Chardonnay. He placed the lo mein box on the tile floor and popped it's lid like we were going to change the oil on a Mercedes Benz, then placed a bowl next to the food and poured a little wine. I'd never tasted anything like what I was chawing and lapping down. If he wanted a wonderful dog, I was his dream come true. He wasn't too shabby in the dog-owner department either.

I made a magic act of the food and drink, it all disappearing right before our eyes. Knowing every dog gets a name, I wondered what mine would be.

CHAPTER TWO ~ GEORGIA  ON HIS MIND

That evening My Boy had friends over and we played Drink Wine and Name That Dog. To play you have to have wine. The dog can be in another county. Either way, it's going to get a name. I figured since it was me getting a name, I'd stick around. One of the people who'd come brought their Chocolate Labrador, Hershey. She let me sit on her. My stomach was full, I had a new friend, and I was about to get a name. Boom-shacka-lacka, let the game begin.

Pop. I uncorked the first bottle of Pinot Noir. Some time during the initial sips, the name Mickey came up, Mick for when we'd be in a hurry and Michelle for when I might be facing consequential reprimand. I wasn't into the Mickey thing. What was I, a mouse? To show my disapproval, I squatted and let out a gassy emulsion so dank and reticulated it looked like mosquito spray. The lo mein and Chardonnay had come back to haunt me. It wouldn't be the last time it did that evening. My Boy flung the sliding door open and my bodily response escaped along with any chance of having to answer to Mickey.

At the bottom of that first bottle we'd come no closer to bearing me an appropriate title, one that matched my character, demeanor, and classy features, a name that told everyone in the world the kind of canine I was, so the cork on the second bottle of Pinot Noir came out and the name game continued. We searched like Ponce de Leon for the Fountain of Youth and Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, and Scott Pruitt for their last shred of morality.

In the middle of this bottle, I was Susannah, better, but not one hundred percent. At the last sip, My Boy announced, Georgia...like the painter, the song, and the country. Dang me, dang me, they coulda' took a rope and hanged me. I was Georgia, G-e-o-r-g-i-a. Even Hershey liked it. She was lying down, my butt perched on her ribs. She raised her head. Could life get any better? I was the dog My Boy'd been searching for. My name fit me crackly-exactly. The only stick in the spokes came later that evening. As I lay on his chest, under the covers, my snout on his neck, that lo mein and Chardonnay swimming in my stomach came up like Jed Clampett's bubblin' crude, making a rush exit out of me like black gold from an Iraqi oil well, splatting in a glommy glob on My Boy's upper torso. I thought, The party's over. I'm going to the pound. He cleaned us and hugged me. Shnizzle-fuh-shizzle. I puked on him and it was o-kay. I didn't plan on making a habit of that, but I did plan on making a habit of his affection and forgiveness. I'd never known such love existed. Overwhelmed by his kindness, I vowed to be the best dog possible, and go easy on the gassy emulsions and puking.

I couldn't have imagined the adventures we were going to have, the things we'd do, the places we'd go, the animals and people we'd meet, first stop Eads, Colorado, April 27, 2007, the official dedication of the Sand Creek National Historic Site. Just like that, we were on the road.

CHAPTER THREE ~ BLESS MY SOUL

April 26, 2007 we hopped in the Hyundai and headed east on Interstate 70, south to Eads, Colorado, and east again, to Sand Creek, site of the largest massacre of unarmed Native Americans by US soldiers, November 29, 1864. The ride was incredible. I had the front passenger seat, my bowls on the floor, a chew toy at my feet, and an open window, the wind in my hair like Sophia Loren in a 1960s convertible, barreling around the Italian countryside in search of her next leading man. Mine was in the driver's seat, hurling us to wherever we were headed.

The marker for the final left turn that would take us north an additional seventeen miles on a dusty, washboard dirt road was a plywood billboard with nothing on it. We passed it and continued east another thirty miles, where we saw signs for Kansas and knew we'd gone too far. Back-tracking, we bombed past the billboard again, our unknown final turn, arriving in Eads and stopping at the first motel to ask how we'd gotten turned around.

The plump, Hispanic night clerk said, That plywood billboard with nothing on it, that's your turn. Son of a beeswax and a basket of burnt biscuits. Leave it to humans to make a sign that doesn't say anything. At the billboard, we left the paved road and journeyed into the past, arriving at the ceremony site seventeen miles later, two podiums like Cigar Store Indians on a makeshift stage, rows of spectator seating, and drum circles marked with chairs around which the drums would be in the middle of each one.

Considering camping in one of the circles, we saw a sign for a road - Authorized Personnel Only. I said, Let's see what's down there. My Boy agreed. Bordered on the left by a row of low hills, they ended after half a mile, the road snaking left. Let's go around the bend, see if anything's there, then turn around and sleep in a drum circle, I suggested. Around the bend we couldn't say what we were looking at, twenty eight cylindrical, glowing orbs......teepees, incredible after coming so far, going so wrong, and ignoring the sign saying what we shouldn't do. We parked and my nose led us to the mess tent. Contrary to its name, it was tidy in there. Dinner was over, but a woman fixed us plates...corn, sweet potatoes, and buffalo meat. I was one living-large puppy.

Sleep in the supply tent, she said, the teepee housing food and provisions for everyone in attendance. We put our sleeping bag in there and had a look around. Men were coming out of a sweat lodge, a buffalo skull on the ground in front of it, the biggest bone I'd ever seen. Silly me, I tried to chew it, receiving a gentle boot to the butt for my misdeed. I yelped, moved away, and was summoned by he who had shooed me, Black Bear, a Cherokee medicine man. He held me up to the stars and blessed me in his native tongue. With that much good karma I could've gnawed a Senator's leg off and nobody would have said anything. Somebody might have said, Look at that terrier-hound gnawing that Senator's leg, but doubtful anyone would've jumped in to help. Our first adventure was okay so far by me.

In the morning I dashed ahead to the mess tent. My Boy found me perched on Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell's lap, him feeding me a piece of ham the size of my head. When I finished, I gnawed his leg. The Senator was the only one who asked me to stop. The three of us listened to the governor and lieutenant governor offer their condolences for US soldiers killing unarmed Native Americans, people who had nothing to do with the crime apologizing for someone else's monstrous behavior. That's how politics works, do something heinous, let a hundred and forty years go by, then get someone else to apologize for it. Politicians apologize for what politicians who came before them have done then do exactly what the politicians before them have done. It makes them look good, and gives them an out, but notice they never apologize for what they do. Embroiled in scandal, they feign humility and remorse, not for doing something heinous, for getting caught, begging for mercy they wouldn't give someone that's participated in the same bad behavior. Politicians talk about jobs, healthcare, even the environment, but framing our habitat abstractly allows inconsiderate people to act irresponsibly. I used to think people who litter didn't know it's wrong. They know. They just don't care, idiotic because the amalgamation of our litter is a sizable source of our pollution. Not littering is something anyone can do, keeping where we live clean. Most of the things we throw on the ground leach into and contaminate our water supply and soil. Cigarette butts contain nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT. While nicotine is highly addictive in humans, cigarette ingredients are deadly to every living thing in The Animal and Plant World. When people throw their butts on the ground, it effects me, so short of me gnawing your leg off, don't pollute. If anyone wants to prove the intelligence humans boast they possess, start with throwing cigarette butts in trash cans or receptacles, and all trash likewise.