Adventures of a Dog Man

By Gordon Garrett

Grew Tuckett was born with one eye; he was unable to work in the paper mill in the town where he grew up. His dog companion guided him eventually to working with dogs, first in a veterinary hospital, then to his own dog business. He also became a dog-show judge. Tales of the sexual affairs among the dog people and the challenges he faced are the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Mar 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781643459776

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Preface

A few years ago, I wrote this story and had it published. It could be true; it is compiled from notes I took, almost like a diary, writing of what was happening in my life. When I put it all together, I wrote it as fiction, not wanting to embarrass people involved or myself, so the names are fictitious and I used a false name as the author. That name is my first and second but not the last.

Recently, the publisher and other publishers have contacted me wanting to take over the marketing of my book, for a price. Since as far as I know, it has not gone so well, I wondered why they would be bothered. I had not considered it a roaring success, and some people were offended with the sexuality written about, so I was reluctant to spend more money.

Since I had hardly looked at the book for the last few years, I brought it out and started to read. There were incidents that came to mind that I laughed about, some pleasurable, some that made me sad, and yes, there were incidents that happened that I now wish had enfolded in a different way, but I had lived or had been told these stories, and as I read them again, I am consumed by them. They have taken me over as I reread and think back. Some are amusing, some bizarre, and some that tear at my emotions. Did all that happen? Overall, I find that it is worth telling and sharing how things went down. Believe it or not.

One sees differently when they are old. I do wish that in some cases I had written it in a different way; it is raw, especially the sex. I have tried to describe the emotional feeling and accept the blame for my writing ability but think and hope that through practice through the years my writing has improved. I have revised the book, changed the name. It is more realistic now; I dropped the fantasy ending, think it is now more how it all really unfolded—from how I see life now. Finally, this is also about love after sex. This is the revised version.

Chapter 1

A Kennel Near Goodwood

The story is written in third person with Grew Tuckett as the main character. The area is real; events are real. Goodwood is a place in Southern Ontario, Canada, at least it was there halfway through the twentieth century. Grew Tuckett and his wife had a place about two miles east of the town where they raised dogs. It formed the beginning of what turned out to be a saga of people connected to the dog business.

Grew had, for some time, collected information that had gone into stories of the people and dogs that had passed through his life. Much of the source of the stories began around the time when they had the kennel near Goodwood. It was a place in his life where stories of women he had known or had become involved with started. From what Grew had written, short bits he remembered, that took him back to that time when they had lived in the area where his life had been shaped, those adventures in turn affected what became of him.

Grew Tuckett had lived his whole life in a different way because he was born blind in one eye. Although he was tall, lean, and relatively strong, he was forbidden to play the contact sports. His parents were always afraid something would happen to the other eye. Still, he had practiced throwing a baseball at the woodshed and, for a brief time, pitched for a local baseball team until his parents found out what he was doing. Running and hiking became his sports which led to him getting a dog that became his constant companion. Perhaps it had something to do with why he adopted a life working with dogs.

The first time Marilyn and Grew followed the road through Goodwood, it was pretty well broken up with potholes or where the road had been repaired with patches of tar. In their old Ford, they had followed Highway 47 bouncing over the road first through Stouffville, then on to Goodwood and beyond.

They were not married at the time and were on their way to visit his friend that had just moved to the area. Fred Burr and his wife had lived off Eglinton Avenue in Toronto near where Grew worked for a veterinary clinic. The two friends had met and talked often in the confectionary store where Grew had frequently sat, drank coffee, and watched the TV. He did not have a TV in his room at the veterinary hospital. Fred and Grew had a common interest in dogs. Fred had no children but a beagle and a wife that seemed to be almost always miserable which was in stark contrast to the demeanor of Fred.

As the two drove through Goodwood, Marilyn noted the Esso station with one car filling up at the pump.

Look, gas is only thirty-seven cents a gallon. We should fill up on the way back.

Grew agreed and noticed next to the gas station was a general store and post office. It was small with steps leading up to a small platform before the door. A little farther along the road was a BP station with an old stake truck parked beside it. The truck was red, but the paint had deteriorated and it looked like the mud had never been washed off. The truck was later to play a part in their lives.

Across the road from it was another general store, and there were a few houses scattered around and down a side street. Then they were past Goodwood. The road went up a hill then wound around a bit; on the right was an expanse of gravel pits almost as far as one could see. By the next century, this whole area was covered with estate-type homes, each one with a few acres.

While visiting the Burrs in their new home, at least new to them, a modest home with two bedrooms, they had talked of the area and the openness. Fred had suggested that there was a property down the road that was for sale but that it was only a shack and there was no water, yet it had five acres. They decided to look at it.

Grew had brought along his female German Shepherd that he had left in the car while they visited. When coming out of the house, Marilyn noticed it first as they moved toward the car. She quickly turned around and faced Grew who was still talking to Fred. She said, I don’t think you are going to like what you are about to see, turn around slowly.

Grew turned and, through the side window of the car, saw the material hanging. Bisket had torn the lining out of the ceiling of the car while she had waited for the couple to visit. Grew should have known better; when they arrived, he had not let her out to relieve herself and, in her frustration, had tried to make her own way out.

Grew let the dog out of the car, and she quickly squatted beside the driveway on some unkempt grass. He gazed at the door of the car for a minute, reached in, and pulled the cloth loose as he quietly murmured that it was his fault. His anger was hardly evident; through his years working with dogs, it was not unexpected—it was only a car. He tore the rest of the hanging cloth loose which left an ugly display of bare metal. He never showed any anger either toward the dog or Marilyn as he looked around and saw Marilyn smiling. Suddenly, they were both laughing. Then they drove down the highway to look at the five acres.

They were both on the athletic side. Marilyn, being a bit heavier build, had grown up working physically for most things that she achieved; one thing was cleaning horse stalls in order to get to ride. Grew had also had to work his way in life, first by learning to cook in the west and for a few years working at logging and construction camps, but then turning in Vancouver to making a living cleaning dog kennels. That led to him working in Toronto at the veterinary hospital and also at a large kennel in Michigan.

For Grew, what was so appealing about the property was the potential of five acres. It was isolated and an ideal place for a kennel. The appeal for Marilyn was, that time, Grew was living in a small room at the animal hospital, and if there was ever to be a life together, they had to find a place of their own. Such a place was also going to have to accommodate their dogs; she had a small poodle and he had two German Shepherds. Marilyn that had a small eye problem herself would probably not notice anything unusual in Grew’s eye. She was rather buxom, but the main thing about her was her personality: she was friendly to everyone.

The road wound around the front of the property and then dipped down where the entrance was with a car shelter just inside the property and a rough road up a hill to a shack on the upper slope. They walked up the hill from the road toward the empty shack. The grass had grown long around the building. There was a rusty padlock on the paint-chipped door that had seen better days. The outer walls were of a sort of plaster that had been painted over long before and patches of paint had peeled off, leaving a pinto effect. A peeling black trim surrounded each window, two on the front and one on the side with no conformity as if each window had been scrounged from a dump. The house, if it could be called that, was perched near the crest of the rise.

They walked together with Bisket running loose, ranging out over the property, then looking back to see if her people were coming as they moved over the crest. There before them appeared a large field a couple of hundred feet wide. It was flat and deep with a line of evergreens bordering the right side. There was a forest of hardwood trees at the back end of the field standing naked and alone—on guard. It was a property all on its own, invisible from neighbors on either side or from across the road.

A rabbit popped up from somewhere, and Bisket took off after it; apparently, she had caught its scent and had been looking for it. Soon after she appeared trotting towards them with tongue hanging and without the rabbit. There was an expression of satisfaction, as she wagged her tail.

They returned to the shack and walked around it, wondering if they could make it livable. It was built on a cement slab, placed on gravel. It worked on gravel or a rock base. The cement slab idea found favor in the area, and in fact, the whole hill was gravel. The roof seemed square as did the walls, and they were in good condition. It looked like it would hold up and, in fact, had withstood the Snowbelt winters for many years before.

There was a scrambling of how they were going to buy the property, but they did manage, thanks to Grew’s father who sent $1,000 to help with the down payment. They were going to rough it, bringing in water in plastic gallon jugs. They worked it out that they could put inside kennels in the attached shed behind the house where they would have to also put their toilet. It was just too good an opportunity, too good a place to raise dogs. They lived there for five years, each day driving to the city and returning with their jugs of water, piled in the back of their cars that suffered from the wear.

The true potential for this property occurred years later, when someone else owned it that could afford the necessities, like water. The people that came later also dug under the house and put a full basement in. On top of the hill, they also put a small barn for horses. When Grew was to look at the property sometime in the future, he was envious of the improvements that had been made. He never even tried to borrow money from the bank to realize the potential.

At the time though, the property was an ideal piece of land for their purposes. There was no trouble getting the kennel license. Grew referred to the place as his Seclusion. They fixed up the shelter enough at the bottom of the hill, so they were able put their car in it when the winter came. They knew they would not be able to get the car up the hill when it snowed.

It was fall when they took possession of the property. Priority time was taken up in putting a wooden floor over the cement slab. With the help of Marilyn’s brother and brothers-in-law, they also fixed up the wooden shed attached to the back of the house, making it a combination doghouse and outhouse. To use the toilet, one had to be in the company of the German Shepherds who were in pens that had been built for them, complete with swinging doors that let them into outside runs. The runs were built by sinking cedar posts into the gravel on the slope above the house and then divided off with twelve-gauge six-foot chain-link fencing.

People that knew the area had warned Grew that when the snow melted every year, the runoff would flood the building, so Grew dug a ditch around the upper perimeter of the fenced dog runs. He found the digging quite easy, and a substantial ditch was soon put in place. In the years that they lived there, flooding was never a problem.

Grew and Marilyn had a quiet wedding earlier with the Henrys from Hamilton being the only others there. Previously, they had been conscripted by Grew to find a position at their kennel for Marilyn for eight months while she endured a pregnancy that had been kept quiet from her seven sisters and all but one of her four brothers or half-brothers. The pregnancy was the result of an unfortunate affair Marilyn had become involved in before meeting Grew and shortly after the death of her mother that she had been looking after. There was an unexpected physiological effect on Marilyn when the baby was adopted out. She had agreed to it as the sensible thing to do, but years later, Grew had wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to keep it.

When they first took over, they put a space heater in what they designated as the living room. Marilyn’s father, who for a long time she had never spoken to and she regarded as a creep, designated the house as a fire trap. The interior doorways were left open without doors and were left that way except for a bamboo screen across the bedroom doorway. They built on another side room which extended the area of the living room into what had been a porch. In doing this, they had to take down a couple of interior walls. As the walls came down, they found that the builder of the place had used as insulation in those walls, pages of a book on skiing, written by Mr. Maison. The book looked to be informative.

Marilyn and Grew looked at the pages with a combination of respect and humor for the author who had apparently written a credible book on skiing. Supposedly, the book had not sold well and was used as insulation. Grew and Marilyn were getting along quite well with the Maisons. Mr. Maison had written at least the one book, and on occasions, he presented an interesting political viewpoint as he related his own disagreements with the Canadian government.

Most of the association with the family would have been with their son, Tire, who for some time travelled with them to the city to attend trade school. Tire also used to come up to their house on occasion to talk to the two of them, sometimes with Marilyn alone. He got to know the dogs and, to a certain extent, got to know what the two of them were about, presenting informed and interesting points of view. He appeared to have been taught to think things out for himself.

Mr. Maison originally built the Tuckett home as he had others, all built on cement slabs put on the ground. Scattered around the area were a number of these houses that Maison rented out. Mr. Maison and his family were a story in their own right as was the whole area that the Tucketts had decided to settle in. Maisons lived next door down the hill in a valley and behind the young evergreens, planted trees that separated the two properties, Tuckett’s land. Maison had sold to someone else but with no water on the property.

That first year, the winter provided an abundance of snow, and Mr. Maison could be seen doing spins on his novel skis as he slid down the hill. This was long before the advent of snowboards and hot dog skis. At the time of Mr. Maison’s skiing displays, he would have been well into his sixties.

The Maisons had moved in shortly after the end of WWII in order to get away from the Mounties who had him pegged as a communist. He did look wild, with long hair and a beard, but he also looked and acted healthy. His wife had a backwoods look to her, but the children were all good-looking and looked fit. I don’t think there was a smoker among them. They owned and rented out most of the houses in the area.

Mr. Maison was a charming fellow as were most of his children; they had an air of confidence and were outspoken. Probably got the communist label for being overzealous in the labor movement. In later life, he would probably be considered a capitalist. He had bought sixty acres and, later, more land when it was dirt cheap. Later still, he leased it out to gravel companies. The Maisons had a few cows, chickens, and grew corn that the girls sold from the roadside.

When the corn was ripe, his pretty girls would set up on the side of the road with a little stand and sell it; they were a charming lot. Grew did not miss the beauty but confined his association with them to buying corn. The boys were all named after Greek gods of mythology. There was Thor, Lott, Frie, and Tire. Another son had been partially paralyzed through an electoral industrial accident as he worked as an electrician.

The Maisons eventually worked a deal with the gravel company for the gravel on their land and became quite well-off even though they never changed their lifestyle. To enter their house, that was seldom done by Grew and Marilyn, was like going into something that one expected in a hillbilly domain, with clothes scattered everywhere, hung on clotheslines. The odd window was boarded up, and it was dark on the main floor that was at ground level. The smell of wood smoke filled the air, and as one looked around for a place to sit, it was noticed that every chair had clothing on it. Piled boxes of things lay around the floor in no particular pattern. There were narrow passageways between the junk, impossible to get through.

After they were married, living in the country estate, Marilyn had a job in downtown Toronto while Grew still had a job with the same animal hospital that he had started with but was about to move on to another. His job was twenty-five miles from home, hers was much farther.

Across the road from the kennel was a tenant of the Maisons that raised chickens. Charley, the husband of the couple, also worked at the General Motors plant in Oshawa which was directly on a road just east of the kennel, running south about twenty-five miles onto Lake Ontario. They too were an out-of-the-ordinary couple that had grown up in rural Ontario, developing ways to do things that seemed strange to city folks. Grew learned just how different they were when the roof of their chicken house caught fire.

As Grew and Marilyn observed the flames rising above the chicken house from their home on high, across the road, Grew shouted to Marilyn to phone the fire department. Then Grew rushed across the road to help in whatever way he could. The chicken house was about twenty feet long and about ten feet deep and only about six feet high. As Charley and Grew worked frantically, bending as they kept returning into the chicken house, picking chickens from the roost—chickens that appeared to be enjoying the warmth coming from above—throwing them out the door, the fire department arrived.

The fire had happened because Charley had decided that a fire on the roof would melt the snow that had become deep enough that Charley was worried about the roof collapsing. It did melt the snow. Charley was really put out because the fire department had been called. Considering the mind-set of Charley, it is not surprising that he reacted as he did.

There are other stories about the Goodwood area that appeared amidst the time when they lived near Goodwood. There were tales of mixed-up relationships and people searching for some kind of contentment and sexual satisfaction. Eventually, Grew’s own story too became bizarre.

The kennel name was decided to be Chloe. It was a name Grew had chosen years before while passing through Chicago. He had picked up the sheet music to a song called Chloe. The lyrics were those of a wanderer searching the world for the perfect woman that he had designated as Chloe. Chloe was Grew’s personification of perfection. The song has her as a woman. Grew wanted that perfection in his dogs and was incorporated into his kennel name.

They went on to breed a number of excellent German Shepherds that make their mark in the background of breed pillars in North America. They also bred a number of Welsh corgi, that did well in dog shows as well as home companions. One of their own poodles was shown and got points but was eased out of their breeding when it developed epilepsy.

The two of them gave every indication that they were satisfied in their cozy little home. They got through the first winter in relative ease. The dogs were content out in their toilet shed, and in the second year, a litter of puppies was born there and seemed quite happy in the unheated environment. The people used the chemical toilet quickly in the cold weather, and the dogs got used to seeing people eliminating in the other part of their home. Often, the dogs were brought into the house to be enjoyed and to share the comfort or to be studied by guests that occasionally visited. In the spring and summer, those same guests walked with either Grew or Marilyn as they walked in the fields with dogs running free out to the end of the property and beyond into surrounding fields.

They bathed by heating water, then standing in a two and a half diameter tub and washing. They had a small TV across from a pullout couch in the living room. There was also a table and two chairs in the kitchen, a counter to prepare food on, and an electric stove. They had a small fridge that had been picked up secondhand from somewhere. In the bedroom, there was a double bed. Everything was secondhand and very little was owed, except they had traded in the old Ford for a Volkswagen Beetle, paid for on time. The wooden floor that had been put in they covered with tiles, so altogether, they considered their abode quite comfortable.

Grew was always searching for water on the property. At one time, he had hired a well-digging company to come in and dig a well, but since their equipment was limited, they gave up at sixty feet. That hole became their garbage depositary. Farther down the hill on the lowest point in the land, Grew started digging on his own. He gave up at about eight feet, leaving it for another time. Another spot would gather water during a storm so he tried there—same result, nothing.

One day in the spring, Grew watched from outside the door of the house as a Volkswagen raced around the curve in the road. The car went out of control as Grew watched, and suddenly, it was airborne; it had gone into and end-over-end summersault. It made about three turns before it landed right side up right next to Grew’s failed water hole.

Grew called into the house for Marilyn to call 911 as he started down the hill to check out the accident scene. At first, he didn’t see a driver, just the car beside the hole. Then he heard a voice coming from the hole, Hello up there, watch where you step. I’m down here.

The driver had stepped out of the car right into the eight-foot hole. Good thing that the hole had no water in it. He was drunk, and the police took him away muttering. The car was hardly damaged, and it is not known how the driver made out. The next day, the car was gone.

While they were driving to work one Friday, Marilyn told Grew that she was bringing a girl that worked with her home for the weekend. The pullout couch was able to accommodate a guest, one that was prepared to rough it. Grew had no problem with the idea, but when he met the girl, he was astounded at her beauty and personality as they set out for home. He knew at the time that he would have to be careful with this girl; he had previously seen the jealous nature of his wife pop to the surface. Years later, Grew would wonder, knowing the way Marilyn was, why she would have brought such a girl home. Was it a test? He wondered about the sleeping arrangements and the primitive toilet. He knew though that he would have enjoyed seeing more of this girl.

It was snowing as they started off from the city. As they proceeded to the outer limits of the city, they ran into heavier traffic; the snow was becoming heavier. No one was getting up the hills. They spent a lot of time in the car telling stories, laughing, and joking. Grew thought the road was okay but as they went farther, the weather got worse, so bad that it became difficult to get the young lady, Joanne, anywhere near her home; she had planned to stop there.

They decided it was better to drop her off and leave her if they could even get that far. After Joanne left, Marilyn made it quite clear that she was disturbed over the attention Grew had given to this girl, who was single and unattached. She knew well enough that she should have expected it. She was always making comments that Grew kept turning and looking at girls as they drove. Marilyn was still upset, but they had another problem: where would they stay? And what about the dogs being on their own? It couldn’t be helped. They did find a bed at the home of one of their Toronto friends.

The next day, as soon as they could, the two of them set of with the Volkswagen. They were able to get within five miles of home when they were confronted by a large drift across the road. No one was driving through that. The drift as was high as the telephone poles. Grew had rubber boots on, and she had snow boots on. They decided to walk the rest of the way. As they walked along, there were places that were almost bare, then they would come to one of those high drifts. Hand in hand, they climbed over the drifts, when one of them would sink through the crusts, they would lay flat together and wiggle their way forward until they felt safe to try walking again.

Several hours later, they made their way to the snow-covered door packed with snow up to the roof. With gloved hands, they dug at the door until they were able to get in. Inside, they found it quite warm. Immediately, both of them headed for the door to the back shed where they found the dogs happy to see them. They had been able to get through their outside swinging doors and appeared in good shape. Their water pails were not frozen and not empty, and there was still a bit of dry food left from what had been left with them.

The house heater had worked well on low, and although the house was covered with snow, they were satisfied that it had withstood the storm exceptionally well. With all the dogs, they fought through the snow dunes back in the property, taking them all for a romp in the snow-covered land. The dogs seemed to love plowing their way through the white landscape. The Corgis make their way under the snow while the German Shepherds plowed their way through or over the top.

The following week, Grew had visited Marilyn at work, and for some reason, she was not there. Joanne, who was about to go out to lunch, was quite willing to go with him as he too needed something to eat. He talked to her about getting a gift for Marilyn but, in reality, was coming onto her. It was something that Marilyn had always picked up on. Grew had lived to twenty-seven years without seriously getting involved with a woman and was used to being free to carrying on conversations with whoever he chose.

At that time, Marilyn responded by taking it out on Joanne, the innocent, even though Marilyn had not been at her workplace because she was out to lunch with a male coworker. She withdrew within herself at work, not cooperating with other staff. Grew felt that he was never quite able to deal with or smooth the damage done from her previous experience with the father of her baby. Marilyn lost her job over her attitude with the rest of the staff.

Earlier, she had befriended a man from work and had given him glowing reports on Corgis, information she got from Grew; she had helped him import a corgi from England. When that one grew up, Grew had also arranged for the breeding of this dog, and for all the help given, the man had given them a pup which was the start of their corgi breeding.

Joanne had struck Grew in his emotional need, maybe even awakening thoughts of Judy. Marilyn, although she was not aware of Judy, knew there was something not right about the Joanne relationship. Marriage did not provide the answer she had expected. Perhaps Grew felt he had been pushed into marriage, although he had adjusted well and was content with what his life had become. He was confused himself about his feelings for Judy. The impression on him of this new beauty, Joanne, with a personality to match, brought it all back to him, but he never saw her again.

It didn’t make him happy. How was he to deal with what he saw as Marilyn’s over control of him? He was not used to being controlled. It was not life he was satisfied with, something was missing, but at the time, he could not admit it, certainly not to Marilyn. His devotion to a lifestyle with dogs was compatible to life with Marilyn. His experience with women before Marilyn had been minimal. He had spent a lot of time in the wilderness and didn’t suppose his family upbringing with one sister helped his understanding of women. He could remember sitting by while his mother counselled his sister on the evils of men wanting to steal her virginity. Marilyn was not from the same ilk; she was sexual, yet her overpossessiveness only worked to push him the wrong way, giving his very independent nature a feeling or excuse of being restricted and not trusted. He discovered, in time, that those who trust no one are usually not to be trusted themselves

Chapter 2

Marilyn’s Story

Grew Tuckett sat at his desk, going over notes he had made on his computer years before. As Grew perused his notes, he thought how he had become so involved with dogs in the first place. Why had he not known where the next step next was? In those days, like so many young men, he didn’t seem to have a plan. He decided it was just the way it was meant to be, moved like a pawn from one square to the next, and he would just have to live with whatever fate brought him. As he read through his notes about the place he had dubbed, because of the promiscuity Good would, the memories did not return in order; they moved through his mind as they would. The notes triggered other memories and thoughts about how it all went down. Recalling it all was not always pleasant, but the memories became vivid, bringing it all back.

Grew had met Marilyn at the dog training at Fort York Armories. She had a Miniature Poodle that was a picture of enthusiasm, doing all the training exercises with precision. Sammy was such a happy working dog that everybody was noticing him. In one obedience trial, Marilyn and Sammy had defeated the woman who had a lock on high scores in obedience trials. Sammy could not be missed, but Grew also noticed the young lady that was almost part of the dog.

Marilyn was not a classic beauty, but in some ways, she tried to be. When Grew first became aware of her, she had bleached blonde hair, almost a white blonde. It was something that to