My Pets

Probably compared to most people I've not had a lot of pets over my lifetime. But they few I have had made some lasting memories worth sharing.

The earliest pet experience would be my grandfather's parakeet whose name was Johnny. I remember hearing Johnny declare often, "Johnny is a pretty boy!" Yes, you can use the stereotypical parakeet voice when you read that. The first pet I remember our family having was a beagle with long ears named Lady. I have only one memory of Lady. I'm maybe three or four, sitting on the back steps of the house, and Lady runs up to me and starts licking.

It wouldn't be until I was about eleven when we got our next pet. We lived in Ridgecrest, Louisiana, and a family in the church had a puppy to give away. This puppy was a mix of Doberman and Catahoula Cur, medium brown with black splotches much like the look of Scooby Doo, and a tail only about six inches long. I came up with the perfect name for our new member of the family ... Dozer. See, the family who gave us the dog was Danny and Rose Garner. "D" for Danny, "oz" for Rose and "er" for the end of Garner. Genius! We lived at the end of a rural street in a neighborhood with no leash laws, so Dozer could run down the road and across fields, anywhere his adventurous spirit would take him. We had a special call that guaranteed his return home. We would step out in the yard, cup our hands to our mouth and call to the top of our lungs in a falsetto tone , "Eeeeee! Eeeeee! Eeeeee!" Something about that long "e" would catch Dozer's ear and he would come running. We could spot him afar off heading at full run because he know it was time to eat, or play, or something worth coming for. Dozer was a master of avoiding taking his medicine. He would keep a tight jaw if you tried to slip a pill down his throat. If you mashed the pill inside his food or even left overs, he would eat the food carefully leaving the pill in the bottom of the bowl. Another thing Dozer avoided eating was peas. We regularly gave him table scraps, and if the content of this food offering contained peas, no matter how mixed up the scrapings were, you would come back later to find a dog dish full of cleaned peas. Dozer was a well behaved family dog and I don't remember a bit of trouble out of him.

I've never cared to have furry creatures inside the home. After high school and a year in college, I was back home when my parents bought my sister a Toy Puddle. Having gone eighteen years with no inside pets required some adjustment having a four-legged creature scurrying about. T'Jean wasn't one of those super hyper dogs like many of that breed can be. He was pretty clean and wasn't too destructive, except for my sheep skin rug that one day looked like it contracted the mange. T'Jean probably thought the only word I knew how to say was, "No."

The only pet I felt suitable for inside were the ones in my fish tank. It was after Terri and I started dating I decided to set up my first fish tank. We drove from Haynesville to Magnolia, Arkansas, to a pet store to get the set up. I placed the ten gallon tank on a stand made of planks and painted milk crates, added the pebbles for the base, a plastic plant and a hot pink and purple rock with holes for the fish to swim in and out of, filled it with treated water and deposited my new pets in their artificial habitat. The next morning I was excited to feed my aquatic pals, so I turned on the light, flipped the lid open with a clack, and sprinkled some tasty colored flakes on the water surface, expecting the fish to swarm to the surface like a school of parana. But they did nothing of the sort. The swam around as if nothing had happened, like no food was dangling overhead. I watched in disbelief, saying, "You've got to be hungry. Eat your food!" Nothing! I thought, "I bought the dumbest fish at the store." It took a couple of days before the fish learned the routine. See, I think one of those flakes, as it waterlogged and started to sink, brushed the lip of one of the fish and he licked his lips and thought, "Hey, this colored flake is delicious." Soon he and his buddies were excited for feeding time. I would turn the light on, click the lid open, and the fish would immediately rise to the top smacking at the water surface in anticipation of the colored flake rain about to descend upon them. I've used this as an analogy many times in sermons, writings and teaching, as an example of how we should react after we taste and see that the Lord is good. We begin to wait with hungry expectation for the blessings of the Lord.

There are many lessons we can learn from fish. Compatibility is important. I learned early on that you cannot put a cichlid and beta in the same tank. The cichlid, which was yellow and black in honor of one of my favorite bands Stryper, will eat all the fins off the beta and it will sink to the bottom and die. Why can't they all just get along? A rainbow shark was always a favorite of mine, with its charcoal gray body and redish orange fins, and can be very territorial. He could hold his own against the cichlid, and they would race around the tank in a frantic chase.

The fish tank followed me to El Dorado after Terri and I married. I added a couple of fiddler crabs to the line up and enjoyed watching them crawl around. The bigger of the two, whose circumferance legs and all was only that of a quarter, I named Toby. One day I was sitting in the living room when something caught the corner of my eye. Toby was scurrying acrose the carpet having somehow achieved freedom from his aquarium environment. I scooped him up and returned him to the tank with a stern scolding. A day or two later I noticed Toby's absence and a quick search found him enjoying a stroll in on the carpet. It was perplexing how Toby could be escaping, so I staked out the habitat to see how this mini Houdini was finding his freedom. Well, this little crustacean genius climbed up the plastic plant, to the very top, and launched himself off, flapping his legs as if they were wings. He flapped and flapped, and guided himself toward the water filter tube that hung down the side of the tank, lodge himself between the tube and glass and commenced to shimmying up until reaching the top, then slipped through the opening and dropped to the floor. I was impressed, and even a little proud to have such an enterprising pet, but I had to take measures to stop him so he wouldn't get mistaken for a spider and find the bottom of a shoe. Well, one day Toby disappeared and as I searched I moved a pile of clothes to find Toby legs up under the laundry. Naturally a spiritual parallel can be found here as well. Often the things we feel represent freedom can really end up being the death of us.

I abandoned keeping a fish tank for about twenty-five years and around 2017 decided to install a twenty gallon fish tank in my new work office. It can be relaxing to look over and see them swimming around leisurely with not a care in the world. On Life Group nights, the fish seem to be a hit with the kiddos.

When Chanda and Jamin were little we thought it would be a great idea to get a dog. I had a guy I worked with who raised pure bred Dalmatians. I love the look of these fire station staples, so I took advantage of the opportunity to bring Dallas home to the family. I built him a pen and a house. He was a playful, fun puppy, but as he grew he proved to be too much for the young children, so after about a year I gifted him to a friend.

Our next dog acquisition would be around 2000. We purchased a pure bred Border Collie, beautiful black coat with a white cape and white socks, with light brown down one of his front legs. We named him Bravo. His birthday just happened to be October 18, the same as Terri's birthday and the birthday of LaDonna, my sister. He was a brilliant dog, but had some peculiar ways. We had a six foot dog-eared fence bag yard, and he would chase cars along the road from inside the fence, but not in a straight line. As he ran, he would spin in a circle as if he were taunting the car's slow speed with his antics. He loved to play catch. I wish I could say it was catching frisbees, like those Border Collies you say taking flight to grab a soaring flying disc. Not so much that, but he would sit and allow me to toss a ball, or even a frisbee, in his direction and he would catch it. Taking him for a walk was a challenge because he had to be on a leash to keep him from running off. He would not heel, but would strain at the end of the leash, choking and gagging as we went. If he would have just walked casually with me it would have been much more pleasant for both of us, but he didn't have the patience for that.

He loved his people, though. You could see it in his eyes when he looked at you. But he was a little moody, too. When we would have to go out of town for a couple of days I would just make sure there was extra food and water. When we returned home, we would walk into the back yard where he would be laying in his house with his head on his crossed paws. No greeting. No, "Glad to see you," wagging tail. He wouldn't even lift his head, just cut his eyes in your direction as a visual display that we had abandoned him for too long and he didn't appreciate it one bit.

The biggest battle with Bravo was keeping him in the back yard, We lived in the city, so dogs couldn't be free to roam. Border Collies are natrual farm dogs and have a inherent desire to run through the field and herd sheep. The dog-eared fence proved to be no match for his quest for adventure. Digging under the fence was the first practice to thwart. I had to plank the inside of the fence to make the dig wider. Not enough. Eventually I had to build a ten by fifteen dog pen to keep him in because containing him in the greater yard was impossible. It didn't take him long to dig out of the pen, so I had to line the inside fenceline with concrete pavers. One day the pen was empty, the yard vacant. Bravo was gone. He would be gone for three days. We would receive calls from people around town who would get close enough to read his tag and call, yet they wouldn't hold him so we could come get him. The story was always the same, "He just came up to us and was so friendly." Finally, one street vendor had the presence of mind to hold onto Bravo so we could drive to the location. We drove up, opened the side door of the Plymouth Grand Voyager van and he bolted right into the van as though he was tired of adventure and was ready to go home. As we pinpointed the addresses on a map that each of the callers had contacted us from, we noticed he had made a giant circle around the city, even crossing North West Avenue twice (the four lane main road through the city.) The final location where we picked him up was only about a mile from the house as though he was making his way back. That was the longest adventure, though he had been gone multiple days before and came home on his own. So how was he getting out of the pen? It was six feet tall with no breaks, concrete around the inside to prevent digging. Well, we found he was climbing the fence and dropping over the top. I took additional chain link fencing and with electrical copper wire lashed a top onto the pen making the cage completely fenced. Even after this Bravo was found outside the enclosure. One day I watched from inside the house discretely and saw him climb up the corner of the fence and with his teeth nipped and pulled at the wire until he untied enough to push through the top. It was man verses beast in this battle of wits to keep Bravo contained.

These days I find it easier to feed my fish and not get too attached to them. Maybe in this phase of my life I just don't have the energy for that level of care giving. Who knows what season the future holds.