My Inheritance
by Captain Perry Wrinkle
About this time last year my youngest son dropped his eighteen month old cocker spaniel pup at my house for me to watch for a week or so. He is still here a year later. This dog has a personality. If he were a person he would probably be head of the mafia.
The first thing he did was drive the “damn cat” back home to my other son next door. He then proceeded to drive the rest of the cats out of the neighborhood. He found a tennis ball and immediately trained me and the old woman to throw it for him. He gets up in the morning and bounces that ball against my leg until I get up from the table and feed him.
He knows everything that people say and can hear you even if you whisper. My wife and I like to go out to supper once in a while and if I say “Honey, let’s go out this evening”, he plants himself right in front of my door. The minute we start to put our coats on he begins his little dance where he stands on his hind legs and dances around in a circle and whines. If it isn’t to cold we take him and the old woman always orders some chicken fingers for him. If it’s too cold and we leave him home, he gets in front of the bathroom door, leaves a big pile on the floor for us to clean up when we get home and then hides upstairs. I have rubbed his nose in it and thrown him outside in the cold but it hasn’t changed him at all.
There are a couple female dogs in the neighborhood that go into heat from time to time. Every time this happens, he is gone like a rocket. I have to go get him and drive him home with a stick. I keep him on a rope and he will whine and howl for hours.
He is exactly like my little buddy “Fred” who sometimes helps me work on my boat. Now Fred lives to aggravate people and this dog is an awful lot like him. I even suspect that Fred may be his father or at least a close relation. Nobody has ever been able to change Fred from being the cantankerous way that he is and I have just about given up on the old dog.
They say that he may mellow with age but I’m not looking forward to it. With Fred it has worked just the opposite. There is one consolation to it all, the old woman and I are really enjoying spending my son’s inheritance.
Good fishing,
Capt. Perry Wrinkle