In the above picture was my sister
Sue’s dog Buddy. As mentioned in many previous missives, I have always liked
animals and for the most part they have always liked me (other than most cats
when I was very young). This story will highlight one of the rare exceptions.
Buddy was a stray dog that originally hung around
Heckleman’s Sohio station. Since he was
becoming a nuisance at the station, they gave him to Sue who readily adopted
him. This surprised me because I thought he belonged to Gene “The Machine” (as
we called him) who worked there. The two became inseparable and Sue had a real
emotional attachment to him. Because of that, to me that was a made to order
target for me to tease the dog. In the first place, I called him “Leeman” just
because Sue didn’t like that name! Every pet she ever had I would call
Leeman the 2nd, 3rd, etc., etc. The one “button” I found
to “push” to get Buddy really aggravated was to use my hand like a pistol and
making shooting noises and pretend to “shoot at him”. This made him bark and
growl at me incessantly! I figured that someone must have taken real shoots at
him at some point in the past and this caused him to react as he did to “gun
shots”. I would do this almost continuously and kept him in a state of anger
just about constantly. I was also very gifted keeping most humans in a state on
anger as well. This was no doubt in response to the fact that I couldn’t beat
up on Sue as much as before because Buddy would attack me! Sometimes I would
use guerilla tactics, do a hit and run tease at Buddy and Sue. The problem was
it was hard to outrun a dog and he would usually bite me in the leg during my
rapid flight away from him. Whenever that happened Sue would cheer and go
YAHHHHHHH! Over the years I had so many leg and ankle bites that my legs could
have gone to a masquerade party as a pincushion! Since he was a stray and
probably never had any rabies shots, it’s amazing I didn’t develop rabies and
go insane. (Hmmmm, maybe I did; which would explain a lot of things…)
Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly one of Buddy’s favorite people! In fact, as
far as I can recall, this was the only one of the many dogs we
had as kids that didn’t like me. (Hmmm, I wonder why???) This resulted in me
really getting ticked off and to be even more determined to get away with
teasing using other evil tactics. One of my favorites was to get home from
school before Sue, untie Buddy from his doghouse, and hide him somewhere. When Sue got home she would usually be
frantic calling for Buddy and having me say that he ran away or got hit by a
car and killed, or whatever. Sue always seemed to believe me, which always
befuddled me since I did this most every day! Since these days the “shoe is on
the other foot” and I always worry about the cats getting hit in the road, it’s
amazing Sue doesn’t come and sneak out one of the cats and hide it and say it
got run over or something just for pay back from earlier years! I guess that
speaks to her character now. (Hmmmm, I wonder what it says for my
character???) J
