My husband and I are big-dog people. Wait, that doesn’t sound quite right. That is to say, we are not people who are also big dogs; we just prefer them over small ones. Although I do have a rather long snout and whenever my husband hears the metallic pop-shhh of a freshly opened can of Natural Lite, he does exhibit classic Pavlovian responses—wagging tail and excessive drooling.
Throughout our long marriage, we have always been owned by male German shepherd dogs, so I never thought I would ever consider having a little, yappy, ankle-biting dog. A dachshund. A female wiener dog. Actually, I didn’t consider it; little Sweetie was part of our inheritance, left to my husband and I by my late mother-in-law, Betty.
After losing her aged poodle Ginger, Betty was susceptible to the charms of almost any brown-eyed, fur-bearing creature. She awoke one morning to the sound of a small, filthy dog barking in the back yard of her home. One of the street people in our town had deposited the matted, flea-ridden mutt over Betty’s back fence and had gone off to do whatever street people do during the day. I suppose he intended to retrieve her at day’s end. But, after a trip to the vet’s office for a check-up and shots, and a much needed bath and shave at the groomer, little Sweetie was now recognizable as a long-haired dachshund. Her former owner did return for his dog several days later but my feisty mother-in-law refused to give up her new companion.
The rest of our family was glad that Betty and Sweetie had found one another, but after having big dogs for so long we really didn’t warm up to this new addition right away. I mean, she yapped and she was a non-stop face-licker—I couldn’t stand it. I never had a dog that burrowed under the covers to sleep or needed stairs to reach the furniture (in her later years.) That must have meant I was a big-dog snob who merely didn’t recognize the virtues of this little dog. She tried with all her might to be liked and we all just tolerated her.
