When Ted and I first married and moved away with the Air Force, we both left beloved pets at home. We missed them and wanted a dog. One day Ted came home with a Boxer puppy that some G.I. had sold him for $50.00. For that price I might have sent him back, but I was in love after the first lick.
Ted named him Wuffty Von Arfty Bark. He said the name had to be German because Boxers are German dogs, hence the Von, and it had to be classy because he had papers! I agreed if we could call him Wuffty.
We naively thought the fifty bucks was the last of our doggy expenses but then came puppy shots, ear clipping (in those days you never saw a boxer with droopy ears), special food because of his allergies, leashes, collars and various doggie toys to keep him from eating the house. He was one expensive pooch!One would think that with his classy, German bloodline, his lofty registered name, his AKC papers and all that he cost us, that Wuffty would have been more... well, genteel, but such was not the case. Wuffty was a world class slob!
Not only did he have skin allergies that caused an itchy, stinky rash but he also had the sneezing, slobbering, eye watering kind of allergy. We never found the source of this so he just suffered from it and so did we.
Wuffty slept on his back in an old chair with his legs spread apart, without the benefit of underwear! He snored like an old man. He dug up rotten things, ate them, then threw up his snack on the living room rug. Every summer he had fleas and scratched all night. His favorite chew toy was our shoes and his favorite game was dragging our dirty laundry outside for the neighbors to see.
Our 1955 Plymouth had a fancy air conditioner in the front floorboard between the seats. Wuffty would plant his hundred pound body in-between us with his head on the air vents of this air conditioner. There he'd sleep for miles, blocking the flow of air but still managing to disperse slobber and doggie smells throughout the car. Since Ted did most of the driving and I couldn't move him, we just endured it.One time when we were visiting my parents, my mother cleaned her parakeet cage. She always let her bird, Pitter Pat, fly around the house free, while she cleaned his cage. But this time when she went to find her bird, he was nowhere to be found. On one of her trips through the kitchen she happened to notice Wuffty sitting in a corner with his face to the wall, like a naughty kid. She stopped and studied him for moment then asked, "Wuffty, what's wrong with you?" (Mother always talked to animals like she expected them to answer her.) When he glanced back at her she saw two green feathers protruding from his mouth. Mother gasped, then yelled, "Wuffty, drop that bird! Drop it!" Wuffty ducked his head then obediently opened his mouth and the bird fell out, whole and unhurt, but traumatized and wet. Mother grabbed the bird and headed for the sink to bathe off the dog slobber. While she bathed him, she changed his name to Jonah!
When we lived in Arizona, Wuffty ate citrus fruit that fell from the trees in our yard. We had a lemon tree, an orange tree and a grapefruit tree. He sampled them all then broke out in his disgusting skin rash. He used to sit in our front yard looking longing across the street because he wanted to run across and explore the neighborhood. I would then have to go find him and drag him home, scolding him all the way. So one morning he sat at the edge of the yard gazing at "freedom" with a look that said it all. I was watching him from the window. He looked over his shoulder to see if I was watching, then made a run for it. I hurried from the window to the front door and flung it open just in time to see him crash into the side of a pickup truck in the middle of the street. The concerned driver had stopped and was getting out of the truck. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I couldn't stop in time and he just ran right into my truck!" After examining his truck to make sure it wasn't dented, I assured him the dog was all right and began dragging his addled behind back to the house.
Now before you judge him too harshly, I need to tell you the wonderful side of Wuffty. To begin with, he was a great guard dog. He could be trusted to stay by the side our our new baby, Joel for hours, refusing to move until one of us called him. He walked by our sides without a leash when we went someplace, never chasing off after something. He warned anyone who approached us, with a low growl and bared teeth, that we belonged to him and he was our protector. He understood English as well as I did and was one of the most obedient animals we'd ever owned. He was our loyal, lovable, affable, slobby friend.
On our first tour of duty to Spain, we had to leave Wuffty behind with my parents. By then they lived on the farm in central Texas, so he had lots of running space. A dog could live the good life there and we knew he'd be happy on the farm. He went with Daddy to herd the cows and chase rabbits. At times he came home smelling like a skunk, then would be banished to the back yard for the next week until the smell wore off. Mother dutifully reported all his doggie antics in her letters to us and we could tell that they had a mutual admiration going on between them.
He was usually a very friendly dog and would greet any visitor that came to the farm with a happy whine and gyrations of his backside and vibrations of his stubby little tail. But he had a sixth sense about people. He knew with a look and a scent when one wasn't to be trusted. One evening as Daddy finished up at the barn, a pickup came into the front yard. Mother didn't recognize the vehicle or the driver from her vantage point at the front window, but Wuffty was asleep on the porch so she just stayed inside waiting for the man to get out and approach the house. Suddenly she saw Wuffty run to the pickup barking. He jumped up onto the door of the truck, snarling, and barking like he wanted to eat the man up.
Mother walked into the yard and up to the truck. She grabbed Wuffty by the collar but he wouldn't stop. He strained against his collar, snarling and barking and the man lowered his window a little. He was afraid to get out and as she looked at him she didn't trust him either. His eyes were glassy and his head bobbed as if he were about to pass out. He looked drunk or high and Mother asked? "Are you okay?" The guy mumbled something and Wuffty went crazy again. Mother could barely hear his slurred words over the barking and growling, so she said, "Mister, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to hold this dog off, so you'd better go on down the road." He said something else, that she didn't understand, rolled up the window and backed out of the driveway, leaving her and her crazy dog.
Wuffty slept in an old rocking chair in their living room. It was the same old rocker that had rocked and squeaked and lulled me to sleep as a baby. Like I said before, he didn't curl up to sleep like other dogs, instead he stretched his ample body across the chair from one arm to the other, lying on his back, legs spread apart, snoring like a buzz saw. It wasn't a pretty sight.
One morning he was taking his morning nap in the chair when the Pastor's wife and two Sunday school teachers stopped by for a visit. Mother invited them in and they had to pass through the living room to get to the kitchen where they would be served coffee and cake. As they walked through the room they glanced at Wuffty and began giggling. One of the ladies pinched her nose and said, "I declare, Miz Stanely, I've never heard such noise or smelled such smells coming from an animal in my life! How do you put up with that?"
Mother was immediately offended. She said, "I'm sorry. He had leftover beans for supper last night. We'll just go into the kitchen and let him finish his nap without us." They left the room and Wuffty snored on, undisturbed.
As he grew older, Wuffty began to lose some of his guard dog alertness. Daddy decided to take him one night on his night watchman job. He had a part time job guarding an oil well a couple nights a week to insure that the expensive equipment was safe. There was a guard shack on the property with a couple cots inside for the nightwatchmen. When they got to the site, Daddy laid down on one cot to read until he went to sleep and Wuffty stretched out on the other. Daddy was depending on Wuffty to alert him if someone came onto the site.
About 2:00 a.m. Daddy was awakened by a racket outside. He knew someone was prowling around the well. He whispered, as loudly as he dared and grabbed his rifle. "Get up, Wuff! We have company!" He started toward the door then turned and looked at Wuffty. The snoring hadn't stopped and the dog hadn't moved. Daddy walked over to the cot and shook him and whispered again, "Come on boy! There's someone out there!" Wuffty never opened his eyes. Daddy kicked the leg of the cot then grabbed the dog's collar and pulled him off it. His body hit the floor with a thud and Wuffty stood up slowly, shook himself and without even looking at Daddy, hopped back up on the cot. By the time Daddy got outside a truck was driving away. Fortunately, the would-be thieves hadn't seen anything they wanted, so nothing was missing. Daddy brought Wuffty home the next morning and talked for two days about what a worthless, lazy, good-for-nothing watchdog he was. The story amused Mother and didn't seem to affect Wuffty at all. By that time he was ten or eleven years old, about seventy something in dog years. He was ready to retire.
One morning just before we returned from Spain, Mother went out the back door, heading for the barn to milk. She almost stumbled over Wuffty on the bottom step of the porch. As she stepped over him she exclaimed, "Wuffty, you'd better move! I almost stepped on you!" He didn't look up, which wasn't too unusual because they had long suspected that he was losing his hearing. But as she looked closely at him she realized that he looked stiff. She bent to shake him and felt his cold body under her hand. He had died in his sleep during the hot summer night... possibly of a heart attack. He had gotten quite fat in his old age, eating my parents leftovers and not running as much as he did in his youth. They buried him on the farm and grieved for him for weeks. When we got home a month later they still cried when they talked about him. Wuffty was a good friend who had blessed us for all the years of his life and I still miss him.
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