A DOG part 1

I had a frayed childhood. Youngest and fairest of five, I had no say. I wanted to watch Princess Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring - Howdy Doody's  girlfriend. No amount of whining could make my brother Johnny budge from The Tex Pavel Show. Older brother, Walter, left me for the seminary when I was five. 

He told me thirty years later that I had cried and that he felt bad.. "Too late" I told him.

 My sister, Katherine, a licensed psychotherapist, giggled when she announced that Santa Clause didn't exit. What did she know?

Luckily my parents were loving, and there was my best friend my "Pal" a hound dog mutt with character.

 To be an artist, one must have a God-like sense of power, at least while creating. With Pal, who was privileged to have his own arm chair in the living room next to the radiator, I had control. I taught him everything he knew. "Sit."and "Shake." and also told him my gripes while sitting on the warm floor beneath him.

My teen-age years were far more shallow. I only thought about boys. I had a part-time job at the local library and took a liking to poetry. I read and memorized poems at night. Rarely opening a text book. That irked my parents, for I was now in a private school, but I think they figured that I was incorrigible. 

FAST FORWARD 1981

I'm in my early thirtys, back from Paris and a painter with some accomplishments and travel. As for boys, boys, boys, I figure that I've been disappointed too often and lied to in every

language, so I head off for the A.S.P.C..A. 

There, I found Ruby, among many howling contestants. The tag on her cage said "lost in the Bronx". I gave the custodian thirty dollars for this pretty mostly boarder collie. The used leash was

included. We walked home in the snow she looking up at me every three or four trots.  

Ruby had been abandoned and feared the same fate for her next fifteen years. Her last seven years she spent in Paris.

Lucky for her with all the good sniffs and the tolerance the French have for their canine.

Unlucky for fluffy white poodles , and their mistresses.

They were not her brand. Must have been something from her puppyhood.