Never Judge a Book By Its Cover Nor a Dog By Its Breed

Jean Bevis

The first dog our children had was a cairn terrier—you know, the Wizard of Oz dog. That’s how the breed is always identified, but not all of them resemble Toto. Ours was shaggier, longer haired, blonder; actually, she was called a "brindle", but she was really a strawberry blonde with charcoal highlights. As she matured, she looked as though she’d been dipped in a dye bath and all its color had dripped off except for what stained her tail, her ears, and part of her muzzle.

We chose her from a litter of puppies when they were six weeks old while the breeder anxiously watched the three children to detect any meanness or tendency to tease. They didn’t demonstrate either, only complete affection and gentleness, so she granted us the privilege of buying Meg.

The children named her Meg, short for nutmeg, since she was close to that color then. She had dignity, even as a tiny pup, and an eagerness to please from the beginning, allowing my daughter Ann to dress her in doll clothes. She would sit dutifully in a little red wagon, originally intended for dolls and Teddy bears, patiently waiting to be pulled around the house. She looked only mildly stressed when clothed, always in compliance with whatever Ann selected for her wardrobe. Ann petted and cooed and loved her, so Meg wouldn’t have considered jumping from the wagon and fleeing. Probably her favorite place in the house was Ann’s room, where there was a fish bowl with three goldfish cruising around and around, providing hours of entertainment. Meg not once tried to tip the bowl—watching was enough, ears at the alert, neck arched in attention. The two boys romped with her, enjoying her comical antics and her racing around the large fenced yard at such a speed that they worried she might misjudge distance and crash into a tree at full tilt.

After one distasteful experience with burying a small bone outside after a rain, necessitating a bath to cleanse four very muddy paws and face, all her Milkbones were "buried" in corners in the house, carefully "dug" with her paws scratching as fast as they could go. The bones would be quite deliberately placed, surroundings checked to make sure no one was watching (although we often were), and then the laborious "covering" would begin, with Meg swiping her face from all directions repeatedly over the carpet, which she apparently imagined was dirt, toward the bone. All the fur and whiskers on her face looked combed and slicked back against her head by this time. She would often return to the site to assure herself that the bone was safe and still there, sometimes deciding to move it to a better place, repeating the whole ritual. Occasionally, she would eat it within minutes, looking quite satisfied with her own resourcefulness.

We bragged on how well she understood language, recording all the words she obviously knew; eventually we found ourselves spelling some of them to avoid unnecessary excitement or anxiety (vet, bath, etc.).

Little Meg died when she was six, on a cold, rainy October day, in the vet’s office of a congenital kidney problem, the same day our six-month-old Oldsmobile was stolen, and we hardly missed the car in our grief. Had the cairn who followed her been our first cairn, we probably never would have mustered the courage to own a second. While Meg was an angel, the next one—almost a twin in appearance--was totally the opposite, a furry little devil with four legs. Meg, with an instinctive need to please everyone who loved her, responded as well to a frown as to the word no. If there is a doggy heaven, she’s a cherished resident there.

The second cairn, Nibs, would have been in a detention home, had she been human, by the time she was a year old. We drove with her in a tall cardboard box directly from the kennel to the vet’s office across town, with her jumping and yipping the whole way, hardly stopping to breathe. The vet’s reaction to this feisty ball of energy was, "Well, you certainly have a livewire here. She’s not going to be a carbon copy of that sweet Meg," truly prophetic words.

She was totally without conscience or remorse for her misdeeds, which were legion. When I opened the refrigerator, she immediately tried to climb onto the bottom shelf. When I opened the dishwasher, she was there, her compact little body struggling to hoist itself up. If a shoe, purse, glove, or cap was left within her reach, she grabbed it and ran, regardless of how unmanageable the size or weight was for her. We finally had to forego using paper napkins at meals, switching to large cloth ones to grip between our knees when she tried to make off with them. Having Kleenex or handkerchief in a pocket was as enticing to her as waving a red flag at a bull; she knew how to open a woman’s handbag, zippered or snapped, so guests had to be warned. The basement door had to remain closed because she learned to wait at the base of the clothes chute for select items of dirty laundry, socks and underwear, which she would later present to family or guest at inopportune times. The vestibule door remained closed, as well, when mail disappeared as soon as it came through the slot; she terrorized the carrier, grabbing it from his hand when she could, snarling deceptively with a BIG dog sound. We found bills and bank statements in her favorite hiding place, under a skirted wingback chair in the living room.

Nothing dismayed her—ranting, scolding, clapping hands together. She never flattened her ears or flinched or tucked her tail between her legs—no shame ever, not once in her sixteen years. She slept in our bed, learning that should one of us leave briefly, she could appropriate the vacated pillow. Conditioned to her way of thinking, I took my pillow with me; however, my husband regularly dealt with defiance until that fateful night when she nipped him as he tried to recover what was his. That was the end of her reign of terror; she was thereafter confined to the kitchen at night, under duress. Getting her there was always a challenge, but I won.

Obedience training was a fiasco and complete frustration for the trainer who trained the owners. Nibs knew how to intimidate him without blinking an eye, probably damaging his professional self-esteem forever. I didn’t attend the graduation exercises with her, wishing to spare the man that final night. He called me to inquire why we didn’t appear, saying that two other dogs, probably stunned into passive behavior in Nibs’ presence, had chosen to act out, nearly wrecking what might have been a peaceful evening for him.

I often commented that if Nibs ever learned to behave, I would worry about her health. This didn’t come to pass until she lost her hearing and was becoming blind. We loved her greatly, in spite of it all. She knew how to make us laugh, even after these many years. After a long and rowdy life, she died, uncharacteristically, quietly in her sleep. We know she isn’t with Meg.

 ©Jean Bevis, August 2003