When I was small, we had a dog named Mingy. Some of my very, very, very earliest memories are of Mingy. Standing up on his hind legs (which were, I shit you not, no longer than an upright marshmallow) peering into my bed.
With his one good eye. His other eye was blind and was a beautiful milky blue color.
Mingy is the dog that introduced me to animal love. Immaculately bred and exceedingly well mannered, he was a dog that would rather die than shit in the livingroom, and would hardly even lift his head even though there may have been a battery powered Tonka truck furiously entangled in his tail fur.
There was only one time Mingy misbehaved. And it was a DOOZY.
3 doors down from our house lived the Bell family. They were wonderful neighbors to My Mom and I, and let me tell you, I will never forget it, either. Being wonderful neighbors was never more obvious than when they let us hide out at their house and sleep in their own master bedroom when my dad went and threatened to kidnap me. For real. It was serious, then. My Mom joked years later that we should have just laughed because had he the balls required to carry out a kidnapping, he still would have had to take care of something other than himself. And that, was not something my dad was really ever capable of. Imagine, My Mom said, how funny it would have been had he actually gone through with the kidnapping, only to bring you back the next day?
Nevermind, he would have had to get past Wayne first. But that's a whole 'nother story.
In the eyes of a small child, the Bell's were the absolute height of civilization. They had a sunken livingroom and a cavernous blood red bathtub with a light inside it. Oh, how I loved that bathtub. I would pretend to have to pee just to go in there, lock the door and stare at it, sans interruptions. They also always had bread and Crystal Lite on account of their having kids and Bonnie's diabetes. The dad's name was Wayne, who in addition to loving Alice Cooper, had the BIGGEST BOOMIN' VOICE I had ever heard. But all he ever did was laugh, so that BIG VOICE, although startling, was always good to listen to. He also did a wickedly accurate Donald Duck impersonation. Which, I bet I begged him to do no less than 8 million times. Bonnie, the Mom, was a tiny little firecracker of a woman, who never failed to remind me that she held me when I was thiiiiis big (holding out her hands about 8 inches apart) and was also best buddies with My Mom. We lived in a small town full of small minds, and Bonnie and My Mom were like the rebel Moms. Constantly updating eachother of life events, and forever trashing the other neighbors. It was fabulous. If they weren't having coffee at eachother's houses, they were on the phone. From 3 doors down. But, I digress.
The reason I believe today that animals are intuative, and instinctively know who to trust when they are in trouble - is because of Bonnie. More animals deposited themselves on her doorstep, and more kittens found themselves in her basement than could even reasonably be considered coincidental. Because somewhere, deep down, animals knew Bonnie would care for them and NOT throw them in the dugout like our other neighbor, Reynold Belitsky would. Bonnie was a SUCKER for animals of every kind (not just cats and dogs), and allowed her kids, Derek and Dawn (who were both so shiny and perfect it HURT), to bring home the Pense Elementary School's pet guiney pig over school holidays.
One day, shortly after the guiney pig was brought home by the two angelic Bell kids, my mother putzed over to the Bell's (as per usual) to visitquick with Bonnie. As they both stood in the doorway, Mingy, who was always no more than a few steps away, sniffed something unfamiliar inside the door.
To hear my mother tell it, Mingy then proceeded to turn into the devil himself.
Bolting past Bonnie's size 6's, Mingy darted through the kitchen, down the hallway, past the bathroom with the red bathtub, and into Dawn's bedroom.
Before Bonnie and My Mom even got there, he had the guiney pig out of the cage, and with one furious shake of the head - killed that guiney pig dead.
My dog offed the school guiney pig.
Thankfully, it was only another 7 years before we moved and I finally escaped the stinging comments at school about being a coldblooded guiney pig murderer.
My Mom laughed about it years later and said "You can't blame a dog for being a dog".
And that, is how my love of animals all began.
Lucky, me.
Lise
Inertwine Design + Communications
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