Dogs Are Family Too...One

Let me tell you some stories about dogs.  Let's start with a Siberian Husky named Princess.  When I was a preteen we raised Siberians.  Princess was our first breeding bitch.  She wasn't all that pretty but somehow she threw great puppies.  One of her pups finished well up the working class at Chicago back in the 1960's.  One of her first litter, Racecrest Bandit was the breed standard in Canada for several decades. But Princess was dear to me personally for several reasons.  She once chased a squirrel up a large tree about 15 feet vertically up the trunk before she realized she could not defeat gravity.  When I was in Grade Four, she took a litter of 5 pups on a field trip past the window of my classroom.  I got out of school for several hours while I rounded up Princess and the puppies.  Made me famous for almost a week.  Lastly, our whole family swore that Princess spoke English.  She could even spell.  She considered my Mother's car her personal means of conveyance.  That car was not allowed to go anywhere without her.  If someone tried to make plans about a trip in the car.  She would immediately go to the door and wait.  We often spelled things we did not want her to know and after a while even that did not work.  She was my initiation into smart dogs and she was the beginning of our breeding line for Siberian Huskies.

My wife DJ and I got a Siberian from my Mother's line we also called Bandit after the first Bandit who had passed on.  We took this dog to Princeton with us as I finished up my engineering degree.  He was forever placed on the honour role for his contributions on spring day in Kingston NJ.  Back in the early 1970's there was a movie out called Thief.  The basic idea was that a burglar robbed houses during the day when everyone was at work.  This is DJ's story.  She was home alone upstairs in the two story house we rented 100 yards up the road from the Kings Inn (where I worked when I wasn't in class).  A man came in our house and was calling several girls' names up the stairs.  My wife stuck her head around the corner and said "No, what is that you want?"  He said he had dropped off several girls at our house a couples of days ago and they had invited him to come back anytime.  My wife explained that there was no one at the house by those names but he continued up the stairs.  Just then, Bandit stuck his head around the corner.  Bandit had a silly habit.  If you wiggled your fingers at his nose then he would play snarl and act like he was thinking about biting you.  Bandit was a long haired Siberian.  To the uneducated, he looked like a wolf.  DJ and Bandit came down the stairs and past the guy with Bandit nibbling on DJ's fingers.  She kept walking to the kitchen and the man followed.  Bandit sat beside her as they chatted.  DJ suggested he check at the Kingston Post Office as the older ladies up there knew everyone and everything.  He left.  My wife locked the door and called me at work.  To this day she remembers Bandit fondly. 

As the kids got bigger we yearned for another dog.  But that's another story...