By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 1993, The Syracuse Newspapers
With the children long since grown
and out of the house and with the grandchildren far away, our
dog Fala has become our little boy. He acts like a typical kid,
pouting when he can't get his own way, showing off when he wants
attention and putting on a bark-and-moan routine when he is jealous.
He also knows all about Christmas.
To a little kid like Fala, Christmas
is a time for toys. Scotch terriers wouldn't know what to do with
tricycles and dolls, but they have a pretty good notion about
the importance of see-through plastic bags that squeak when you
bite into them.
That was the lesson we learned last
year, when we had hidden a squeaky dog toy, still in its display
bag, in the back of one of our closets. It was in a box on the
floor of the closet.
It's not possible, in human terms,
for Fala to have known that we had hidden his Christmas present
in a box, in a bag, in a closet. But in dog terms, we must have
put the equivalent of a sign up over his feeding dish saying,
in terrier language, "Squeaky toy is located down the hall
and in the closet, in a box near the corner. Go for it!"
So he did. And one day, long before Christmas, we found him strutting
around with a new squeaky-fuzzy toy in his mouth. The bag was
still in his mouth, too. In fact, the toy was still in the bag.
So what do you do when one of your
kids finds his Christmas toy early and unwraps it? You read him
the riot act, right? And then you let him keep the toy.
People who say that dogs really can't
understand people-talk are wrong. They know exactly what you are
saying. Fala sat there and listened while he got the full treatment.
Of course, like all little kids,
what we said and what Fala heard were two different things. We
told him he mustn't open up his toys before Christmas ever again.
We told him about the importance of surprises and the virtue of
patience. What he heard, however, was something like this: "Darn
it! Blah-blah. Where'd you ... blah-blah. Don't ever ... blah-blah."
So this year we got smart. My wife, Nancy, bought him another
squeaky toy and hid it on a high shelf in that same closet. It
was in the same kind of see-through bag, and it still made that
silly noise right through the bag. But this time the little squeak-hunter
would never find it.
A week later, I was about to leave
for work when a little black form appeared under my feet. It was
Fala, telling me he wanted to go out. Usually, he looks up at
me and says something in dog-talk, but this time his head was
down, pointing away, and he seemed to be carrying something in
his mouth.
I thought no more about it and went
on my way. Later, when I came home and called him to come in,
he failed to appear. I knew he was out there, because I had heard
him barking at a squirrel while I was walking into the house.
But as soon as he realized I was home, he put on a disappearing
act.
This was so unlike Fala that I got
worried. Was he ill? Was he injured? Was he stuck under the fence?
He finally came in, his head still down. Why didn't he want to
look at me? A squeak provided the answer. We found Fala later,
off in another room, happily chewing on a new toy—his Christmas
toy, the one in the closet, on a high shelf. He had been playing
with it all day, hiding it from us and feeling guilty when he
knew that at last we were going to find out.
Parents among you will know right
away what we did next. We gave up. No scolding, no fretting and
no more guilt for the little guy.
We know what we have to do next year.
We'll wait until Christmas Eve, while he's asleep, to bring his
present out of the car. But we'll never know how this dog with
three-inch legs ever got that toy. Did the box get knocked down
during cleaning? Did he jump five feet up to the shelf? A kid
would know. But to grownups, it will always be a mystery.
technofile:
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