Pet Stories III

Well this series of Pet Stories will have to be split into 2 or 3 sections; otherwise the blog stories will be too long and cumbersome.....So to start:
This section on pets is about Fritz, a German Shorthair Pointer

We bought Fritz first, he was a cute little thing with long legs and big ears and about 12 weeks old. Dave fell in love with him, and that was that, we had a dog.
We were living in California at the time and liked to go for rides in the Mountains on weekends. One weekend we put Fritz between us in the front seat of the truck. Since we like to camp and travel, we thought it would be a good idea to get Fritz used to the vehicle. So we decided to take one of our favorite trips on the Angeles Crest Highway.

Now, if you are not familiar with this highway, it is in the San Gabriel Mountains and also goes through the Angeles National Forest. So, you have a 2 lane road (one lane each direction), that has a lot (I mean a lot) of s-curves and switchbacks, and has very beautiful scenery.........The trip started out fairly uneventful, it was a beautiful sunny day, and Fritz seemed to be doing well. As we traveled down the road we encountered more and more switchbacks and fairly tight s-curves...

I had my hand around Fritz's tummy kind of holding him in place on the seat when I started to feel these strange movements against my hand......Too Late! I yelled to Dave to stop at the next pullout we came to. Dave did, but it was too late! Fritz was so very sick! To make matters worse, I was trying to push Fritz out Dave's side of the Truck and he was trying to push Fritz out my side of the truck! Just when you think it can't get worse then having a puppy 'heaving' all over the front seat of the car......His bowels gave............Needless to say, it was a rough 3 hour trip home.

Fritz never fully recovered from that trip; anytime we went anywhere, he at some point was 'car sick'. One of the worst was when I made a 60 mile trip to a German Butcher's called Schreiner's. I had grown up going with my dad and sister to visit this butcher. They knew exactly how thin to cut the meat for Roladen (My favorite German dish). I was going to make some and wanted to revisit my childhood memories of this shop. I took Fritz with me (Why? Momentary loss of sanity? I don't know....). Fritz was great the whole trip there; we pulled into the parking lot and stopped. Then it happened, however, I was unprepared for his getting sick on me! I mean 'On' me....I had learned my lessons in the past so had a roll of paper towels in the truck. However, I am sure they couldn't wait to get rid of me due to the melding scents of perfume and Fritz's breakfast.....Oh well, the Roladen was great!

I tried various concoctions from the vet to help with Fritz's weak stomach, without any success. The best we did was to give him about 2 tums or pepto bismal tablets before we got in the vehicle........Because Dave had to go out of town soon after we brought Fritz home, Dave likes to swear that I traded his 'good' dog for 'Fritz'...

Fritz was quite the clown and stinker, and therefore has provided me with a wealth of short little stories to share with you. Here are a few of them:

One Christmas, I kept finding these little balls of foil on the floor. I finally took one apart and found it was the wrapper from a 'Hershey kiss'. I told Dave to stop throwing the foil on the floor and he informed me that he wasn't doing it....
Then I made a discovery, I happened to 'catch' Fritz very carefully pulling a 'kiss' (by the little paper ribbon) from out of the bowl on the coffee table. Chewing on it until he got all the chocolate out and then spitting out the foil. Needless to say I moved the bowl out of his reach.

Then there was the electric blanket incident. Even though we were in Southern California, the nights do get chilly, so we had an electric blanket in the winter that had dual controls. One night the blanket stopped working; we figured it died because the warranty was up (isn't that usually what happens?!). The next morning I went under the bed to unplug the blanket, what do I find? The cords were chewed into pieces about 8" long. How Fritz managed to chew through the cords without being electrocuted is beyond me.....

Then there was the time that Dave called me at work one morning (he had the day off), and asked me why my slipper was in the cereal bowl on the kitchen counter! Silence on the phone for a minute, mainly due to the fact that I couldn't believe Dave was asking me about this.....I told him, it was probably Fritz; as I wasn't in the habit of putting my slippers into my cereal bowls...
Fritz had this cute little 'self entertainment' trick he did (Dave hadn't ever seen him do it). Fritz loved to take balls, bones, slippers, whatever was in his reach, and he would toss it in the air and try to catch it.....Hence, the slipper in the cereal bowl....

More stories to come, but I need to introduce you to our second dog 'Shilo', because a lot of the funny stories involve the two together. So the next installment will be about Shilo.......