Memories of Sandy (not that one)
Jul. 6th, 2021 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblog...or, Why I REALLY hate neighborhood fireworks.
I will post remembrances of our sister Sandy later this month when her 82nd birthday comes around, but this entry brings back memories of another Sandy I knew from almost as young an age.
She was a collie, or perhaps a Golden- accounts in my brain vary- and she belonged to a family around the corner where my mother and hers were close and I became friends with Timmy, who was about my age. Dogs back then were not the all-consuming cultural Thing they are now. We never had one, with my father once, before my time, talking about bringing one home and Mom, aka scared-of-dogbites Dorothy, actually put her foot down for once and wouldn't allow him to do something he wanted. Many of those who were around the neighborhood were untrained, loud and nippy Big Dogz, like Charlie the German shepherd around the corner and Duke the Doberman a few blocks down. In general, I took my cues from Mom and learned to fear most of them, but Sandy was just too sweet and cuddly to get scared of.
Until one year right after July 4th. This was likely pre-K, so I was something like four years old. The next time after that I went over to play, Sandy was locked in the basement. She'd freaked out after a particularly pyrotechnic blast of neighborhood fireworks and bit Timmy or one of his sibs. I never saw the dog again; whether put down or out to pasture somewhere, I can't remember. Not long after, his mom and mine got into an argument over something or other and Raymond just didn't get to go play at that house anymore.
The Internet being the Great Detective that it is, I have Timmy's phone number. He moved around Long Island for any number of years before now settling in Frisco, Texas. They still lived in that house until at least 2005, when mom deeded it to the kids, who sold it in 2012 for close to a quarter of a million bucks. I imagine it's now worth twice that.
::goes, checks::
$483,715
I hope they have a good dog guarding it....
To this day, late-night blasts of cherry bombs and whatnots piss me off, and I suspect it goes back to the loss I felt over a dog that wasn't even ours. We never had one there, and other than a brief experiment with a puppy in one semester of college where we gave up and gave him away to a family with plenty of acreage (me: "now he's got 40 acres to chew"), I never had one until we made our first rescue in 2001. Tasha had definitely been neglected and probably abused before we found her at the pound, and Fourth fireworks made her totally on edge. We've been luckier with the two since then, who seem not to be bothered by them, but as I read the posts every year about friends' pups cowering in cellars and cuddled in thundershirts, I just have to ask: is it THAT important for you to make so damn much noise when you KNOW it makes dogs crazy?
I will post remembrances of our sister Sandy later this month when her 82nd birthday comes around, but this entry brings back memories of another Sandy I knew from almost as young an age.
She was a collie, or perhaps a Golden- accounts in my brain vary- and she belonged to a family around the corner where my mother and hers were close and I became friends with Timmy, who was about my age. Dogs back then were not the all-consuming cultural Thing they are now. We never had one, with my father once, before my time, talking about bringing one home and Mom, aka scared-of-dogbites Dorothy, actually put her foot down for once and wouldn't allow him to do something he wanted. Many of those who were around the neighborhood were untrained, loud and nippy Big Dogz, like Charlie the German shepherd around the corner and Duke the Doberman a few blocks down. In general, I took my cues from Mom and learned to fear most of them, but Sandy was just too sweet and cuddly to get scared of.
Until one year right after July 4th. This was likely pre-K, so I was something like four years old. The next time after that I went over to play, Sandy was locked in the basement. She'd freaked out after a particularly pyrotechnic blast of neighborhood fireworks and bit Timmy or one of his sibs. I never saw the dog again; whether put down or out to pasture somewhere, I can't remember. Not long after, his mom and mine got into an argument over something or other and Raymond just didn't get to go play at that house anymore.
The Internet being the Great Detective that it is, I have Timmy's phone number. He moved around Long Island for any number of years before now settling in Frisco, Texas. They still lived in that house until at least 2005, when mom deeded it to the kids, who sold it in 2012 for close to a quarter of a million bucks. I imagine it's now worth twice that.
::goes, checks::
$483,715
I hope they have a good dog guarding it....
To this day, late-night blasts of cherry bombs and whatnots piss me off, and I suspect it goes back to the loss I felt over a dog that wasn't even ours. We never had one there, and other than a brief experiment with a puppy in one semester of college where we gave up and gave him away to a family with plenty of acreage (me: "now he's got 40 acres to chew"), I never had one until we made our first rescue in 2001. Tasha had definitely been neglected and probably abused before we found her at the pound, and Fourth fireworks made her totally on edge. We've been luckier with the two since then, who seem not to be bothered by them, but as I read the posts every year about friends' pups cowering in cellars and cuddled in thundershirts, I just have to ask: is it THAT important for you to make so damn much noise when you KNOW it makes dogs crazy?
I know, right?
Date: 2021-07-07 11:31 am (UTC)