Bonnie

The Big Finn didn't know that I have a dog. Let's remedy that with an introduction. You can't watch the game if you don't know all the players.



This is Bonnie. We also call her Bonbon, Little Girl, Schmoops and when she's bad we call her Fräulein (Nicht so, Fräulein!). She's a mixed breed...something or other.

I've always had pets and when I moved to Germany that need to have a pet didn't change. My MIL had a little spitz named Tina but she didn't feel like my pet. Plus Tina was freakishly attached to my MIL.

In 2001 I finally talked B into getting a dog of our own. We wanted one from an animal shelter but small, apartment-sized dogs aren't always easy to come by. Aunt Annoying saw a photo of Bonnie in her local newspaper saying she was up for adoption at a shelter in a nearby town and told us about it and we immediately called for them to hold her until we could get there.

Bonnie was a street dog. She'd been running free in a neighboring village for about three months in the dead of winter before she was picked up and taken to the shelter. She was just the right size for us and all we needed to do was get her, pay her bail and sign some papers.

When my MIL and I got to the animal shelter we saw her in the same open area with much bigger dogs. She was painfully thin, filthy dirty and frankly, not too attractive. She was still quite young - probably just under a year old - and her fur and little Schnauzery beard hadn't filled out yet. And she hardly had a tail. Tail docking and ear clipping isn't normally ever done by vets in Germany so it meant that someone had done it at home themselves or perhaps her tail had become caught somewhere and had been torn off. Either way, it had to be painful and to this day Bonnie is extremely suspicious of anyone coming at her with a comb or scissors or a syringe.

She wasn't very attractive - not my idea of a cuddly pet - but one look into her eyes told me I'd found my dog.

From the beginning Bonnie's been both a joy and a pain in the neck. At first she wasn't too crazy about Tina but Bonnie learned to tolerate her once she figured out that Tina wasn't going anywhere. I figured that being a street dog would make her hard to housebreak but somehow she came to us housebroken. To this day the only time she's ever made a mess inside was when she was terribly sick and simply couldn't help it. Bonnie's a bit of a barker too. She's rather territorial and when she hears another dog bark she can't help but answer. Luckily in our new apartment building she's the only dog so the barking has lessened considerably. Bonnie hates to be bathed - the one time I attempted it she nearly bit my arm off - but we have a fearless groomer who gets her reasonably clean...except under her chin. You can only get so close to those snapping teeth. Pulling ticks off of her has to be done by stealth and taking her to the vet is a nightmare. It's nearly impossible to get a muzzle on her and the vet usually needs two assistants to give Bonnie her shots.

But Bonnie is wonderfully faithful. She's not always very friendly to other dogs but what dogs she does like she adores and she's really crazy about people. Pet her once and she'll remember you always. Give her a treat and she's practically yours.

She's got a few quirks as well. Maybe it's from her days of living on the streets eating anything she could manage to find but she's bad for eating paper. White paper. A stray tissue is like a gourmet meal to her. She's not terribly fond of meat except for poultry - feeding her dog food with beef or liver or lamb is a waste of time. She won't beg for your dinner but if you're eating a piece of cake she wants her share. And what she's really crazy for is rice, pasta, and vegetables like peas or carrots or green beans. I've seen her snub a piece of bratwurst and nearly knock you down to get your green beans.

Bonnie loves to watch TV. She'll sit on the sofa next to you and watch it like she understands it all. We figure that she believes it's a window because sometimes when something rushes by on the screen she'll run to the real window to see if she can see it again. However, having a TV addict dog isn't always so good. She hates to see other dogs on TV and will bark her head off and sometimes there are commercials that she hates for whatever reason - usually she hates the music or there's a dog in the commercial. She could be in another room but if she hears the commercial on TV, she starts to bark.

Over the years Bonnie became a shared pet. It started when my MIL had a summer house with a large fenced yard. My MIL would spend six months of the year there and she'd occasionally take Bonnie for the weekend so she could play all day in the yard. The next year she spent more of the summer there. And when fall came, Tina died.

We never thought that Bonnie would take it so hard - they often ignored one another all day long - but Bonnie missed Tina so much that my MIL had to put pictures of Tina in places where Bonnie couldn't see them because else she'd sit in front of them and whine. My MIL took Tina's death very hard as well. She was used to having someone with her in the mornings and late evenings and having a little dog around kept her from feeling lonesome. At that time we lived in the same apartment building as her and after a few weeks I suggested that Bonnie stay with my MIL overnights and be with us during the day. It worked out wonderfully. My MIL had someone with her and I didn't have to be the one to get up at dawn to walk the dog.

My MIL now lives a few blocks from us but our system still works. Bonnie's over there in the mornings, she comes over to us around noon and my MIL picks her back up in the late afternoon. Bonnie's virtually never alone - we have her during the day when my MIL is often out shopping or hanging out with her friends, and then my MIL has her again in the evenings when she'd normally be lonesome without a little buddy there with her. It also affords my MIL the opportunity to travel. When Tina was alive my MIL could barely go anywhere for more than a few hours because Tina cried constantly but it's completely different with Bonnie. As long as she's with one of us, she's home.



And you know over the years she's gotten much, much cuter.