Growing up, one of our family vacations was a trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Sparks, Nevada. Getting there produced some of the most memorable moments because we piled two adults, three kids, and two dogs into one car. One of the canine members of the clan was a nasty little Schnauzer that bit some member of our family at least once a month, occasionally alternating to terrorize guests. I generally remember my father having occasion to cry, “Wilbur, you dirt bag!” about every six months or so.
Typically, Wilbur yelped for the first half hour of the four hour ride, racing back and forth across the backseat my sister and I shared, digging his nails first into the flesh on my bare legs, and then into my sister’s. The yelping, it should be noted, did not resemble gentle ocean lapping sounds. It was piercing and high pitched, sort of like a chipmunk being strangled. This plagued every trip until, in my teenage years, we discovered that if I ran Wilbur around the block for ten minutes before the ride, he’d be gasping for breath and unable to do the dying chipmunk impersonation. The trade off was that the whole car reeked of dog breath, but at least everyone’s blood pressure remained at moderate levels.
My mom always brought snacks on these trips, most always popcorn. We fed the burnt popcorn to Wilbur. Once after Wilbur had ingested a few too many burnt popcorn kernels, he mysteriously jammed his nose against the blaring air conditioner, blocking the rest of us from receiving any air. It was a bit comical for a few seconds before his motives became clear. Immediately every window in the car went down, heads hung out the window, and the cursing of Wilbur commenced. Apparently Schnauzer digestive systems don’t do so well with burnt popcorn. After this malodorous, traumatic incident, you’d think we would have lain off sharing the burnt popcorn with Wilbur, but no. There really was no learning curve, and the incident repeated itself on every subsequent car ride.
I had this favorite toy that I would bring with me. It was a little radio with a microphone attached. As American Idol had not yet been invented, it seemed like a novel gadget. I brought it along with us on one of our trips, and my brother used it to conduct a science experiment delving into the origin of Wilbur’s constant growling. Wilbur did growl continuously. Even when he wanted to be petted and loved, while you were showering him with attention and loving words, he was growling. It was a strange compulsion that years of therapy would not have been able to undo. At any rate, Wilbur was growling as per normal, and my brother held the microphone up to his mouth. Nothing. Then he shifted the microphone to Wilbur’s nose, and would you believe the growls were magnified. It was quite an interesting realization for small children. We all yelped with delight and Wilbur, who was a very intelligent dog, upon hearing his magnified growls, became aware that he was being made fun of. This only prompted him to growl with more anger and ferocity, which in turn was magnified, and our whoops of laughter increased.
From Wilbur’s perspective, I see his torment. Like most sad and angry people, he wanted to be happy but was trapped within the body of a curmudgeon. Annoyed by his own incessant, compulsive yapping (as not even the producer of such sounds could escape annoyance), humiliated by the microphone toy, and continuously fed food that made him produce an excess of methane—it does, in the retelling, sound pitiable. To think that my family thought we were the ones being tortured by these long car rides!
Typically, Wilbur yelped for the first half hour of the four hour ride, racing back and forth across the backseat my sister and I shared, digging his nails first into the flesh on my bare legs, and then into my sister’s. The yelping, it should be noted, did not resemble gentle ocean lapping sounds. It was piercing and high pitched, sort of like a chipmunk being strangled. This plagued every trip until, in my teenage years, we discovered that if I ran Wilbur around the block for ten minutes before the ride, he’d be gasping for breath and unable to do the dying chipmunk impersonation. The trade off was that the whole car reeked of dog breath, but at least everyone’s blood pressure remained at moderate levels.
My mom always brought snacks on these trips, most always popcorn. We fed the burnt popcorn to Wilbur. Once after Wilbur had ingested a few too many burnt popcorn kernels, he mysteriously jammed his nose against the blaring air conditioner, blocking the rest of us from receiving any air. It was a bit comical for a few seconds before his motives became clear. Immediately every window in the car went down, heads hung out the window, and the cursing of Wilbur commenced. Apparently Schnauzer digestive systems don’t do so well with burnt popcorn. After this malodorous, traumatic incident, you’d think we would have lain off sharing the burnt popcorn with Wilbur, but no. There really was no learning curve, and the incident repeated itself on every subsequent car ride.
I had this favorite toy that I would bring with me. It was a little radio with a microphone attached. As American Idol had not yet been invented, it seemed like a novel gadget. I brought it along with us on one of our trips, and my brother used it to conduct a science experiment delving into the origin of Wilbur’s constant growling. Wilbur did growl continuously. Even when he wanted to be petted and loved, while you were showering him with attention and loving words, he was growling. It was a strange compulsion that years of therapy would not have been able to undo. At any rate, Wilbur was growling as per normal, and my brother held the microphone up to his mouth. Nothing. Then he shifted the microphone to Wilbur’s nose, and would you believe the growls were magnified. It was quite an interesting realization for small children. We all yelped with delight and Wilbur, who was a very intelligent dog, upon hearing his magnified growls, became aware that he was being made fun of. This only prompted him to growl with more anger and ferocity, which in turn was magnified, and our whoops of laughter increased.
From Wilbur’s perspective, I see his torment. Like most sad and angry people, he wanted to be happy but was trapped within the body of a curmudgeon. Annoyed by his own incessant, compulsive yapping (as not even the producer of such sounds could escape annoyance), humiliated by the microphone toy, and continuously fed food that made him produce an excess of methane—it does, in the retelling, sound pitiable. To think that my family thought we were the ones being tortured by these long car rides!
