The Pittsburgh Press (January 10, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
ALBUQUERQUE – We have a dog. A brand-new dog.
The whole thing was sort of fantastic. That Girl said one evening last fall that she’d like a Great Dane. She said that if she ever had a dog it had to be a big one. She said the only trouble with a Great Dane was that it wasn’t big enough. She said what she’d really like to have was a dog as big as a horse.
So we talked a while along that line, and then she said that if she couldn’t have a dog as big as a horse she’d like a “toy” dog so little you could hardly see it. She is a woman of terrific extremes. She said she’d read in a magazine that they now have toy shepherds so tiny you can put one in a shoe. She said one of these would serve the purpose.
So when I went to Washington recently I inquired around about toy shepherds. Finally we tracked our desire down to its lair. and over near Falls Church, Va., we found a whole kennelful of toy shepherds.
Well, it turned out they weren’t little enough to put in a shoe. They weren’t little enough to put in a rubber boot, or even in two rubber boots. But they were pretty little. And they were mighty sweet. So I said okay, wrap one up. I’ll take it.
I left by plane the next day. The dog was delivered to me at the airport by the kennel people. They had it in a nice lightweight wooden box. I said “Hello dog,” and we both got on the airplane and flew away.
A dog has to go in the baggage compartment, so I couldn’t see her on the way. But the captain came back two or three times and told me she was doing fine and didn’t seem scared. He said that as a matter of fact dogs are good fliers, but that cats and monkeys are terrible. They get airsick.
Due to various stopovers, we were a week getting out here. The dog and I lived in hotels and the homes of friends; we traveled on trains and in autos; we were stacked by big dogs and frightened by strange people; we had weird experiences by the score and digestive disturbances by the thousand.
Probably no dog has ever flown so far and seen so many people in her first week away from home. Our eastward journey was an epic and a torture, but I’ll have to tell you all that some evening sitting before a fireplace.
When we finally got here the poor thing didn’t know whether she was a dog or a flywheel, and she had the shakes and the shivers something terrible. But she had nothing on me. I was shaking, too, with anxiety that That Girl might not like her. For after all, she was neither as big as a horse nor as little as a shoe.
Dog turns family into idiots
But I needn’t have worried. For the new owner took to the dog in such colossal fashion that I’m in a jealous rage. I don’t get any attention at all.
The dog has by now wrought an outstanding change in our lives. Why is it that two purportedly sane people, suddenly confronted with dog ownership, actually turn into simpering idiots, and drool and burble and talk baby-talk until they have to sit and laugh at themselves in their clearer moments?
We get practically sick at our stomachs when the dog’s nose gets hot, for we are sure she is dying. Her refusal to drink milk with an egg in it causes long and serious conferences. If she runs around sniffing at things, we know she is to have a fit. If she lies down quietly and goes to sleep we are positive she is just about to have a stroke.
We try to force water down her when she doesn’t want to drink. If she gets a burr in her foot we whine and carry on more than she does. If she doesn’t want to come in the house from her play, we figure that she hates us, and we sit in self-reproach.
Twice I have corrected her in the most apologetic fashion, yet I slunk around for hours afterward as though I’d been caught pulling the wings off flies.
‘Didums hurtems footsy-wootsy’
And buy things? Why, there wasn’t a day for the first two weeks that I didn’t spend at least two hours downtown haunting the stores looking for dog things. I’ve bought rubber rats, rubber bones, plastic bones, rubber balls, cloth balls, wire combs, rubber combs, leather leashes, chain leashes, flea powder, dog-bath soap, three dog books, dog biscuits, dog mattresses, canned dog food, hamburger, two dog magazines, and have clipped a coupon in one of them and sent away for two more dog books and a sack of cedar dog-bedding.
And the damn dog won’t play with her rubber rats and won’t lie on her dog-mattress and won’t eat her dog biscuits. All she wants to do is either sit on our laps or else get out in the big south lot and scamper and play all day and half the night.
Actually the other night That Girl, who should have been snug in her convalescent bed, was out there in the yard in the cold moonlight of 2 a.m. playing catch-the-ball with this beast, just because it woke up and seemed restless in the house.
Yes, it’s wonderful to own a dog. I’m glad I’m on mv way again. If I stayed here another month I bet I wouldn’t have an ounce of sense left.
For when a grown man finally winds up sitting in a chair saying “Ohh didums hurtems poor little footsy-wootsy oh me oh my blub blub blibber,” then it’s time he’s getting out.
So goodbye, dog, I’m going before it’s too late. That’s the way I’m solving my dog-idiocy problem. That Girl will just have to rassle hers out in her own fashion.