The Black Marshmellow - Part V

Today, Charlie has a difficult time getting around, as he suffers from hip displacia. (Imagine both of your hip bones acting like a rickety rocking chair as you walk.) Nonetheless, he still has the same heart of that little puppy we brought home from the pound 11 years ago. When I come home to visit, he will make the trip out to see me, and still wag his tail the same way he always has. When I was 15 I had a void, and didn't know it. Charlie filled that void. He was just about the only constant I had as I went from adolescnece into adulthood.

The Black Marshmellow - Part IV

Charlie was a an enigma. I wondered sometimes if a three toed sloth had actually gotten mixed up with a litter of puppies. He would spend most of his time rolled up in a ball on the basement floor, where it was nice and cool. That is why we called him "The Black Marshmellow". Charlie was the biggest softy you have ever seen. If another dog got aggressive with him, he would just shrug it off, and next thing you know they would be friends.

This is the enigmatic part: Charlie was hyperactive when he was anywhere in nature. Bring him on a camping trip, and he run around and peruse the forrest, zig zagging his way around the mountain side. As we hiked he would bolt back and forth across the trail like sewing machine running a pattern. We would find tufts of fur around the front yard - the presumed remains of an innocent bunny rabbit.

Charlie was probably the most stellar sight around water. Whenever we would go to the lake, he was the first one in. While we were all carefully stepping in, and going to the "male halfway mark", Charlie, (possibly because he had his male halfway mark removed surgically), was crashing into the water head first. We would grab on, with our arms around his chest, as he would pull us to shore.

The Black Marshmellow - Part III

Two weeks later we were still trying to figure his name. My older brother wanted to name him "Elwood" after the infamous Blues Brother. We tried it out for about a day, but it just wasn't working. A few days later, my little brother and I were with the dog upstairs, when I spun around and blurted, "Charlie!". It was perfect! I don't know where it came from, was it devine inspiration? All I know was that my little brother quickly responded, "Yeah! Charlie!". Our little dog even responded with perky ears so as to say, "Sheesh you dopes! It's about time! I've been waiting for two weeks!"

The Black Marshmellow - Part II

The first couple of days were tough for this new, fuzzy little puppy. In fact, we first set him down on the carpet, he lifted up his chin and howled at the ceiling. Poor guy. That was the first time I noticed the white tuft on his chin, and the white streak going down his chest to match. It made him look like he was wearing a little tuxedo.

Our little friend really warmed up the first time he discovered Doritos. It was on a Saturday morning, and I was just watching the cartoons, and eating my typical teenage breakfast, "Cheesy Nacho" Doritos. Our little puppy waddled over to me, and politely sat down on his haunches. He studied me carefully as I drew one chip at a time from the crinkly bag and put it in my mouth. This is the first time I had the little guy's interest; before this it was all about hiding and sleeping for him. I sadistically found it a little bit amusing to see this new little guy crave something. After a little while of doing this, after I lost interest in my sick little game, I decided to give him a chip. He immediately scarfed it down, and I saw his little tail wag a little bit. I gave him another, and his tail wagged even more. I gave him a third chip, and his little tail went into a full frenzy. A friendship had formed.

The Black Marshmellow - Part I

In a tribute to one of my best friends, I'm going to write a little bit about my dog Charlie. I'll do it in installments, as much as I feel like, because you really could write a novel about him.

Sometimes you don’t know you have a void in your life. You go around thinking you are perfectly fine, but have no idea that if something changed, some little new piece was added, everything would be so much more meaningful. You may have built up a tolerance to an aching pain you have, and after years of living with it, one day you discover a remedy, and now it feels like you have a new lease on life. For me, my pain was lonliness, and the remedy came in the form of a floppy eared Labrador – Springer Spaniel mix, named Charlie.

On a cool summer’s day, my mother took me, along with my little brother and sister to the pound in hopes that we would find a puppy. I did not come to this decision easily. Years before we had a dog. She was a fiery German Shepherd mutt, who was too smart for her own good. She devised numerous methods for breaking out of our yard, some of which included digging under fences, chewing through chain link fences, and even climbing trees. Her life came to a sad end, in a pound, when the law determined, correctly, that we just could not contain her.

I did not want to make the same mistake with our next dog, if we even got one, that is. I read book upon book, learning all about the things we had done wrong with our previous pet, and what we could do to prevent those mistakes if we got a new one; until I finally felt comfortable to take another under our care.

The pound was a cacophony of dog barks, wines, and whimpers. A plethora of shiny large eyes glared in our direction as we guiltily walked by looking for that eight week old puppy we had come for. In a corner kennel, was a pure bred English Springer Spaniel, with 5 black little puppies waddling around beneath her. Just like I had learned from one of the dog books I had read, I snapped my fingers around each black little head, and took notice of which one was most attentive. One of the five seemed to have a magnetic draw towards us, as he scuttled on the slick concrete floor towards us. He’s the one we took home.