Pooch Cafe by Paul Gilligan for May 22, 2009

Poncho, that’s what happens when you show compassion.

No good deed goes unpunished…

Oh no Poncho!

Ut Oh!

Ten minutes, Poncho. Write out your will.

Ha Ha Love it! Now Poncho will come up with a solution to this problem.

Maybe it’ll involve his board.

IT’S NOT A BOARD, IT’S A PLANK! Its name is “Plankie”…

When I was a kid, we had a dog who chewed through a supposedly-unchewable nylon mesh leash in about ten minutes flat. The cut was as clean as if it had been done with a razor. This same dog, a dachshund/beagle mix about 10 inches at the shoulder, figured out that he could climb a 4-foot storm fence inch by inch, letting his weight continually draw it down until it was almost horizontal. Too smart for his own good, that dog, but not smart enough to outthink traffic on one of his escapes (his last one, obviously).

Our next dog, a collie/retriever of some sort, could simply jump over that same fence from a standing start (she’d get scratches on her belly, but no other harm). But once she got free of the back yard, all she was interested in was sitting under the tree in the front yard where she could watch the world go by. She could NOT be coaxed to step foot in the street if she was unleashed, and we got to the point where we didn’t bother with the back yard at all. We’d just open the front door and let her enjoy herself. Best dang dog I ever knew. (Can you believe this site bleeps “d*mn”?)

Fritzoid, your collie/retriever of some sort could have been an English Shepherd. I didn’t know I had one when I adopted a “border collie,” who had also been called a “rottweiler/collie mix,” until I found http://www.englishshepherd.org/

Best Dogs Ever.

She wasn’t that, but those do look like great dogs. Maggie was all mutt; medium height, thin like maybe a setter of some sort, short yellow fur like a lab but with feathering on her haunches and tail, white chest, collie nose. Amazing dog. Taught her to jump into my outstretched arms when I came home. She could straight run up the side of the sycamore tree in our front yard (with a running start, not from a standstill), grab a tennis ball from the notch between the split trunks about six feet off the ground, do a reverse flip, and land on her feet.

There’s a Peanuts cartoon where Linus tells Snoopy to fetch a (rubber-tipped) arrow that he’s about to let fly. Snoopy just clamps on to the arrow as it leaves the bow and offers it back to Linus without moving anything other than his head. Maggie’s reflexes were ALMOST that good. Catching treats that were tossed to her wasn’t enough of a challenge, so we’d fling them sidearm PAST her head, on either side. CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP! What an infielder she would have made.

She died of a burst (cancerous) blood vessel when she was only seven. We never got a chance to try and train her for competitive frisbee-catching, but I’ve never seen any of those dogs on TV do anything that Maggie wasn’t CAPABLE of, had we tried to teach her to do it.

Good memories fritzoid.

Once we were out at a lake. The roped-off swimming area was closed because of cold weather, but a lifeguard was present nonetheless.

It was cruel, I know (not to mention littering, but this was 30 years ago and the statute of limitations on this has run out), but when we were throwing sticks out in the water for Maggie to retrieve, we’d occasionally toss a soda can half-filled with water instead. They would remain buoyant just long enough for Maggie to keep them in sight, but sink just before she got to them. Finally, she got so frustrated by the disappearing fetch-objects that she grabbed the buoy line in her mouth and tried to bring it back to shore. She’d paddle furiously and SEEM to be making progress, but she’d reach the point of no more slack, and get pushed backwards.

We started shouting “Drop it, Maggie, drop it!”, but she just kept paddling HARDER the more excited we got. Finally, the lifeguard went out and detatched her from the line lest she exhaust herself and drown, and when she got back to land she just looked so DEJECTED that she hadn’t succeeded in bring that rope back for us.

Of course, once she got her energy back she immediately found a dead crab or something to roll in, so all the way home the car reeked of rotten shellfish. Maggie’s revenge, I suppose, and I can’t say we didn’t deserve it.

OH MY GOD PONCHO’S FACE IN FOURTH PANEL!!!