Tank is a German Short Haired Pointer. Since he was a little puppy, he has reminded me of a brown-and-white baby deer, all legs. The dog is fast – very, very fast. But when he hits the hardwood floors at my daughter’s house, it’s like watching one of those videos of a newborn horse trying to walk. Although he’s been around for at least a year, the Tank still has plenty of puppy energy and usually appears to have the intellect of a small pebble.
He’s a loving dog, and he fancies himself to be a lap dog. He starts by snuggling up to you for a head pet, moves closer with the front paws and then tries to put his giant body on the chair or couch with you. It’s like trying to fit a Volkswagen Beetle in a baby crib, but worse than that, he is not allowed to be there!
Tank loves to eat the extremities off the girls’ baby dolls, and, if even the smallest window of opportunity opens, you will find him romping in the garbage as well. One could only describe him as a well-rounded puppy with multiple culinary interests.
His buddy, Chipper, is a very laid back, chocolate lab, only a few years older than Tank. As a casual observer, the only thing I can say is that it’s a good thing that Chip is a lab because any other breed of dog would have gotten so fed up with this puppy’s constant harassment and interference that Tank would have been history.
When I spend time with Tank, it brings memories rushing back into my mind of my junior high school teaching days. Sometimes the house sounds and feels like the same chaos that I endured when 185 band kids would be locked in the room with me waiting for dismissal the day before summer vacation.
This week was different, though, it was a new kind of chaos, the kind of chaos that happens when a snake crawls down the isle of an airplane. You see, Tank is a hunter. Even when he was knee high to a butterfly, Tank used to stand on the porch frozen in his point position for every song bird in the yard. As fate would have it, the big boy has moved on and is now creating new, exciting experiences for his entire family.
Because Tank’s natural instinct is to hunt, he has begun hunting alone, and this weekend he reached what can only be described as a forte in self-directed hunting. As I approached my daughter’s house, I saw a white streak with brown spots running toward me with what appeared to be something large in his mouth. It was a teenage bunny. After the screams of the kids and their mother, their dad carefully removed the trophy from Tank’s mouth and disposed of it.
The very next morning, he was standing on the porch with yet another rabbit, and he was overwhelmed with pride. The front porch was beginning to look like the opening scenes from “Saving Private Ryan,” the beaches of Normandy. Well, the piece de resistance occurred on Saturday when I heard Tankey begging to go outside at 5 a.m. As I opened the door for him, I expected to hear the Hounds of the Baskerville in the heavy fog outside. Tank ran away like the Road Runner.
When he returned a few minutes later, he ran past me at the speed of light. As he entered his owners’ bedroom, the screams rang out from the rafters. These were the kind of screams that usually occur right before a funnel shaped cloud hits your house. It was then that I realized that the Delivery Dog has struck again. The fog had been too thick to see his entrance, but obviously it was dramatic because this time, Tank delivered a bird to his mother’s side of the BED!
