Mark’s Bark #2

To my amazement, I was asked to provide some more thoughts on Dogs. But this time, instead of a rant I thought I’d tell you the story of Ivan the Terrible, the devil dog, the hound from Hell.

In 1990 we had a pointer named Ivan. I think people often stick to the same breed of dog, providing they liked the first one. Ivan was our first dog (me and the spousal unit), and for a long-married couple who don’t have kids, he was like our child. Unfortunately, like many first time dog owners, we thought that Ivan would just figure out what we wanted. That didn’t happen at all. In fact, when we finally realized we needed a dog trainer and got one, a wonderful guy named Jim Keenan, he was appalled. Ivan, our 6-month old pointer was actually growling at us. And we had him from a puppy! He promptly went to work on Ivan, holding him in his arms upside down when he growled or showed acute alpha dog tendencies. This baby-in-your arms thing worked great, and Ivan soon realized that Jim, not him was the alpha dog. That worked really well for Jim, but not particularly well for us, although Ivan did quit growling at us. However, at 70 lbs he still dragged us down the street and people we passed were often heard to comment, “Hey, who’s walking who?” He also “hoovered” anything he could. Without going into detail, I can tell you that many of the things he got in his mouth, which I, of course had to get out of his mouth, were truly disgusting! So the first couple of years with Ivan were not that great but we expected him to settle in eventually.

This did not happen. He became leash aggressive. He would see another dog on the street and lay down. Typically the other dog was huge, a giant boxer or rottweiler, or Great Dane. Then, when the dog got close to him, he’d leap at them, held by the leash but growling fiercely. Of course, if you know pointers, you know they have no fight in them. So it’s kind of like the friend you have as a kid who always is “gonna kick some butt” and has to be held back. “Lemme at ‘em, Lemme at ‘em” he’d shout, knowing there was no way we were going to let him get anywhere close to the other dogs!

I should probably interject that at 8 months Ivan got hit by a car. He never should have been off lead in the Madison Square Park, there was no enclosed area, and the trainer had told me that pointers have a tendency to bolt. During those rainy day times when I’m sitting around thinking about the best and worst things I’ve ever done, this always comes out at the top of the worst list. Anyway it was a beautiful spring day and he was being good and wanted to play with the other dogs so badly, and I didn’t take my eyes off him for a second. But bolt he did, flying out of the park at 24th street on those impossibly long pointer legs and with me in hot pursuit. It was ridiculous, trying to catch him. Apparently, from what I learned later, he came back to the park looking for me and I was chasing around the streets looking for him. So he left again and got hit by a car at 24th Street and Park Avenue. I found him lying in the gutter. The car that hit him had not stopped and no one had even noticed. He was screaming and I was screaming and there was a lot of blood.  I took off my coat to use as a stretcher and got him into a cab. Of course, the driver told me he wouldn’t take the bleeding, screaming, howling dog. But, after I told him that I would kill him (and this is really true) if he didn’t shut up and drive the damn cab to the Animal Medical Center in 2 minutes, he reconsidered. At that moment, I was legally insane. I ran into the AMC crying and screaming that my dog was dying and they really jumped to it. It turned out he had a collapsed lung and his right femur was snapped in half. Over the course of two weeks they were able to re-inflate his lung and put a contraption with pins on the break and put him back together, sort of. They really wanted to cut the leg off. Unfortunately, my lack of knowledge about how well dogs recuperate and get on with their lives after that kind of amputation and my stupid pride in not wanting a maimed dog made them keep the leg and put pins into it to hold it together. Over the next five or six years he had multiple operations to remove the pins that were now moving around as he grew. Then he had pneumonia. Then his right canine tooth grew upward, with the tip ending in his nose (I still have it-so gross) which had to be surgically removed. This was not a lucky dog and we had no idea so many things could go wrong. I had a physical therapist coming to the loft 3 times each week, working with his injured leg. I took him to a swimming pool and held him while he swam (poorly) to give the injured leg exercise. And eventually it did heal, although he never had full use of it.

…..to be continued