Spunky and me

I often wonder if we choose dogs because they resemble us or if they come to resemble us because we influence them to do so. For example, I adopted a shar pei/pit bull mix, a little black dog who had the most wrinkled, ugly face I have ever seen. I thought I saved him from extinction because I felt sorry for him, but the more I see him, the more I understand how he resembles me.

I am not suggesting that my face is wrinkled and ugly. Actually it is bearded and ugly. But I am suggesting that the longer I have owned Spunky, the more beautiful he has become. So I wonder if he has become beautiful because he has outgrown me or is he beautiful in his own right and I am the only ugly one in the family? It is not just his looks. He is lean and tending to get pudgy in his later life whereas I have always been pudgy and the thought of being lean is the impossible quest that I will never achieve.

What I am talking about in particular is that Spunky is a nervous animal, afraid of his own shadow and in many respects he resembles me emotionally. For example, the other day he saw deer across the field. He charged off the porch, raced down to the field, sped half way across the field until he realized that he was out there alone. He was out there alone because both my wife, our other dog, Sweet Pea, and I had better sense than to go racing after deer a quarter mile away.

On discovering he was alone, he screeched to a halt, turned to look for reinforcements, and seeing none, barked once or twice just to warn off the deer, then slowly trotted home as if he had done a good thing. When I told him he was a chicken, he gazed at me with innocent, brown eyes and lay at my feet. Now what, I ask you, is the point of arguing with a dog that has a loose connection in his head? Even our vet has said Spunky has some loose wires in his head.

How does this resemble me? Well, for years, my mother told me I was crazy and that something in my head was disconnected. I think she said that once when she found me dangling from the banister of the upstairs hallway. When I told her I was trying to stretch my five foot two inch frame into something like six feet tall, she told me I had rocks in my head. I had read this book that said one could stretch his height by hanging with his hands holding onto a banister and using the weight of his body to stretch his bones.

Needless to say, I did a lot of hanging in those days, especially before a date; even more needless to say, I am seventy-two years of age and I am still five foot twl. On the other hand I do have exceptionally long arms. When I see Spunky running from a fight, I recall the number of fights I have had to talk my way out of because I was five-two and the other guy was substantially taller. A short man learns diplomacy if nothing else.

Now I have more to say about the resemblance between Spunky and me, but I will not bore you with the details right now. Suffice it to say I have not learned whether he has come to resemble me emotionally or whether I chose him because I saw the similarities between us. I must say his self-esteem has heightened after he discovered he was one of the stories in my book, Tears and Tales: Stories of Animal and Human Rescue. He even has his picture on the photo album page of my website, www.krazyduck.com.

I suppose Spunky will want royalties and movie rights if we ever get to that point. Right now, he's content to accept doggie treats and scraps from my left over dinner.

Why 9/11?

Why 9/11?


As I watched a documentary on the survivors and non-survivors of 9/11, I asked myself why we were attacked in such a devastating way. It’s horrifying to see people so desperate they were jumping one thousand feet to certain death. In terms of human toll, it is the worst violent attack on us that has ever occurred. I also asked myself why we were unprepared. The enemy certainly had plenty of reason to attack us and they had plenty of reason to suspect we’d give only a token response. I guess I also wondered how Ronnie Reagan would have handled things after 9/11.

Trying to understand why 9/11 occurred, I placed myself in the position of an Moslem. I’m Catholic and we are taught to love and forgive, so it’s difficult to understand the mind of someone whose religious fervor dictates that only by killing others in the name of Allah, can he reach heaven. But that is the tenet of the hard- core Moslem believers.

As I thought about the situation, I thought of all the things I ignored.
Somewhere in there, an attack on the World Trade Center occurred. Well I know it happened but I don’t really know much about it. After all, I live in rural Kentucky and we don’t get much in the way of bombings down here.

Then it seemed our President was so busy in the Oval Office with Monica that he didn’t really make a response when they bombed our ship in the Persian Gulf. And that was another thing I didn’t take the time to learn about.

I think something struck home when they dragged that poor marine’s body through the streets of Somalia, humiliated us, boasted about defeating the greatest nation in the world and our response was to pull our troops out of there. Do ya think maybe Ronnie Reagan might have leveled the place? Somehow it didn’t seem smart to be sending troops to Serbia and Albania when we were being attacked in other places a lot more threatening to us than Serbia. I guess we had to do something for political purposes.

So along comes George Bush, the most maligned President in the history of this nation. Oh, I’m not a fan of his. He’s done some things I absolutely disapprove of, BUT, like Clinton, he is the president and as Americans we should be unified and stand firm. I don’t like the death toll in Iraq. I lost a very good friend in Korea and that made a lot more sense than Iraq. But I know that if we had NOT deposed Hussein, we’d probably have another 9/11 on our hands RIGHT NOW!

I was seven years old when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. I could not wait to be sixteen so my parents could let me sign up to fight for my country. Today we seem to have no patriotism. The flag isn’t something we rally around. It’s something we burn and trample. A lot of fools classify this as freedom of expression and I’ll bet the Communist Liberals in our country just revel in that thought. But when we disparage the flag, we disparage ourselves and we invite attacks such as 9/11. This is what the kids call a no-brainer.

We showed the Moslem terrorists that we were afraid to fight, afraid to take them on, that our military was weakened and our responses were down. We HAD Osama Bin Laden in our hands and our then President did nothing. Didn’t want to lose the Moslem vote. A lot of people paid for that weakness. You can still hear their cries as they fall to the ground. You can still see the tears of the loved ones they left behind. No, you may not like what’s going on in Iraq and now Iran and you may not like all the security in place, but please do consider this… we have not had a single attack since 9/11. Not a single American has died in any attack on American soil.

Now do you think that’s an accident or a coincidence or do you think maybe the President and our Congress is doing something right for a change? If there is a change of Administration to a weaker Administration… well, I’m giving three to one odds we’ll have another major attack if that Administration is weak on foreign policy. And like all of you I do not like $3.00 gas and I do think Mr. Bush is paying off his big oil friends in Texas and corruption is never right… but it can be tolerable as long as we do not have people jumping out of windows and crying over their loved ones who aren’t coming home. It’s better than burning buildings and horrified people.

Russell A Vassallo is a retired trial attorney living in rural Kentucky. His book Tears and Tales, is a compilation of short stories about the animal friends he has loved and lost as well as some of the animals that are still with him. Not a single reader review under FIVE STARS has been listed on Amazon.com. It can be purchased on Amazon.com or directly at Russ@krazyduck.com. Website www.krazyduck.com Christmas is coming!