A French Poodle in Buffalo
You know how dogs resemble their owners? Well, they also resemble the families they become a part of. So the dogs my family had when I was growing up in Snyder were a little, well, eccentric. Especially Oscar.
We lavished upon Oscar all the love we were less comfortable expressing to one another, which made it all the more peculiar that he acted like we were trying to poison him at mealtime. We’d set down his bowl of dog chow, and he’d sniff it for a minute or two before taking a small, precautionary nibble. If that didn’t kill him, he’d eat a little more, but uneasily.
Maybe he was remembering the Nembutal pill we used to slip him when we’d travel with him in the car on our way to Cape Cod. Nembutal, a powerful barbiturate, caused him to walk sideways, a novel and entertaining sight to see at rest stops along the New York State Thruway. For some families, it might have been the highlight of their vacations.
Being French, Oscar was predictably of a romantic nature, but his forays into continuing his line were, to our knowledge, unsuccessful. He used to disappear for hours on end, until we’d get a call from someone asking us to come and stop him from barking on their front lawn. They’d invariably add that Oscar was late, that their dog was no longer in heat, and that all the other suitors had been by a week or two earlier. Looking back on it, I see that in the vacuum of any advice from my father, I may have unconsciously adopted Oscar’s dating tactics in my teenage years, with the same measure of success.
Oscar had no more luck chasing squirrels, and would bark endlessly at them in the trees, urging them to come down and let his powerful poodle jaws end their useless furry lives. They would just laugh at him, in squirrel, which he understood and only further enraged his proud Gallic nature.
Oscar lived a long time, 98 dog years. Toward the end, he had to get up in the middle of the night to relieve himself and, rather than inconvenience us, he simply used the Persian rug in the study. For some reason, we never knew this, until one December night Mom had a sleepover guest and pulled out the folding couch for her in that room, thoughtfully turning up the thermostat to make her more comfortable. Over the course of the evening the carpet began to marinate, causing the study to smell like the men’s room at War Memorial Stadium during the late fourth quarter of a Bills game. I don’t think their friendship survived the incident.
Oscar’s passing hit us hard, but not so hard that I couldn’t suggest we stuff him and place him forever on the feather settee he slept on all those years. I was overruled. My family has since admitted that maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea. Twenty-five years later, we still miss the old gent so much. But we are not without our memories. Especially if we spend any time in the study. Mother never could bear to throw that rug out.
