I’d like to introduce Thor, God of Thunder.
Thor is one of our dogs that now lives’ on “the squirrel farm”. The squirrel farm is a lovely retirement community for our previous dogs that, for whatever reason, can no longer continue to live with us. It is located in Maryland, on a huge farm with lots of trees. Our old dogs get to spend all day chasing squirrels in the sunshine, and lead a perfect life, where any need you could possibly imagine, is promptly met. A really nice friend of a friend will come and pick up the dog, and take it to the farm, but they are very busy and can only come during school time. We can visit the farm and our past dogs whenever we want, but it takes a long time to get there, so we probably won’t go anytime soon.
And that is how, for the first 18 years of my life as a parent, we got rid of dogs. Hey – it’s not my fault it took #1 so many years to do the math and realize that it was impossible for Brandon, one of the first dogs in her life, to still be chasing squirrels at age 23.
Thor was one of our more notable dogs. The ad said “English Mastiff” for sale, and after all 6 of us had fallen in love with the pudgy little adorable tyke, wrote the check and were buckling into the car, the lady says “You know he’s a Brazilian Mastiff right”. English, Brazilian, Irish mastiff, I mean how much of a difference can there be. Uh oh.
Brazilian Mastiffs, also known as FILAS, look like tigers, can behave like tigers, are fiercely protective, and pretty much want to kill all strangers. This could be an issue. I read everything I could on our potential killing machine, as he burrowed his way into our hearts. We established our alpha male pack leader position, took him everywhere to socialize him, and made him part of the family. He was fine with us; he just took a while to feel comfortable with strangers, which is apparently something the human race cannot comprehend about a dog.
I tried every combination of words possible to make it clear; he was a dog you need to approach slowly or not at all. “He is leery of strangers”, “he is an attack dog”, “he will let you know if he wants you to pet him”, “HE BITES”, nine out of ten times, the person would ignore me, say “oh I’m good with dogs” and step into Thors space and start rubbing his head. Thor would give him “the one second eyeball”, which is code for; which body part do I want to take home, and then snap. I got very good at identifying the “one second eyeball” and could separate Thor from an unsuspecting victim in half a second.
When the kids friends would come over, I would explain to them that Thor takes a while to get to know people, and would keep him out back. He would sit by the door, watching, and I cannot tell you the number of times, I would find some idiot kid banging on the door, thinking it’s funny to watch the 160 pound dog hurling himself against the glass with teeth bared.
The doorbell ringing was an immediate call to action. Thor would race to the door to see what was for dinner, the kids would run to the door to see who it was, I would drop everything and sprint to the door, to make sure, it didn’t get opened, and our potential visitor remained uneaten. You may be surprised to discover, this plan was not always fool proof, and several times the sequence did not work out, as practiced, in the family emergency preparedness drills.
One time, Thor made it to the door first, pushed through the screen, and chased an older man on a bicycle riding by our house. We raced out the door after him, and caught him but he had nipped at the old man. The dog trainers response was: “this is good your training worked, he didn’t attack” … ok valid point, however it really means very little if you are the person the 160 pound tiger like looking creature, was chasing down for a taste.
The next day, the older gentleman came back to our house. He stood on the front porch and told me Thor bit him. I asked him if he had required medical attention and offered to pay, he said he didn’t. I apologized, explained a kid left the front door open, we will be more careful, but for some unknown reason our conversation wasn’t ending. The old man wanted to tell me exactly what happened. (Clearly he forgot I was leading the pack of people chasing the dog that was chasing him). The next thing you know, the old man, standing on my porch, refusing to leave, and continually telling me how my dog bit him, pulls down his pants. So now I am standing on my porch looking at, honest to God, old man butt. Truth be told, there was a decent size bruise on the old man butt, but no scratch or cuts were visible, not that I had any intention of going in for a closer look. So I stood there in one of those surreal moments, I have way to frequently in my life, saying “pull up your pants sir”, “just please pull up your pants”, “I’m not sure what you are looking for, but you need to pull up your pants”. The conversation was going nowhere, nor were the pants going up, so I left the man on the front porch, with his pants down around his ankles, went inside and shut the door.
As the kids followed me down the hall asking “mommy why is there a man on the front porch with his pants down?” I called the squirrel farm to see when their next opening would be available.
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