In 2006 I came up against a holiday deadline crunch, so I turned my column over to Turpy, the beloved eight-year-old Golden Retriever/Chow mix who had turned up at our doorstep as a puppy.
Turpy provided the column that follows:
Hi! Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house, we go?
Ha! Maybe that’s the way it was for Norman Rockwell’s canines, but for me it’s more like “through bumper to bumper traffic to the kennel.”
But I shouldn’t complain. I can understand my master’s reluctance to have me in the way while eating turkey and watching parades. All in all, life is sweet. I have lots of things to wag my tail over this Thanksgiving. For instance...
- OPEC failed in its bid to expand into the international kibble market.
- Fleas never got involved in the big steroid scandal.
- Richard Simmons’ voice? So high-pitched even dogs don’t have to listen to it.
- Thanks to inflation, every dog now has his day and a half.
- Cousin Bingo (B-I-N-G-O) finally started collecting royalties from the senior citizens center.
- Just learned that Betty Crocker is planning to market Garbage Can Helper.
- Discovered it’s a lot less trouble to bury calcium tablets instead of bones.
- Blue Cross waived the $500 deductible for checking to see if my nose is cold and wet.
- Civilization has finally progressed enough to put the whole “quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” ethnic slur behind it.
- My mother wasn’t one of those obsessive “Frisbee moms” who would embarrass me in front of the coach.
- Saved a bundle on car-chasing insurance thanks to GEICO.
- Former Soviet scientists blocked from selling “opposable thumb” technology to cats.
- The “Dog is God spelled backwards” craze died down. Now if I can keep anyone from noticing that the stain on my water dish kinda sorta resembles Mother Teresa...
- “Synchronized Rolling In Stuff” is being considered for an Olympic event.
- My poker-playing friends survived their IRS audit.
- This year not a single tree limb got away with its nefarious plot of scraping against the side of the house at 2 a.m.
- Maybe this Christmas the guys will quit kidding around with “Jingle Bells” and bark Handel’s “Messiah,” like we rehearsed.
- The election is over, so politicians can stop marking their red-state and blue-state territories.
- That creep who always tries to fake me out by pretending to throw the tennis ball? Diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome!
Yes, it has been a pretty good year. I don’t have a bone to pick with anybody - unless you count those delicious leftover turkey bones. C’mon, have a few, sit a spell, and tell me about your own Thanksgiving plans. Sit, sit. I’m not going to beg.
I wish Turpy could fill in again this year; but he passed away in January, after suffering from many ailments. I am truly thankful for the years we got to share with that sweet dog.
I am also thankful that there are ample opportunities for other people to provide a home for stray dogs.
And, unlike Turpy, I’m not too proud to beg. Do the right thing; you’ll have something else to be thankful for next year.
Danny welcomes reader e-mail responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades”.