Sometime in 1952 or early 1953, we got our first house in Canada. To make it a real home, a pup soon followed. I think dad got him from someone at the Burns Bog peat company. He was a collie something cross - same colouring but short hair. We named him the traditional Finnish dogs' name, Peni.
That house was on the flats behind the Turf Hotel and close to Peterson Hill leading to Patullo Bridge. The river flats was nothing but a build-up of silt and peat. You could take a walking cane and push it easily into the ground right up to the handle. Outhouse holes never filled up but just kept turning into more peat. Anyway, Peni got to running around the house from back door to front door in an effort to catch either one open and wore a foot deep grove into the peat, all around the house.
When we moved to the fish & chips shop in Coquitlam, Peni would lie in the front entrance to the cafe and customers would just step over him to get in. He only roused himself to any excitement when Finnish speaking people came and he would rush down to the road to greet. We moved from the shop to a new house a street away and Peni would accompany all the kids in the block. Unfortunately, in his excitement to play, his tooth snagged a neighbour girl's leg while she was on a swing. The girl's parents weren't bothered by it but the mother of one of the other kids called the cops and we came home from school to find that Peni had been arrested, with no appeal.
In those days in Coquitlam, the cops were in the basement of the municipal hall. They had a couple of cars out back and a doghouse with a hose attached. I was probably eight or nine years old when I finally made the connection to that little house.
In 1956 or '57, we moved up to the end of Austin Road onto a couple of acres. A black and white, sheep doggish puppy came to stay for my sisters tenth birthday. He got the name Rusty because there was a freckle faced kid on some sit-com named Rusty. He was a guy to follow all of us kids around wherever we went. My proudest moment was when I heard a ruckus around the shed and two cats came streaking past in tandem, like Roman chariot horses, with Rusty in full pursuit. Old Rusty just wanted to be one of the gang but he knew the words "Go home Rusty" better than "Come here boy".
That was the last dog in my growing-up years until I moved to the Okanagan, and Sam and Vince from Camp Kopje brought a black puppy with a white star on his chest to stay. I had to name him Sam and he was brother (not in looks) to Fudd, who went to Dave Galloway. I don't remember where the pups came from but no doubt these needy kids had accepted the brothers from some farmer at the mall who had a litter to give away. Sam got to riding in the back seat of the '71 Super Beetle and he would rest his head between the seats and keep a sleepy eye on the road. Just can't trust those humans to drive properly.
I was coming from the Kootenays, down the Blueberry-Paulson hill, at the type of speed that a VW could do going downhill, when I spotted a black bear lazily walking away from the highway up a logging road to the left. The timing was perfect. I swerved off the road at speed, closing on the bear. Sam's eyes opened wide and he went "Woof". The bear looked over his shoulder and exploded into action and disappeared up a bank. Sam just smiled with his tongue hanging out. Great fun. Both brothers, within a year or so, met unfortunate ends. Sam crossed a busy road and got clipped and somebody shot Fudd in an elementary school yard.
To be continued......
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