#64: Happy Birthday to Pepper

"Squirrel!"

Pepper is only my second dog, and my first to reach the ripe old age of 13. So as King of this blog I consider a little tribute to him on his birthday to be in keeping with the theme here.

Pepper is special. Not necessarily "good" special or "bad" special. Lately we've taken to calling him the Best Worst Dog Ever, "B.W.D.E." which can be pronounced "Bowdy." One of his many nicknames. We spend more time than maybe is healthy waiting for him to die. Almost as much time as we spend cleaning up poop. He'll probably go on another six years, and toss in blind and deaf, just to spite us. And we'll love him for it. It's complicated, yeah?

He is a dog: take him for all in all, as a feller says.

He is a purebred Brittany, thoroughly untrained by us for his breed's purposes as a bird dog, and by turns sweet, cranky, silly, psychotic, intelligent and hollow-skulled. (Seriously, you can knock on his forehead and it's like a coconut. He also often blinks his eyes separately. Not like he winks, but like he will blink one right after the other, as though the signal from the "EYE BLINK NOW" section of his brain gets to one eye just a tad late.) For years he moved like greased lightning - rarely, in a photograph, would he be unblurred or even in-frame. The difference being that greased lightning does not run up and down hills and cliffs in circles, madly flushing birds with no regard for its own life. He's slower now but still turns it on from time to time.

Flushing birds along the Coast Fork, Willamette River

I was going to try to write up a listicle of favorite Pepper stories but whenever I try to think of any, I only have the one. The one about the seawater. I'll tell you that one in a bit, but first I have a guest anecdote from an old friend who knows Pepper quite intimately. Today he writes under the nom de plume "Rotung Bob" for reasons of his own.

Wouldn’t You Like to be a Pepper Too?

By Rotung Bob

I’ve met some weird dogs in my time. Condescending basset hounds. A neurotic corgi or two. Shelties that go into psychotic rages at the mere sight of skateboards. 

Pepper is FAR weirder than any of them.

The problem with this pooch is that it’s impossible to get a read on him. Most dogs simply want to play fetch until they drop or you to feed them beef-flavored treats until they, well, drop. 

Not Pepper.

I remember a Fourth of July weekend when I encountered him standing in the hallway of his family’s beach house on the Oregon coast. He was wearing an American flag bandana around his neck that would have looked downright adorable on any other dog. On Pepper it made him look like a spy that could kill you six times before you hit the ground. The expression on his face was as enigmatic as all get out too. He could have been thinking anything from “why won’t this guy give me a bacon double cheeseburger?” to “how long will I have to torture this fool before he hands over the launch codes? ” 

Like Poe’s infamous raven, Pepper is a creature that could drive sensible men to madness. Doubt it? Consider the following.

Years prior, I spent a weekend with his owners at their old house in Eugene. It was around Halloween and we spent those hours together with mutual friends doing what mutual friends in their mid 20s do in Eugene. We stayed up late raising hell and making tons of noise.

Pepper is not a dog that likes people who stay up late raising hell and making tons of noise. 

That Sunday I awoke around dawn on an inflatable mattress in the house’s office. The sun was tearing through the windows and bombarding my hungover skull with glistening autumnal daylight that it was not prepared to handle. I opened my eyes and there was Pepper sitting a few feet away, looking down at me. 

He was motionless. As still as the Venus de Milo but armed with unconventional munitions. Pepper had been patiently waiting for this moment for minutes or even hours perhaps; like a veteran sniper in a perch killing time until a target enters his crosshairs. 

I think the smell is what I noticed first. I rose my head and beside it, a mere six or seven inches away, was a perfectly round puddle of murky green dog urine. In the cruel morning light, it glowed like a bog at high noon. 

I remember thinking, “How could a dog, any dog, achieve something like this without waking me up or getting pee all over my face?”

I wasn’t angry. No, not at all. I was scared. Very, very scared. I was dealing with a furry ninja. A silent warrior with a unique set of skills traditionally found only in Greek legends and Liam Neeson’s fists.

Pepper remained perfectly still and his face was locked in its usual state of ambiguousness but the quiet message he had delivered was crystal clear. 

It was this: 

“If you come into my house again and keep me awake all night, I will fill your mouth with so much piss you’ll drown in it. Now fetch me a breakfast burrito before I get REALLY angry.” 

Our friend here is more creeped out by Pepper than most who meet him, but I think he's got good reason. Ok, so on to the seawater story.

When Pepper and his doggie brother Zuma were just pups back in 2003 or so, we lived in Eugene, Oregon and loved to take weekends at this little town on the coast name of Yachats.

Pepper in Yachats; that's Zuma in the back

So, we had Pepper down there with us for his first-ever walk on a beach, and after running in mad circles after birds for a while he got an idea to taste the water. He must have liked what he tasted because he just kept lapping it up from a little pool under some rocks. We didn't pay it as much mind as maybe we should have.

After watching the sun go down, Oregon-style (where it goes behind clouds but has not actually set), we headed back up to our hotel room for cocktail hour. This hotel is laid out so that each room has a little ground-level back porch opening onto a broad lawn that slopes down to the water. Every room on your side of the hotel had a view of that whole lawn.

Anyway, a few minutes into our cocktail hour Pepper lets us know he needs to go out to the lawn for business. So we let him. He heads out there to the middle of the lawn, in a good spot where all our fellow guests will have a good seat for his act, and he sets to. He circles a few times, sniffing, and then squats to poo. Fine so far.

Still got it, sort of: charging a bird just last year.

But then that poo, why, it keeps coming. And it goes from solid to loose, and then from loose to liquid, and then from liquid to jet. And then, in a resounding climax, it goes from a small brown jet to a foaming clear jet, and soon our sweet little dog is spouting off like he has a goddamn firehose back there. All the while turning, turning, turning, slowly turning around that lawn, in the golden evening light, like the devil's own sprinkler.

Finally it ends, and I head out to escort him back across the lawn and into our room. I'm met with scattered applause and laughter, and turn to find guests sitting on the porches and standing in the windows of nearly every room in the hotel, watching Pepper's little show. Looking back, I wish I had taken a bow. Regrets, I've got a few.

Anyway, Pepper, happy birthday. You are...you. I know you can't help that, so don't ever stop.

Again, Pepper in Yachats