TAIL TALES

As one of the zillions of proud dog owners, I have heard some really funny experiences from friends and had a few myself. One that stands out involved a lady who lived on Sutton Place (high rent district if you don’t know NY) with her adorable little poodle. Before the pooper-scooper law was enacted, she didn’t think she should leave her precious dog’s poop on the street so she always carried a little shopping bag in which to put it.

So one day they were walking in the neighborhood, precious pooped, she placed it in the bag which happened to be from Tiffany and suddenly, a man ran up to her, seized the bag and took off. We all had a good laugh thinking that what he found was not exactly what he had in mind.

Speaking of poop, when the law was enacted, luckily I had a friend in the promotion business who had lots of pooper-scoopers, called me and offered to give me one with the necessary bags. After using this contraption a few times, I came to the conclusion that rather than try to scoop the poop into the bag, I simply placed it under the dog’s derriere and it was very tidy indeed.

0ne afternoon during his walk, we stopped at 85th and Park Avenue. He assumed the position and voila!  Mission accomplished. An elderly lady was passing at that moment and stopped to watch this rather uninteresting event.  When he had completed his task, she looked at me and said: “ Isn’t that amazing! How long did it take you to teach him to do that?” At first I was speechless. Then realizing she was serious, I responded that it did not take long because he was very bright. Satisfied, she moved on.

Then there was the encounter with a woman down in Palm Beach. She looked at my beautiful super white Maltese and asked if I bleached her. Not funny but absurd. My response was that no I didn’t use bleach. She came that way. She was shocked and obviously a person who didn’t know anything about dogs and went on her way.

Many years ago, I had three Westhighland Terriers. Madness in Manhattan but we had mated the mother, she had four adorable hamster sized puppies and before I could sell one, my kids were slamming doors and screaming that I couldn’t sell Kissy. So of course I didn’t and we became a three-dog family. Thus we wound up with Mother, daughter and son. One day as I was walking the male,, across the street there was one large St. Bernard. My dog started seriously barking at it.  Now if you know Westies they are big dogs in little bodies. The woman with the dog crossed the street, looked at that little male and said: “That’s an hors d’oeurvre.” Hah.

My favorite though occurred here in Manhattan on East End Avenue. I was walking Pixie and a lady stopped to admire her, no novelty.  She then asked her gender, breed and age. I replied that she was a Maltese and eleven. The woman was visibly shocked, “Why she looks like a puppy.” My response?  “Well she had a face lift.” Now I thought that was one of my funnier reposts but the fact that she didn’t respond at all caused me to conjecture that either she didn’t hear me, was deaf or just didn’t get it. However, all my friends had a hearty laugh.