Eb, The Happy Grunting Hound

Kim and Eb Eb got dropped into our lives one day when Evie and I visited a neighbor woman. When we got to her house we found a little black cockapoo cowering on her front porch.

"You want him?" the neighbor asked. "I can't take care of him any more. If you don't, I'm taking him to the humane society."

Her children's tearful pleas to keep him fell on deaf ears. "What's his name," I asked as I knelt next to him and rubbed his ears.

"I just call him puppy."

"Hi, Puppy."

Puppy responded by jumping on my chest and trying to slobber me to death. "What do you think?" I asked, looking up at Evie.

"No. We have a cat, and that's all the pets I want."

I figured it was a done deal, except Eb ran over to her, sniffed her crotch and sneezed. Thereby he won his name, Ebenezer Sneezer, after a childhood song--Eb for short. He also won Evie's heart.

We all were laughing so hard we could hardly breathe. "I don't want him, but he seems to want us," Evie said. Seeming to realize he had been given a new leash on life, Eb frolicked all the way back to our house. I have known many dogs, but none had the unbridled joie de vivre of this one.

Our five-year-old niece, Kim, (shown above) was living with us and used to go with us on our walks. Eb would stop at every tree and lift his leg. He kept it up long after the tank was empty. Our niece used to mimic him. It was funny until she actually peed a little when she did it.

Kim had her own vocabulary, and her word for bowel movement was grunt. It fits if you think about it. Especially if you've had a bit too much cheese. Eb was a regular pooping machine. It seemed like he could deposit his own body weight every day. We didn't like to leave him on a chain in our yard because cleaning up got to be too much of a chore. That's why we took him on frequent walks. The term, Happy Grunting Hound, really did fit him to a tee.

Eb knew some really neat tricks. Like he could bark out Match in the Gas Tank, Boom Boom. (Some people know it as Shave and a Haircut, two bits.) Well, to be truthful, he actually did it once. Usually it came out Arf, arf de arf arf, and then he'd let loose with arf, arf, arf, arf, etc. When he finally got it right we applauded and gave him a special treat.

For all his lovable ways, he had one rather disgusting habit. He regularly raided the cat's litter box. We'd find his muzzle tinged with brown every so often. We finally solved it by putting Ondine's box out of reach. It did occur to us that if the cat could somehow be enticed to eat his, we would have what every environmentalist would die to create: a perfect fecosystem.

We decided that Eb needed to go to obedience school and enrolled him in a Community School program. My wife took Eb every Tuesday evening. When she came back, I would ask how the class went. "I did get him to heel tonight but everybody else had moved on to 'stay.'" When the class had graduation, he had the crowd cheering for him by refusing to do a single thing he was supposed to do. Told to heel, he broke loose and ran over to a Great Dane and leaned on him. Then he peed on the floor, and ran around the gymnasium. His diploma was for perfect attendance.

We regularly took him in for grooming. One time we came to pick him up and he had a froo-froo haircut and a purple bow on his brow. Evie and I could barely keep standing when we saw him. "Well, you didn't tell me how you wanted him cut," the groomer said, "so I used my imagination." We gave her an extra fiver for entertainment value.

Eb loved to run away from home. He always looked for a chance, and when he got away, we followed him in the car. All we had to do is open the car door, he fell for it every time. Occasionally he got too far ahead of us and we couldn't find him. Once he was gone until ten o'clock at night, and we were getting worried he wouldn't come back. He finally did, limping badly. We guessed he had been hit by a car because his rear left leg wouldn't move. The vet said Eb had dislocated his hip, and he fitted our friend with a sling to hold the injured leg up. We were worried he wouldn't be able to walk, but we needn't have been. He could run faster on three legs than any of us could with two healthy ones. The night before we were going back to the vet to get the bandages off, Evie opened the wooden, windowless kitchen door. She heard a whine and found Eb limping. Sure enough, he had been lying by the door and had re-dislocated his hip. Eb wound up having surgery and Evie went on a guilt trip.

Our canine friend spent eight years with us. They were joyous and I hope he's running around in Doggie Heaven. I'm sure everyone loves him.