Every year, I (with occasional help from my sisters) put together a calendar for my parents as a joint Mother’s/Father’s Day gift. We used to go to Proex and have them put it together, but I think it turns out even better when I do it myself on Photoshop. It looks a little bit more tacky with my love for putting the month’s name all over the picture, but at least that tackiness reflects that some thought went into the process, rather than someone feeding pictures into a machine.
We put my family’s last dog down on my birthday this year, and so it was sort of a relief that I had procrastinated on putting this year’s edition to paper, since the calendars usually start with July. (Miles was taken to the vet on July 3.) I decided that it would be an all-dog revue — which is sort of fitting since I’ve given the calendar the purposefully saccharine title “Happy Pups” Calendar for the last three years … Since I recycled the cover of the year that inspired the title, you can probably see why. It didn’t quite make as much sense the year I put a shot of Oreo taking a crap in our backyard on the cover, but I explained the juxtaposition made me a happy pup. Obviously, I’d probably have a hard time writing copy for Hallmark, as I’ve got about as much reverence and decorum as a dog.
I say Miles was our last dog, but I’m not exactly positive that’s the case. The moment we got home from the vets, my parents began searching for adoption agency Web sites for giant schnauzers. They even inquired about one that had, (un)fortunately, already been adopted.
Anyway, here’s this year’s calendar, for any other schnauzer-lovers out there who need a fix as bad as I have this past month.
Happy = stinking, panting hot.
July’s shot is, incidentally, the single best picture of me I know of. Not only is it cute, but it almost looks like I’m giving birth to a puppy. Awesome.
Miles, last year at Leech Lake. He’d already had his near-death experience, so I’m guessing he spent the last year of his life cognizant of the fact that it wouldn’t last forever.
I took this shot before going off to college, so I could stick it up on my wall. I probably made Miles wait for doggie-minutes on end before actually taking the pictures, bastard that I am.
I don’t rightly know if this is actually puppy Miles. It was in a set that the breeders sent to us after we’d indicated our interest in buying a pure-bred standard. Of all the pictures they gave us, this is the one we’re most convinced actually looks like Miles. I suppose it could be one of his brothers or sisters in the “M” litter. (We had to name the dog something beginning with that letter so, presumably, the breeders could keep track of family trees. My dad says he chose Miles because we had to drive so many “miles” to Duluth to pick him up. If you ask me, the dog could’ve easily ended up named Jaco, Kannonball, L-Vin Jones or Nerbie Nancock.)
Nick didn’t wear age very well at all, but he did have a sense of humor about it.
There were only two Christmases where we had all three: Nick, Miles and Oreo (the nervous one my Mom’s looks as though she’s trying to becalm but, in actuality, is probably holding down against her will).
Oreo again. My family was, apparently, the type that included dogs in the tally of children and, thus, the scales of gender were tipped back towards equality between the girls and me with Nick and Miles.
My favorite “I’ve never seen this picture before” discovery made while digging through the two monster boxes of photos. Nick looks a little bit like he’s laughing or yawning, but he’s really just trying to bite that cone off his neck.
This is the Oreo I’ll always remember. She had attitude. She’s looking at her token Christmas gift like “What the fuck you think I’m gonna do with this? Give me some of that roast you were just eating a few minutes ago.”
Nick was a curmudgeonly dog for as long as I can remember. But this picture sort of shows that he may have been old his entire life, but at least part of that time was spent a classy old, like Fred Astaire.
I had just arrived home after my last day of high school class. Actually, I don’t remember that I had to take any finals, so maybe this was taken the day I dropped off my writing portfolio and drove back home. Which means my public school system was so damned good at their jobs that I wasn’t even smart enough to realize that I didn’t have to wear a backpack to drop off a portfolio. The companion shot to this one shows me stepping out of my banana boat first car, a 1985 Pontiac station wagon that smelled of fruity pipe tobacco. That smell would’ve covered anything else that might’ve entered the air in that vehicle. I could’ve been a huge pothead or died of carbon monoxide poisoning and I wouldn’t have ever known.
Again, the “M” litter. Since a lot of the owners had Germanic chauvinism (I remember vividly one massive woman had named Miles’ aunt “Lieben”), I’m guessing the other owners named their pups names like Moritz, Meinhard, Margit and Munchausen.
Morbid, yeah. But it’s the only picture I could find of our non-schnauzer dog, a stray my mom found on the street in Minneapolis and took in named Trygg. He was a cockapoo, which I understand is an accepted term for cocker spaniel/poodle mixes, though I can’t imagine the AKC approves. I sure don’t — it sounds like dirty talk gone horribly wrong.
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