Pets

My family ran the gamut of benign, low key pets. Pseudo pets, I like to think. There were mice, hamsters and guinea pigs…even rabbits and once a duck named Alexander who had a “rebirth” in Echo Park Lake. There was a parakeet that drowned in the dishwater. Once we were given some sort of cameleleon on a chain with a pin that you could buy at the L.A. County Fair. It was sort of a living broach.  The thought now is appalling. Second only to my mother putting our dead goldfish down the garbage disposal.

None of these creatures gave us what we really craved.

The guinea pigs were slaughtered by some unknown night marauder, the rabbits bred with too much fecundity and were dispatched to places unknown, and the hamster reminded my father of a rat.

When you were growing up in the 50’s and 60’s the only REAL pets were either a dog or a horse.  And not in that order.  A pony came first.

On TV there was Flicka, Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, and Spin and Marty on the ranch. Sky King and his niece Penny had a ranch with horses and a Cessna to boot. Johnny Crawford got to ride a horse and hang out with The Rifleman.  Roy Rodgers and Dale had Trigger and Buttermilk and their dog Bullitt.  And a Jeep called Nellybelle.  Then later came that kid in Florida with a dolphin called Flipper.

It seemed like every kid in America had a REAL pet except us. 

It got so bad that I started cutting out Purina Dog Chow ads and pasting them to my wall.  Granted, they would soon be replaced by pictures of Warren Beatty and Richard Chamberlain.  But….

Then one day my mother came home from work in Burbank.  She had seen some puppies and the dam broke.  She and my father and I conspired to get a puppy for my sister for Christmas.

It wasn’t a horse. There was no smell of hay in the air, no reek of leather saddles and no collie rushing to tell me of impending danger. But the puppy changed our family.  My father and sister picked her out at a Humane Society.  My dad liked her because she was the only puppy not yapping.  He loved her more than any of us.  Her name was Betsy.