Skipper

I guess you could call my parents “pet friendly” because during my childhood several cycled through out household. There were the cats named Sambo, Spunky and Callie; a chameleon named Herkimer and a hamster named Sneakers. But the pet that was nearest and dearest to my heart was our dog named Skipper, a daschund-terrier mix. He was big and long with hind legs longer than his front legs which gave him the appearance of always walking downhill. My dad says he got better gas mileage that way, too.

When my brother and I were young Daddy carpooled to work at National Airport with a man by the name of Bill Sterling. He lived in Oakton like we did and was Skipper’s original owner. As the story goes, one day Bill and his family decided to leave Oakton and move to a brand new $25,000 house near Mantua in Fairfax. Along with that decision to move up in the world they also came to the conclusion that it was time for Skipper, a mutt, to also move on. After their move, in fact, the Sterlings purchased a pure-bred daschund.

Skipper needed to find a new home and came to live with our family on Christmas Day 1957 when I was six and my brother not yet four. While we were busily checking out what Santa had delivered, Daddy quietly left the house and went to fetch the dog. When he returned a short while later, he let Skipper enter by the back door off the kitchen. As he ambled through the house on his way to the living room, my brother Steve looked up and asked, “What’s Bill Sterling’s dog doing over here?”

Skipper was black with a few brown markings and to this day I recall him fondly as a good ol’ dog. He lived outside much of the time and had a very cool doghouse with white aluminum siding and shingles to match our house. His little house was very comfy for him and unless the outdoor temperature was extremely hot or cold, he slept in it. He would run away if he escaped the fenced backyard and on a couple of occasions he trotted back to the Sterling’s old house about a mile away. Although generally mild mannered he absolutely did NOT like cats that teased him outside the fence. When the milkman made a delivery Skipper barked like he was going to tear him up. Little children were in danger of a nip if they grabbed him around the neck and Willie Lent, the local paperboy, even lost a little bit of skin off his finger when he opened the storm door to deliver the newspaper one evening.

Skipper was prone to sniffing the air and baying at the moon some nights. My mother attributes this to his raging doggie hormones, for he never was neutered. He would not play ball or fetch but we often observed him all alone, tossing a stick up into the air and catching it. He ran around the yard so much that he wore away the grass, making dirt paths along the fence and from the backdoor to the doghouse. His absolute favorite treat was a graham cracker and would sit upon his hind legs to beg for one. The slightest rattle of the aluminum cookie jar would rouse him from a deep sleep and send him flying to the kitchen hoping for a treat.

Back in the 1950’s and ‘60’s it was the custom to buy kids baby chicks for Easter. One time we had gotten a couple of purple chicks from the Peter Pan Variety Store in Vienna that we kept in a box in the basement. Skipper could hear their peeps and for long stretches of time would sit staring at a crack in the floor, drooling and listening, hoping for a tasty chicky morsel.

One summer Steve and I entered Skipper in a local dog show for kids sponsored by Kennel Ration Dog Food. The afternoon event was held in the Giant Food Store parking lot in Vienna. Beforehand we bathed and brushed Skipper up on the backyard picnic table. He wasn’t trained in any way at all, but when it came time to be judged he stood perfectly still, pointed his tail and looked straight ahead as if he were a grand champion. To our surprise he won a ribbon for Best Cared For Dog by a Boy which was, in fact, Skipper’s solitary achievement.

At the age of sixteen Skipper developed a tumor in his throat that wrapped itself around his doggie vocal chords. During an operation the vet could only remove a portion of the growth and in time the remaining part led to an infection in his brain. My mother was the unfortunate one who witnessed his last breath in this world. My dad wrapped him in an old plastic shower curtain and buried him in a grave under our neighbor’s tree which bordered Flint Hill Cemetery. It was indeed sad to loose a good friend who loved unconditionally.

Perhaps having a dog for those ten years of my formative life turned me into the dog friendly person I am today. When my own children were very young and we lived in our townhouse on Ellenwood Drive in Fairfax, we surprised them with their very own Bob Barker, a feisty four month old Cairn terrier who truly lived up to her name.