I wrote a series of detective stories where my socialist detective, Roy Marx, specialized in solving crimes of class oppression. Marx’s sidekick was his little proletarian white dog named Trotsky who resembled the fiery Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky right down to a black goatee and side burns on his white furry face! During a case, Trotsky always managed to sleuth out clues that Marx misses because he’s swigging too much vodka or debating the finer theoretical points of communism with the cops and capitalists. These stories were intended as farce with some sly cultural commentary sliced in like so much Swiss cheese.

And speaking of farce, one of the greatest cultural farces to ever cross my path involved dogs, the drug-sniffing canines that searched for legal and illegal drugs in the various public high schools I taught in during my teaching career. The farce typically unfolded like this: at the beginning of the academic year, students would assemble in the gymnasium to watch a demonstration of the local police department’s drug dog with the intent of scaring them straight, at least during school hours. Oh, it was a farce all right! A corpulent and goateed cop wearing military-grade body armor would run (barely) a dog, usually a lab of some kind, through a series of searches (with rock music blaring) where the plan was for the dog to detect pot, meth, booze or PCP or whatever in some backpack stashed around the gym. Invariably the dogs made mistakes, public mistakes, and the students always cheered when the poor beast did find contraband. Nothing is more inspiring to youth when a cop holds up some dank weed or bottle of vodka right before first period of the first day of school. After these absurd demonstrations, teachers and students would repair to their classes and begin the lessons. The cop would then tour the drug dog though the halls, into several classes, and elsewhere around the campus, always followed by a newspaper reporter who would splash the dog and cop on the front page accompanied by a hack article on how the school district was “tough on drugs.” Later, during the course of the year, the dog would make surprise visits to a classroom, (sometimes the result of a tip) everyone, including me, would empty out into the hallway while the dog did his thing. I remember well those times in the hall, talking to students about the uniquely American farce that was underway, mentioning that the dog was not searching for legally-prescribed psychotropics, painkillers or anti-depressants ten times more powerful than mere cannabis, for example, that many teachers and students were under the influence at that very moment. I would ask: “Why are some drugs legal and others not?” This was before Oregon legalized recreational cannabis in 2015, and ever since, drug dog searches have mostly gone away because virtually everyone in an Oregon public school setting has some traces of cannabis on their person. The drug dogs would have lost their minds sniffing around classrooms!

In the latest cinematic adaption of Call of the Wild starring Harrison Ford, Buck is entirely rendered with CGI! Dog movies are dead. The Pandemic was the best thing to happen to American dogs. Many people discovered how truly important they are to our mental and physical health and vastly much more effective than an expensive quack therapist or doping up on pills.

While I was teaching English at Taft High School in Lincoln City, one of my students, Jordynn, showed up after school holding a black lab puppy that she had found darting through a skate park while she was skipping class and cruising around riding shotgun in her best friend’s Mustang. Jordynn told me she’d asked her mother if she could keep the puppy and the mother refused. The word had long got out around campus that I owned three dogs and loved dogs, so here she was in my classroom with a dog hidden under her coat! Jordynn begged me to take it. I agreed but made her promise to make posters of the dog and slap them around the skate park. The deadline was tomorrow morning. She agreed and I took a shot of the dog with a digital camera and printed it out for use on the poster. The next morning, Jordynn showed me the poster and said she and her friend had taped up the poster all over town. An owner never came forward. I kept the puppy for a week, but didn’t name her. A teaching colleague adopted her. I guess it was called a “teaching moment” and I found most of the memorable ones rarely had to do with the subject being taught.

In perhaps the greatest dog courtroom scene in television or movie history, Perry Mason, in the “Case of the Golden Oranges” brilliantly employs a large hound named Hardtack and a choke chain in the courtroom to expose the true killer he’s grilling on the stand. Watch the episode!

Perhaps the greatest fine artist of dogs was the French Impressionist, Édouard Manet, who painted a series of eight oil portraits of dogs for his friends between 1875-1883. Manet apparently dashed off these portraits in a matter of minutes when the dogs apparently appeared and interrupted him when he was there to paint another subject! It is unclear if Manet somehow managed to compel the dogs to sit for him (highly unlikely). The portraits are remarkable because Manet’s brushstrokes seem to mimic a dog at play. A beautiful and mysterious woman once painted a watercolor portrait of Sonny the husky (I still have it) and that woman later turned out to be part of my personal extinction and a large reason why I wrote this book on dogs. I wonder if she’ll ever read it, wherever she might be.

Late in his rotund life, Orson Welles would regularly have lunch at a West Hollywood restaurant, Ma Maison, and always bring along his lapdog Kiwi. Dogs were not allowed inside Ma Maison but management made an exception for Orson Welles. How could they not? Welles often ordered a separate lunch for Kiwi (who ate off a plate at the table) and it isn’t clear if Welles ever paid for the meals. Why should he? He’s Orson Welles! All manner of celebrities dropped by Welles’ table to pay their respects and Welles delighted when Kiwi let loose with one of his “atomic” farts that stunk up the joint and led to abbreviated conversations, particularly with celebrities he loathed. Speaking of Orson Welles, one of the greatest TV pitchmen in broadcasting history, I despise almost every commercial on any media format, but dearly wish I could heard that magnificent voice (accompanied by a barking dog) in an ad for Chuck Wagon dog food.

In Sergeant York, Gary Cooper contemplated renouncing his pacifism and fighting in WW I by staying up all night with his coonhound on a promontory overlooking a valley. There, York reads a textbook on civics that ultimately convinced him to fight for his country. What is not widely known is that the director cut the scene where the coonhound talked to Cooper and urged him to remain a pacifist, expounding on the need for world peace and universal brotherhood. Basically, the coonhound was a stand-in for Jesus, but the savior’s words flew right over his master’s head and York ended up killing lots of Germans, winning the Medal of Honor, and becoming an American hero. The lesson is: when it comes to war, no American listens to Jesus on the matter of “love thy enemy as thyself” and “turn the other cheek,” particularly if the message is transmitted through a coonhound. Perhaps a breed like a blue-eyed border collie with long golden hair better resembling a Caucasian, American-looking Jesus might have been a better choice. Did you ever stop to realize how many dogs look like this American version of Jesus? Jesus! Maybe he has returned to us a thousand different times and all the time and Christians are simply not noticing!

I once met an elderly man in a RV park who lived in a 5th-wheel trailer with two elderly malamutes. Actually the malamutes didn’t live in the RV. The man had purchased a mini-van and ripped out all the seats except the driver’s to create a living space for the dogs. He left the van’s sliding door open day and night so the dogs could come and go as they pleased. They never went into the trailer. Whenever the man wanted to take the dogs to the beach or woods, he merely called and motioned the malamutes inside, shut the door, and drove the van to a destination. He also owned a $60,000 truck to tow the 5^th wheel and the van at the same time with the malamutes inside when he traveled to a new park.

My Dad and I were sitting in the living room the other day, it was snowing outside, and he regaled me with a few more stories.

He remarked that the slushy snow falling that very moment reminded him of the snow he experienced as a combat Marine in Korea. He also said he remembered that the military served him canned hamburger patties from Argentinian beef. “Guadalcanal” was stamped on the cans, as in the Guadalcanal battle in WW II. I winced at the idea of tasting that meat. “They were pretty good,” said Dad as he let loose a thunderous guffaw.

We somehow segued to his teaching career at Molalla Grade School in the early 70s. It was around 73-74 that Oregon outlawed corporal punishment in public schools, but before that, one day when the Principal was gone and Dad was the teacher-in-charge, a colleague sent a male delinquent to the principal’s office with the demand the kid get a good lickin.’ Dad had the responsibility to deliver the spanking with a hickory paddle (“it had holes in it”) but there was no way he was going to do it. He said all the spanking requests came from the weak teachers and why punish the kids for their incompetence? He ushered the kid inside the office, shut the door, and told the kid to let out a “holler” when he struck the paddle on the chair.

The kid was dumbstruck and Dad had to explain it to him. Then he whacked the chair and the kid hollered like hell!

We both laughed like hell after he finished this outrageous story and I asked him if something might have been lost when Oregon banned corporal punishment. He said no. It was total sadism.

Dad told me that one Christmas during WW II, all he received as a gift was one orange. It wasn’t wrapped.

We also discussed the reason he ran away from home at 19 to join the Marines and go to Korea. His step mother had thwarted his relationship with a woman (not my mother) by intercepting her letters and destroying him. When he found out, he was practically enlisted the next day and shipping out to Camp Pendleton.

Our storytelling session ended with the astonishing tale of when Dad was in fifth or sixth grade in Albion, Nebraska in 1944 and the school had a boxing ring in the gym where teachers and administrators let boys (never girls) settled disputes! I asked him if he ever got in the ring. No. I asked if they let other kids watch and cheer. No. Did the boxers wear head gear? Hell no! I asked if any kid ever got hurt. No. The gloves were ultra padded and huge.