Elihu Entertainment

We celebrated April Fool’s Day that year by taking our first trip in Lisa. Max had dutifully visited Dr. Zinger for his rabies shot and had behaved politely in spite of getting two needles. We set off at nine-thirty, having given Max a run in the woods before we left.  However, it was a slow trip as the traffic was terrible and it took us an hour and a half to get to and through the border.  Once there, we discovered that Max was a great asset going through customs. The officer in charge of our line was extremely picky and suspicious, and in spite of our declaration that we were not bringing in any prohibited foods, he decided to enter our motorhome and check for himself.  One look at Max’s lowering mask and he changed his mind, reversed in a hurry and waved us through.

We discovered that travelling with a dog was easy in a motorhome. When we left Max and went for a late breakfast at Denny’s in Blaine, he was comfortable with his food dish, his water bowl, his chew toy and his bed.  The trip to Copalis beach proved long and tiring as the traffic continued to be awful right through Seattle and Tacoma, but because he was in his house-on-wheels with all his people present, Max was not at all restless.  It was late when we got in, but he seemed blissfully contented as he watched us prepare dinner and get ready to tuck down for the night.

Come morning, we decided that Max was coping better than we were.  We woke up sore having discovered that the bed was rock hard.  The girls slept in, so Hugh gallantly served me tea in bed, then took Max outside—lurch, lurch, rock, rock—Lisa’s suspension was definitely softer than the bed. The girls were having to adapt to camper life too.  Once up, they went over to the communal shower where Katie acted helpfully as Caroline’s handmaiden until she ruined it all by dropping her sister’s ring down the sink.  After much wailing from Caroline and assistance from the owner, the ring was retrieved and we headed back to make breakfast.  Max seemed mildly bewildered at the amount of time his humans were taking to complete routine tasks, but he was rewarded for his patience once we set out for a walk to Copalis Beach.  What a lovely route it proved to be.  We crossed the bridge over the river, checked out the local store, then walked along a road bordered with grassy dunes and pretty ground cover until we reached the raging Pacific and an immense stretch of sand.  Max tore about like a whirlwind, and he chased every gull in sight.  It was windy but wonderful.  How he enjoyed himself. The whole day evolved into a medley of walks on the magnificent beach and lazy coffee breaks back at base, climaxing with a marshmallow roast by the campfire at night. What a tired dog his was by bedtime.  He was very happy to tuck up in the camper that night.

The second day was quieter for Max, since we were planning to sightsee. Hugh and I took him to the beach early but could only let him run for a while as the clammers were already out and cars were driving up and down the sands.  After breakfast, we set off and toured through Ocean Shores and then down to Aberdeen, after which we visited Hoquiam’s Castle and admired all the beautiful antiques.  Max didn’t seem to mind his enforced stays in the motorhome, since he was given a short walk at every stop where he could investigate a host of new and interesting smells. However, he was happy to return to our campsite, especially as we went straight down to the beach, where Hugh gave the girls their first driving lesson while I ran Max through the sand dunes.

The holiday came to an end far too soon, but before we left, we drove to the beach and ran Max on the dunes.  While there, we made coffee, buttered buns, and enjoyed our last snack by the sea prior to setting off for home.  We drove back via the inside of the Peninsula.  This was a magnificent drive, particularly along the Hoat Canal.  There was a three-hour ferry wait at Port Townsend, and once again, we discovered the benefits of road trips in a motorhome.  Instead of being stuck in a car, we made lunch and ate in comfort, walked Max on the beach, then strolled along the waterfront where we bought ice creams and postcards.

Such a lovely Easter Weekend. The ferry crossing was picturesque. The trip home was lovely too, with the scenic drive across Whitby Island and through Deception Pass.  Max continued to be patient throughout, not even seeming bothered when we left him to go shopping at Bellis Fair.  Going back through the border was a breeze, since there was hardly anyone at the truck crossing, and we were back in Burnaby by seven o’clock. We unloaded our gear, weary but happy, but Max, reluctant to be unpacked, kept returning to his corner in Lisa. His house on wheels had become his home.

Next: Back to school.

Shakespeare definitely had it right when he wrote: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”  March, that year, not only came in like a lion, but went out leaving us feeling as if we were facing a whole Colosseum-full of the growling beasts. Faced with the news that my father had been diagnosed with cancer, I realized there would be many challenges for the family ahead. Had we realized that this sad news would be the precursor of fifteen years of troubles, heaven only knows how we would have coped.

In that first month, it was as if the worry over my father sent the whole family into a tailspin. Everyone was sick, I was diagnosed with an auto-immune inflammatory arthritis, and Max had his first (of several to come) biting incidents—this latter occurring when I was on the phone hearing the results of my father’s tests.  I had kept Max with me all afternoon while Katie entertained a group of friends, all of whom went home at dinnertime.  I saw the girls off, then went back to hearing Dad’s prognosis and finding out what was to be done for him.  Two minutes later, there was a knock.  One of the girls had returned to get something she’d forgotten, so I sent her downstairs to fetch it, by now completely distracted by my father’s news so I didn’t notice that Max had followed her.  Next thing I heard was a yell.  Max had found a dress-up to carry, Katie had told him to drop it, and her friend had yelled at the dog, tried to snatch it from him and got nipped.  Her skin was not broken, but there were two clear dents.

On top of the worry over my father, this was the last straw.  When I phoned the girl’s mother and explained, she was nice about it, and Katie’s friend was back the next day to play, so she couldn’t have been overly traumatized. Still, it was a worrying precursor of things to come.  Max was quick with his mouth, and vigilance was going to be the order of the day if he wasn’t going to get in a lot of trouble.  Even when there is provocation, the dog is always blamed and is held accountable when there is a biting incident. Somehow, we had to protect Max from himself and those alpha-male, husky-wolf genes.

Max was such a strange mixture of lovable pup and misbehaved tough guy.  In many situations, he was fine. He loved to go to Lighthouse Park to walk with my father, and was always wild with excitement when he leapt out of the car and saw his namesake on the trail. He socialized politely, if suspiciously, with the West Vancouver dogs, as if he understood that he was the visitor and this was their territory. On trips to the vet, he sat sedately, ignoring the other dogs in the waiting room and behaving politely with Dr. Zinger. When we took him for runs on the power line, he’d tear up and down, bound through streams and swamps, hurtle through the bushes, and come home happy and covered in mud, though he squirmed a lot as we hosed him off.  Yes, he caused a lot of worry, but he also brought a lot of joy.

In fact, in hindsight, knowing how difficult the next years were to be, I realize that, for all Max’s naughtiness, his cheeky presence in the family provided a source of solace that helped us get through the tough times.  He was certainly a great comfort to me during the day when the rest of the family was at school.  He would lie at my feet, under the computer desk or the music keyboard, sighing blissfully at the music, or if I was painting scenery, he’d find his way to the studio, simply happy to be with one of his people. Yes, he was a difficult dog, but when it came to unconditional love, nothing could beat him. The troubles kept coming, but Max would wag his tail and snuggle up to his people, and every member of the family would smile and feel restored. That Ho Hum Husky had a way of putting everything in perspective.

Next:  Max goes across the line.

Max continued to be a mixture of klutz, disobedient hellion, clever trickster, spoiled brat and independent thinker.  He would race through the woods with such abandon that he regularly hit trees and almost knocked himself out. Alternately, he would pick up huge sticks and charge ahead, taking out the unwary walker at the knees. When called to come, he always looked around first to identify what it was that I didn’t want him to see. One day, he scared me silly during a walk along the power line, for he shot through a gap in the fence and headed for the freeway.  Fortunately he had the sense to stop short when he saw the whizzing cars, but I swear I gained a grey hair every day.

The weather was cold again, with occasional snowfall, which always seemed to stir up Max’s wild husky genes. Walks were frosty, chilly occasions, and Katie cracked us up one day by announcing that she had “goof bumps”—which we all agreed was very apt, for Max as well as for her. However, it was the kind of weather that one liked to hunker down indoors once the exercise walk was done, so I decided it was a good opportunity to get back to writing my mystery stories. I started work on a tale that would later become “Death and the Doorknockers” in my first book, To Catch an Actress. This was fun to write as it made good use of my experiences on the campaign trail.  However, Max was annoyed at being ignored and showed his displeasure by chewing up a pillow, after which he entertained himself by chasing the vacuum when I cleaned up the pile of fluff.

Max was a Smart Alec, and once he’d done something for the first time, he figured he knew the ropes and could call the shots. He became an ace at picking out ‘his people’ (which meant Katie, Caroline or Edna’s grandsons) in the daily parade of children pouring out of the school. He also recognized routes and knew the activities they presaged. One day, I needed the car to take the girls to the dentist, so I drove Hugh to school and took Max along for the ride. Since Hugh taught at Alpha in North Burnaby, we had to go right by Dr. Zinger’s Pet Hospital.  Max, sitting in the back, looked more and more dejected as he recognized the route, but perked up once he realized we weren’t going to the vets.  It was hilarious watching his doleful face in the rear-view mirror and seeing how it instantly reverted to macho-dog cheekiness once we drove by the dreaded destination.

In addition to his fear of the vet, Max had developed a dread of school, and he became very glum whenever Gary Gibson appeared.  Around this time, Gary was trying to sell his motorhome, and since I had just received a sum of money for a whiplash injury, Hugh and I decided to buy it and use it for family holidays.  So one Sunday, Gary and his wife, Kathy, came over to show us the motorhome, which they had named Lisa.   Max made no bones about expressing his opinion of their presence.  He sat mulishly, head bowed, face scowling, his back turned to Gary, deliberately ignoring him for the entire visit.  However, he quite liked Kathy, and cheerfully demonstrated his Can Can for her, glowing with pride when she said how clever he was. Max looked bewildered and relieved when they left and he realized he hadn’t had a training session. He appeared to puzzle over the fact for the rest of the evening.

The sale of the motorhome went through, and Max was most intrigued by his new house-on-wheels. We decided to take it out to Sasamat Lake for a test outing with the girls and their friends, so we packed a picnic and set off for the day.  Max took up his position between me and Hugh as if he’d decided that the front seats were the equivalent of our armchairs at home.  He remained there and behaved with impeccable manners during the drive.  However, he was naughty on our run around the lake. He was over-excited by the new smells and flatly refused to come when called.  We finally had to leash him, though Hugh let him go at the end of the walk so he could chase the geese.  The geese were unafraid and very contemptuous of this delinquent dog.  They flew all of two feet in front of him and then sedately outswam him until he gave up and headed exhausted back to shore.  He was a tired, but happy dog that night.  It was the start of a new era for Max. Lisa was going to provide him with a lot of happy times in the future.

Next: Troubles coming in battalions.

It was abundantly obvious when Max had completely recovered because he reverted to ‘Hell on Paws’ mode again.  The command, “Come”, was no longer in his vocabulary, witness the day he took off in pursuit of a spaniel, ran right out onto the road, and then played dodgems with us when we tried to catch him.  He was also into scavenging.  One day, he found a long bone in the woods.  Every effort to extract it from his jaws failed, and he gulped it down defiantly, causing me to watch him anxiously for the next few days.  However, like the Christmas light bulb, he seemed to digest it.  Max obviously had a cast-iron stomach.

We resorted to leash walks.  As long as there were no distractions, this was fine.  Max could behave impeccably on a decorous walk to the library.  City sidewalks did not offer too many diversions.  But the woods were another story.  One day, I nearly dislocated my shoulder when a fox darted out from the clearing and ran across our path. Before you could say, “View Halloo,” Max caught the scent and lunged forward.  I could barely hold him for the rest of the walk.  The command, “Heel” had also disappeared into the ether.

In spite of his difficult ways, Max still managed to make us laugh.  He was a terrible klutz.  On one occasion, he crashed into a tree while playing with Brandy, bit his tongue and saw stars.  He lay down and looked utterly pathetic.  He would not stir until he had been patted and reassured that he was okay.  For a tough dog, he could also be a wimp.  When we walked him in a hailstorm, his face was a picture as the ice balls bounced off his head.  Indignation personified.  Another time, he saw his shadow and nearly jumped out of his skin.  Then he spent the next few minutes trying to locate the elusive giant black hound.

As we tossed around the idea that it was time for another call to Gary Gibson, something else happened to precipitate a visit from the trainer.  I received a call from our lawyer to tell me I was getting $15000 for whiplash injury, and what we were to spend it on impacted Max and his trainer as well.

Next:  Hell on Paws gets a House on Wheels.

The first weeks of 1994 were depressing.  We and the world were out of joint.  The news was dominated by news of Sue Rodriguez’s right to die, or downers from the world of figure skating. Brasseur and Eisler placed third when they should have won gold.  Harding and Kerrigan were feuding.  Kurt Browning was over the hill.  On the home front, everyone in our family was sick.  The doctor said Caroline’s chest sounded like a chain saw and mine was squeaking with pleurisy, so we were both on antibiotics.  I was also struggling ineffectually with my Max scripts, yet nothing was flowing off the pen.  And poor Max was missing Brandy.

For a dog with Max’s exuberant energy, it was torture to be confined to leash walks with no opportunity for play. When we walked through the Derby trails, he would stand on the bridge, looking down to Brandy’s favourite waterhole, and cry pitifully.  But since the vet had said that Max had to be kept calm, Edna and I couldn’t risk joining up for our walks.  One day, though, as Max and I plodded through the trails, we met Edna with Brandy, who was also leashed due to an injured shoulder.  Brandy was ecstatic to see Max, but funnily enough, Max was standoffish.  It was as if he couldn’t understand why she’d neglected him for so long.  Still, they managed to behave, and with both dogs leashed, we were able to return to our old routine.  The next day, I walked Katie to school and continued on to Edna’s house, and this time, Max was thrilled.  His tail went a mile a minute.  He and Brandy behaved on their walk too.  They seemed to understand that they couldn’t run and play.  They were just happy to be together

When we finally took Max to the vet to have his stitches taken out, there was one small spot still bleeding, so Dr. Zinger ordered the leash walks to continue for another three weeks.  You could have sworn Max knew what was being said, because he became most uncooperative.  He lay down in the corner so we couldn’t lift him up and refused to roll over.  Once we’d forcibly dragged him out and held him down so that the stitches could come out, he grudgingly allowed Dr. Zinger to pat him.  Such a contrary animal.  Around this time, the movie, Iron Will, came out and we took the girls to see it.  It was a gripping movie, set during the 1917 Iditarod, the annual sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome.  Gus, the lead dog, looked a lot like Max and certainly had some of his temperament.  Watching the show brought to mind much that our trainer, Gary Gibson, had told us.  When we returned home, we all made a fuss of Max, but Hugh wryly commented that we had landed ourselves with dog who should be christened ‘Wus than Gus’.

To be fair to Max, he co-operated on his leash walks.  I supposed he realized it was that or nothing.  Occasionally something different would happen to make the walk interesting.  One weekend, we noticed a new trail and went exploring.  The path soon ended in a glade, where we discovered a locked and camouflaged shack in the woods.  Once home, we reported it to the RCMP, and were asked if we’d accompany a constable back to the woods and show him the location.  Max was delighted to get a second walk, though he was not too sure about the large, uniformed male who accompanied us.  The locked cabin turned out to be nothing more than a teen hangout, and nothing was discovered on the premises, other than a porno magazine, which the officer confiscated and put in a black plastic bag.  As we walked back, I went ahead with Max, and Hugh and the constable walked behind us.  As we emerged onto the main trail, we met Samantha and her owners.  They took one look at the policeman, walking three paces behind me, and said I had it pretty good to have an RCMP officer assigned to follow me and my dog with a plastic bag. The constable did not look amused.

By the first week in February, Max was due for his check up and shots.  We went on a Saturday, and Dr. Zinger was very jolly with him.  As Hugh commented, “Why wouldn’t he be?  At the rate he was going, Max was going to pay for Dr. Zinger’s early retirement.”  Max behaved moderately well, and to everyone’s relief, we were told that he could now run and play for short periods, although we had to break him in slowly.  So the following day, we took him to the Foreshore where we let him have his first off-leash gambol since his injury.  What a happy dog he was.  On Monday, he was even happier, for he and Brandy were finally allowed to play.  He even had a bonus, for we met two ladies with three friendly dogs, and all five had a terrific romp while the humans chatted.  So much for starting in gradually,

By Valentine’s Day, Max was completely healed.  He enthusiastically took part as we shared out Valentine’s chocolates and cards.  His treats, of course, were not chocolate, but hamburger chews, which he liked, though he proceeded to make rude smells for the rest of the day.  He also enjoyed his present from Brandy, and later, we walked round to deliver his present to her—cookies enclosed in a fancy box made by Katie.

It was no wonder, later on, I created a show called Guard Dog with Heart, loaded up with all sorts of silly puns and a rock group called The Hearts.  Max and Brandy really were Valentines.  Two dogs who were always happy when they were together.  He might have been howling the blues as the year began, but by February 14, he was right back in the pink.