Elihu Entertainment

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.

Poor Max was still in a lot of pain, so he was very restless in the night—not a good thing since we were all exhausted from the New Year’s Eve party.  The girls were able to flop on the couch and vegetate with movies, but Hugh and I had to clear the debris and prepare New Year’s Day dinner for my parents.  Max felt sufficiently pathetic that he was happy to have doting grandparents visit and shower him with sympathy.  Since my parents settled to watch videos with the girls, Hugh and I slipped out for a walk and retraced our steps, trying to find what it was that had injured Max so badly.  It turned out to be a rusted fan-belt shield from an old vehicle, half buried in leaves and dirt, but with lethal edges projecting upwards.  Hugh hung the thing up on a tree so that it couldn’t harm any other creatures, and we plodded home to finish making dinner.  When we passed Edna’s house, Brandy recognized us and barked until Dick and Edna appeared and let her out.  She was pleased to see us but puzzled not to see Max.  Edna gave me a chew bone to take home for the invalid.

By bedtime, Max had perked up a bit.  He’d enjoyed being fussed over by Mum and Dad, and he was patient putting up with his time-consuming bedtime routine.  The next morning he seemed much more cheerful.  He gulped down his pill, well-wrapped in corned beef, and was very accommodating with his plastic sock, obligingly putting his foot up so that I could tie it on.  However, once back inside, he nipped at it impatiently as if to say, “Get this thing off me!”  This was a precursor of things to come.  Once he was pain-free, Max proved to be a terrible invalid.  The diary entries said it all:

January 4:  Spent fifteen minutes in the garden in the rain trying to get Max to go to the loo—he didn’t oblige—and a further ten minutes inside unsuccessfully trying to get him to take his pills.  Needless to say, we were late at the Vet.  Dr. Zinger agreed reluctantly to change the dressing without putting Max under, so I held the biting end while Dr. Zinger worked on the paw.  Managed very well; however, as we got Max down, he banged his paw and it started to bleed, so we had to start all over again.  This time Max was cross and vocal.  Afterwards, he got even by eating a piece of gauze on the floor.

January 5:  When it was time for Kate to go to school, Max hopped about and looked so eager that I decided to let him trot down the block.  He took off at speed on his three good legs – the fourth pointing up in front like a little lance.  He was so excited at having a walk that we got right round into the lane then came back through the garden. The only way I could make him rest the paw was to insist on a long down.

January 6:  Walked Kate partway to school.  Max cried when we parted from Kate.  He wanted to keep going in the worst way, but I made him turn back.  The whole body language spelled defiance, and when he saw a squirrel in the lane, he lunged ahead on three legs, the gammy one pointing forwards as if he were jousting in the lists.

January 7:  Gave Max his turn round the block after we saw Kate off at the corner.  Then home for housework, after which I had coffee and Max pouted through a long down.  He cheered up after lunch, when we walked Kate partway back to school and we met both the postmen who had made friends with him.  More pats, more sympathy.  How he lapped it up, doing his Sarah Bernhardt routine with the pathetic raised paw.

January 8:  Hugh, Kate and I took Max to the Vet.  We were greeted by a jolly nurse whom we hadn’t met before.  She beamed and asked:  “Is this the infamous Max?”  It turned out she’d been on duty when I phoned to ask about the light bulb he’d eaten.  She added:  “Does he light up when you plug him in?”  Max was very good while his bandage was changed and afterwards he let Dr. Zinger pat him and ate a Christmas cookie provided by the nurse.  The nurse had read about the puppets and was delighted to hear we were planning to build a show around a Max Marionette.  She asked if the puppet Max was going to eat a light bulb too.

January 9:  Girls were  sick so we skipped church.  Hugh and I gave Max his loop round the block and then, feeling guilty, left him with the girls and set off for a walk at the Foreshore.  Max got his revenge by chewing off half his new bandage.

January 11:  Both girls sick at home, so I was distracted. Max entertained himself by chewing his bandage right off.  I had to make an extra trip to the vet to get the bandage redone (another $20), plus rent a huge collar to stop him from chewing.  Max was pleased with himself for forcing an outing and he seemed quite happy to have another visit to Dr. Zinger, but his face was a sight when the collar went on.  This was definitely not in the plan.  For the rest of the day, he sulked, while Caroline, Katie and Hugh went into gales of laughter every time they looked at him.

January 12:  Max is using his collar like a cross between a lacrosse racquet, a shield and a battering ram.  He had a riotous play with his chew toy, scooping it up and tossing it into the air.

The day the bandage came off was a relief for everyone.  Hugh and Kate were home sick, so I left them watching news of the Los Angeles earthquake and took Max to the Vet, where, to his joy, he was relieved of both bandage and collar.  He shook hands with Dr. Zinger and bounced out exuberantly.  I took him to city hall on my way home, and while I picked up my agenda, he was much admired and sympathized over.  Then I stopped at the top of the park and walked him around the top path.  When he got home he was very happy and he lay at our feet while we had coffee, checking his foot and seeming relieved that everything was there.  Counting pads, as Hugh said:  “One, two….more than two….more than two.”  Max didn’t care how much we laughed and teased him.  He was one very happy dog that day.

The few days following Christmas were lovely.  Max enjoyed long walks on the crisp, frosty mornings, and afternoon visits with friends and family, not to mention leftover turkey and all the other treats that were part of the festive season.  We were planning a party for New Year’s Eve, so the preparations for that were fun too.  But then, on December 30, disaster struck.  We were walking through the woods below the new George Derby Centre.  This was the route we referred to as the Cariboo Walk, as the trails meandered all the way over to Cariboo Road.  My girls were off playing with friends, but Edna had her grandsons with her, and Hugh, thank heavens, was with us too.  If Hugh hadn’t been there, I don’t think Max would have survived.

We were heading up the trail that came out on Sixteenth Avenue below Cariboo Hill School, when suddenly, Max lurched out of the bush, blood pouring out of his foot.  It was obvious he was in shock and seriously injured.  Quick-thinking Hugh whipped off his sock and made a tourniquet, then sprinted off towards the road so he could flag down a ride home and bring back our car.  Edna leashed Brandy and gave her to Justin and Josh to hold.  Then she and I took Max’s rear and front ends respectively, and carried him out of the woods a few yards at a time.  We never realized how heavy he was until we had to get him up that trail, and we had to put him down periodically so we could rest and catch our breath.  Poor Max didn’t mind being carried for he seemed to realize that he needed help.  We finally got him out to the road and lay him down on the verge.  Hugh appeared almost immediately.  Someone up there was definitely looking after Max that day.  Hugh had careened out onto the road, covered in blood, and waved to the passing vehicles for a ride.  Instantly, a young man in a flatbed truck pulled over and picked him up.  Hugh never got the driver’s name, but whoever he was, that kind man saved Max’s life.

We lay Max on the back seat and I sat with him while Hugh sped to Dr. Zinger’s veterinary hospital.  The tourniquet had stopped the bleeding, but once we got Max inside and he tried to walk, the bleeding started again.  Dr. Zinger sedated him and we left him there, but as we drove home, we felt dreadfully anxious.  The girls greeted me with quips about Nightmare on Elm Street, and when I looked down, I realized why.  I hadn’t noticed how bloody I was, but when I took off my jeans, I found they were soaked in blood.  We carried on apprehensively throughout the day and called the vet late in the afternoon.  Dr. Zinger said we would have to call again later to see if Max could go home as he’d had heavy sedation.  Evidently, the cut had opened an artery and Max had been going into shock when he arrived at the surgery.  Dr. Zinger also told us that if we’d been any longer getting Max to the hospital, he would have died.  As it was, it had been touch and go.

I survived the rest of the day on coffee and Anacin.  In the evening we called, and to our relief, the night nurse said that Max could come home.  Hugh, Katie and I set off right away.  Poor Max was ecstatic to see us.  He crawled out of the cage, tail wagging.  Then the anesthetic overpowered him and he fell over and peed himself.  While trying to keep his bandaged foot dry, I knelt in the puddle with my right knee.  As I said to Hugh later, the day had gone full circle.  I started out with a blood-soaked left knee and finished up with a pee-soaked right knee.

Max was so happy to be home, but he was terribly drowsy.  We all made a big fuss of him, then fell into bed exhausted, but relieved.  In spite of our fatigue, we had a very bad night, for Max woke up frequently.  The poor boy was restless and uncomfortable, and in the morning, he seemed depressed.  Hugh had to carry him up and down the stairs.  I think he was in pain, and he was also very cranky.  We plodded on with the cleaning and party preparations, aided cheerfully by Marcella and crabbily by my own two ingrates.  Periodically, we took breaks to put Max’s plastic sock on and take him out to the bathroom.  Miraculously, the party turned out to be a great success, not that Max got to socialize.  He was tucked up in our room sleeping off the traumas of the past 48 hours.  But when midnight came and we chorused the usual greetings, I couldn’t help thinking how close our family had been to the saddest New Year’s Eve we’d ever known.  But thanks to Hugh’s quick thinking in a crisis, it was a Happy New Year after all.

Once we’d decided to create a Max puppet, the possibilities seemed endless.  Max was to replace the poodle in the Christmas show, but I soon realized that I could build a series of shows around his various tricks.  And since Hugh was clever enough to make a Max puppet, I naturally asked him to create a Brandy puppet too.  Max couldn’t be a star without his leading lady.

The song itself took shape quickly.  It was a cute story song about Max, the reluctant sled-dog who was put to work on Christmas Eve when a little girl fell ill and needed urgent medical care.  It took a challenge from Santa to get the Ho Hum Husky moving, but once he was racing Santa’s sleigh, he delivered the doctor to the child’s bedside in record time.  Once I’d finished the song, I read the lyrics to the girls as a bedtime story.  Caroline pronounced it good, but geeky; but as she declared “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer” geeky too, Max’s song passed the test.  The chorus proved so catchy that soon everyone was singing it.  Katie grumbled that she couldn’t get away from the song because even her friends would break into ‘ho hums’ in the midst of their games.

Max enjoyed having the children home over the school holidays.  Edna’s grandsons joined us for walks too.  Max liked the boys, being such a boy-boy himself, and all the young males had lots of fun playing on the trails. Two days before Christmas, Max came home from our walk with a Christmas gift from Brandy.  He was most intrigued by this, and very eager to have his present.  His nose told him that it was something he’d like to eat.  On Christmas Eve, he, in turn, took a present round for Brandy, though he was reluctant to part with it and looked very cross when I gave it to Edna and made him come home.   His nose remained out of joint for the rest of the day, and he demonstrated his rebellious mood by trying to steal a visitor’s hat.

Since Max was starting to ferret for loot and abscond with things he was not supposed to have, Hugh built a new garden gate to block the back parking lot.  Max enjoyed being outside with Daddy and watching the project take shape, but he was not thrilled once he realized his freedom had been curtailed.  Indoors, we had to be careful too, and we made sure that his Christmas presents were kept well out of reach.  The problem we didn’t anticipate was the Christmas tree itself.  We knew Max liked berries, for he’d often pick salmon-berries to eat in the woods, but it never occurred to us that he’d mistake a red Christmas-tree bulb for a berry.  Still, that’s what he did.  He crunched down a Christmas tree light bulb!  We called Dr. Zinger, who told us to give Max hydrogen peroxide to make him throw up.  However, Max kept two doses down and licked his lips as if he thought the medicine quite tasty.  He slurped down some more spoonfuls, but still didn’t bring up the glass.  Finally, I gave up and dispensed half a loaf of bread to coat it.

That night, we were to go to the William Tell for our anniversary dinner.  My mother had come over to stay with the girls, but we set off with trepidation, not knowing if there would be problems with Max.  I supposed concern about the dog dominated our evening, so we ended up talking pets with Mr. Dobeli, and heard all about his dominant and rather misbehaved dog named Willy.   Fortunately, dinner wasn’t marred by any emergency calls, and when we arrived home, naughty Max greeted us happily.  He appeared to have digested his light bulb and was feeling in fine fettle, having been fussed over by my mother all evening.  So I stopped worrying and wrote the incident into the Christmas show.

“How’s your tummy, Max.  You look a bit peaky.”
“I can’t look Pekey.  I’m a husky.”

Max’s first Christmas Day was great fun.  The girls were up early to open their stockings, and Max, stirred into action by the activity, was very funny with his.  He couldn’t figure out what was going on, but was most interested as assorted treats came out of his stocking.  He proceeded to ‘bury’ them all over the bedroom, in the process wearing the skin off his nose.  Later, he was equally interested in the present opening, particularly when he saw that Brandy’s present was a bag of the peanuts that he regularly stole from the squirrels.  While we ripped wrapping paper off our presents, he worked his way through the peanuts, then sat down with his new chew toy and bared his teeth at anyone who went near it.  A little lacking in the Christmas spirit, but then, what could you expect from a dog that ate light bulbs.

In spite of the decorating and the festive songs tinkling from the radio, I could not come up with a concept for my Christmas song.  I had written a good script, which included three Pelham animal marionettes—a cat, a poodle and a dragon—as well as several other antique puppets.  But I needed that feature song to drive the middle of the show.  It was so frustrating, but no matter how hard I tried, I drew a blank.

My own creative flow might have dried up, but I was surrounded by enchanting tales everywhere I went.  One of these was from my friend, Edna, who explained how her lop-eared rabbit had acquired its name.  I was aware that Edna had a rabbit named CB, though for all I knew, it could have been a nautical moniker and spelled Seabee.  However, during an early-December walk, Edna explained that CB stood for Christmas Bunny.  The reason for this name was quite the tear-jerker.  The previous year, Edna and Brandy had been walking in the woods on Christmas Day, and Brandy had become fascinated by a mound of snow.  When Edna investigated, it proved to be a shivering, abandoned lop-eared rabbit, freezing cold and not long for this world if he hadn’t been discovered by this caring pair.  So the bunny was taken home, thawed, and nursed back to the land of the living.  Given the miracle of his salvation and the day it occurred, he was christened Christmas Bunny.

Well, who could compete with a story like that?  I gave up trying and concentrated on the practicalities of shopping, baking and rehearsing our shows.  We had several gigs for December.  One of these was a birthday-party show, booked by a lovely family that attended our church.  The Claydons were cheerful and patient, in spite of the fact that we had problems setting up in time.  However, our performance got underway, albeit with us frazzled and roasting, since there was a radiator belching out heat beside us.  In spite of our discomfort, the show went well until the finale when we did the unthinkable – We Dropped a Puppet!!!  Such shame, but the Claydons didn’t appear to mind.  I vaguely recall hoots of laughter and someone calling out, “There goes one!”  Fortunately, they considered it a comedy turn.  In hindsight, I quail at the thought of the primitive nature of those early shows.  What forgiving audiences we had!

A gig of a different colour was the booking to perform Babes in the Wood for Scotia MacLeod in their high-rise downtown office.  Having hauled our equipment up in a service elevator that kept getting stuck, we found ourselves performing in the lobby, opposite the front desk, where we competed with ringing phones, peripatetic couriers and roving stock-brokers.  The show was clearly the finale to the staff Christmas luncheon and was designed as What-to-do-with-the-wives-and-children-while-the-husbands-put-in-another-two-hours-at-the-office.  Needless to say, our audience sat as if press-ganged and had as much animation as a row of sausage rolls.  The adults looked bored before we started, and the children were so robotically well-behaved it was positively eerie, but we soldiered on.  The show continued smoothly, except for the Sheriff losing a string early on and proceeding to look tipsy for the rest of the performance.  By the time we’d packed up and tackled the temperamental elevator once more, everyone in the family had as much Ho Ho Ho in them as Ebenezer Scrooge.

All this pressure took its toll as December wore on.  Katie became very naughty during her church concert.  She rattled off her lines as if she was chanting her ABC’s, and tossed Baby Jesus’ gift down like a discarded bus ticket.  Hugh assessed the situation and suggested that some festive outings were in order to restore our Christmas spirit.  And so, one evening, while Caroline was at a skating party, the rest of us went to Ioco to see the Carol Ships.  Although we had intended to watch from the clubhouse, Hugh decided it would be more fun to go out on the boat.  Of course, we had not prepared for this, so needless to say, we froze.  Having chugged around the bay for half an hour, the only result was borderline hypothermia.  We saw plenty of marker ships coming out of Reed point, but no carol ships anywhere.  Finally, we gave up and came in.  Then, the minute we walked off the dock, the first Carol ship glided around the point.  So we watched from the clubhouse as originally planned, and I made Max do a long down on my feet while we saw the flotilla pass by.  That solid husky torso made a fabulous foot-warmer.

Once we were all home, Hugh made a hot rum to thaw me out.  I decided to enjoy it upstairs, lolling on the couch in our bedroom.  Max, equally exhausted by the long day, was sprawled in the middle of the carpet, having been too tired to make it to his usual corner.  A totally ho-hum husky, determined not to stir unless something really exciting got his attention.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a set of lyrics floated into my mind:

Max, the Ho Hum Husky, could run faster than the rest,
But he never made the effort unless put unto the test,
Unless he sensed another team gaining on his tail,
He’d slow down and move at a pace more suited to a snail.

Bugger the poodle, I thought.  We can do better than that.

“Hugh!”  I called down the stairs.  “Do you think you could make a puppet of Max!”

The day after the election, we set off to meet Edna and Brandy as usual.  It had snowed in the night, and then frozen, so the ground was treacherous.  To add to the hazardous conditions, we were joined by an ownerless trio of canines, made up of two unruly mongrels that we’d met before with a large German shepherd in tow.  Fortunately, all three dogs were friendly, but large and boisterous, so it proved quite the walk.  Snow plus a pack of five!  Max had such a puzzled expression on his face.  His brain was on overload trying to figure out who was the leader of the pack.  Gary Gibson was right about Max’s alpha-male attitude.  Whenever he met another male dog, Max would test for dominance.  He accepted it graciously if the other dog asserted leadership, but he had to know who was in charge.

Between watching her feet and making sure the dogs didn’t take her out at the knees, Edna, predictably, sounded off about the election.  She was very annoyed about the ultimate outcome, but as I pointed out to her, everyone was more disappointed than I was.  In fact, I wasn’t disappointed at all, merely relieved.  Edna had far more of the spirit to make a politician than I ever did.  She was quite prepared to take on difficult people.  I’ll never forget the day we ran into ‘Mr. Chow’, a particularly obnoxious walker with an equally obnoxious dog.  ‘Mr. Chow’ laid into Edna because Brandy was unleashed, even though she was nowhere near his dog.  Edna promptly told him to ‘dry up and stick his head down a toilet.’  What headlines I could have made if I’d used that turn of phrase at an all-candidates meeting!

After-effects from the election continued to interrupt my days.  Many people would call, assuming I could help with local issues.  A particularly disturbing incident occurred when I received a strange note ending with a string of x’s.  I felt disconcerted.  I was even more uneasy when a few phone calls turned up the fact that the letter writer was a schizophrenic who was known to have violent outbursts and had fixations on dark-eyed brunettes.  Never was I so glad that I had my feisty Max to keep me company.

However, with the election over, life became a mad dash to Christmas, but what fun that was.  Shopping, writing letters, wrapping presents, cleaning silver, booking and rehearsing shows—all were a joy after the strain of politics.  We had more time for visits to my parents and they were glad to see us back to normal too.  On our first post-election visit, Big Max took little Max round the block so many times that, once back in the house, Max Junior jumped into my lap for shelter.  Totally overdosed on walkies.

Max liked the fall.  He enjoyed the cooler weather, and he was very interested in the new acquisitions that began to appear in the house.  My birthday came and went, along with a gift of some weights for my morning exercises.  Max found these fascinating.  He thought I’d been given giant chew toys, though he was not so impressed when he tried to get his teeth around them.  He was very interested, too, when a box of antique Pelham marionettes arrived from my old friend, Jennifer Guttridge Milne, who had heard about Elwoodettes and decided to donate the puppets we played with as children.  These Max was not allowed to test his teeth on.  As December approached and the girls became more hyper, the anticipation in the air was too much for Max and he started to be naughty too.  It was no use issuing warnings not to pout, cry or shout; everyone was just too excited about Christmas.

Amid all these preparations, I was struggling to find a focal point for a Christmas song.  I’d written a script for a half-hour show, which we were creating with a view to performing for the Burnaby Village Museum the following year.  Babes in the Wood was fun, but it was too long and cumbersome for private gigs, and it was becoming obvious that we needed shorter shows for special occasions.  However, the song eluded me, and I finally gave up and concentrated on the tasks at hand.  One of these was the holiday decorating marathon.

Our family always decorated the house on the first weekend in December.  This practice dated back to the days of Hugh’s parents and our first dog, Beanie, when we used to make a special trip to the Sunshine Coast to cut our tree.  This event was even immortalized one year by a Sun photographer when the newspaper did a story on family traditions.  Since our house is more than 100 years old, it is full of nooks and crannies that lend themselves to ornamentation, so a lot of trees and garlands go into this endeavor.

Max, of course, new to this tradition, was ecstatic.  My diary records that we tackled the job, ‘un-helped by a very excited and naughty Max who kept stealing decorations, including Hugh’s ship-in-a-bottle which he crunched into smithereens.’  After dinner, we sat around and admired the tree, but Max lay on guard all evening.  His wolf-mask expression was easy to read:  “My tree!  My presents!”   Katie became most indignant, for Max growled at her whenever she tried to look at her present.  So much for trying to peel back the paper and take a peek.  Santa wasn’t the only one who was watching.