Episode 6: Fretless in Montana

Julie- Hey, welcome to Happy Tales of Happy Tails, the podcast where you’ll hear stories of the way pups have touched our hearts and our lives. So for the next few minutes, let everything else go and just listen and smile. I’m your host, Julie Jackson. Hey, friends, I am so excited to be joined today by my friend Craig Lancaster, who is an award winning author. And one of the most amazing storytellers that I know, I’m going to include a link to his website, so I highly encourage you to go check it out. Just a little side note his book,” 600 hours of Edward” is probably one of my favorite books. And he wrote such a real character. I was sad when it was over. I felt like I was moving away from a lifelong friend. So really delighted to have him here and loved this conversation. It was full of so many great little gyms, I’ve gone back and listened to it several times. It just makes me happy. And I hope it does the same for you. So just sit back and enjoy.

Craig- I’m so glad you asked me to do this. I love I love I love the doggos. Yeah, so I’ve basically been breed specific, you know? Yeah, like we had a Cocker Spaniel, I think when I was in my teen years, but it’s, it’s always been the dachsies for me. You know, I think because I want to achieve like the, the greatest disparity in dog size and human size. So…

Julie- Right. They’re so cute, though.

Craig- Oh yeah. Yeah. So, um, so Fretless is, my Fretless just turned, four. And he is my fifth or sixth dachshund.

Julie- Are we gonna get to meet fretless today?

Craig- Yeah, I don’t know where he went. But he’ll come back.

Julie- Okay, good. I was hoping so.

Craig- Yeah. So. And I think what it is, you know, like, there’s a certain amount of, you know, what you’re gonna get with a breed, right? Like they have. They kind of have like archetypes right there. They’re kind of this thing, and then they all each individual pet has his or her own personality. That’s just hilarious. You know?

Julie- Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We have a house full of heelers and huskies. So we know we’re gonna get destruction and backtalk.

Craig- Backtalk… and my dad is a heeler guy. And yes, like incredibly loyal, predictable dogs. Dad had a blue heeler that just, you didn’t worry about the house, right? I mean, he was always on patrol. He was always on patrol. And, and he would do funny things like jump up on the back of a horse with my dad when my dad was rounding up cattle and stuff. You know, it just, you know, and to have the natural herding instinct, right. So dad could just walk him out to a pasture and say Tighly, round them up, and she just got to work, you know?

Julie- Yeah, it’s nuts. Yeah. But like you said, the uniqueness of our heelers. They’re 12 now but they’re twin girls from the same litter. And when they were little, and they would wake up in the morning and they’d want to take me to the back, you know, hey, take me outside and they would herd me to the back door. But without seeing them, I knew who was herding me because one nipped and the other shoved me. So, they had their distinct… So if I was being nipped, I knew it was Lilly. And if I was being shoved, I knew it was Eleanor.

Craig- Funny. That’s just hilarious. Yeah. So my first dachshund was Sniffer. And he was a stray. We were, it was right after my mom and I moved to Texas to be with my stepfather. And we were living in what used to be the Soto Grande apartments over in Euless. And, and Sniffer just showed up one day, and he never left. Yeah, and, and I hate to be the guy who like looks back on his own childhood, and is like, well, you know, things were just so much better when when I was a kid, you know, because I think everybody reminisces. I think people do that because they want to be relevant as they age, as opposed to just acknowledging that every age is pretty spectacular on its own. Right. Like I mean, you know, I would have I would have loved have a phone that does all the things my phone does when I was 16. I probably wouldn’t have, you know, been as diligent about some things. Had I had that phone. But anyway, so, so I do tend to get nostalgic about Sniffer, but it really was during a time, in the town that both you and I grew up in, where, you know, you just opened the doors in the morning and everybody left, right, including the dog. It’d be like see ya later. Sniffer. If he was, if he was doing anything he wasn’t supposed to do, the neighbors all knew him. They’d send him home. Yeah, get out of here Sniffer, go home.

Julie- Like, “Oh streetlights are coming on. I gotta get back home now!”

Craig- Right, right. Whereas now with my dog, I’m like, “You know, gosh, I haven’t seen him in seven minutes. Where is he?” You know, like, is everything okay? We never worried about Sniffer that way. You know, the kids would bang out the door. He’d bang out the door, everybody show up for lunch, you know, whatever. And, and he was, you know, we’ll occasionally watch old family movies, and he’ll show up and it’s just man. And he was a full size dauchsund which have had miniatures since. So he was just he was rippled. He was just strong. He was just such a good boy, you know, and that sort of cast cast my heart in that direction.

Julie- Right, right. Yeah. Makes sense.

Craig- Yeah. And I’ve had, you know, I’ve had had girl doxies, I’ve had boy, doxies. You know, the boys are a little more aggressive. The girls are a little more sedate. But, gosh, the dog I had that was most like a cat was a girl dachshund. You know, she was she was kind of standoffish and…

Julie- A little more timid or…?

Craig- Yeah, well, well, more like more like, you know, she wanted to be worshipped the way a cat.

Julie- Oh, aloof, kind of?

Craig- Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always used to get annoyed with my mom when she would say you know, about the cat, “Well, I’m just happy the cat lets us live with her”. And I was like, “Forget that!” You know, like, pack the cat’s bags. I’ll walk them to the curb. Yeah. Until I had a dog that acted that way. And then I got it. Then I was like, Oh, yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Julie- Your majesty, I understand now.

Craig- That’s exactly right. Yeah. So. So I was thinking about, you know, what to talk about today. And, you know, the paradox of dogs and pets in general is that we’re, if we live a life, that’s, you know, what the actuarial tables say it’s going to be, we’re going to have a lot of them. And we’re always going to have to say, and we’re always going to have to say goodbye. And, and that’s been the single hardest part. And I, as I’ve gotten older, you know, like since Fretless is four, and I hear his ticking clock, you know, yeah. I just do. I can’t believe it’s already been four years. Still a young dog, but I remember when I brought him home, you know, and I think about the inevitability of that. And, and honestly, how I hope it’s that I say goodbye to him, and he doesn’t say goodbye to me. Because, you know, then where’s he gonna go live?

Julie- Oh, my gosh, yeah. Yeah.

Craig- Yeah. So I had a I had a girl dachshund named Mitzi. And it’s the only one that I’ve lost early. I lost Mitzi when she was five, because she developed cancer. And and I had arranged to, you know, have a friend of the family who was a vet come to the house. So we could say goodbye that way. And her, her little veins had collapsed so badly that he couldn’t get you couldn’t get a line into her. And, in fact, ended up you know, sort of injecting the stuff not into a vein but into the system, which just made for a doped up dog, you know, like she was, she’s, like, she was drunken. So ended up having to take her to the hospital for the shot in the heart. And, um, and it was, you know, I mean, I tell stories for a living and I would, had anybody sketched out this story, I’d have been like, Come on, man. That’s way too maudlin and we can’t, we can’t do that. But you know, I had her little head and waiting for the shot, and which is almost instantaneous, but there is like that little moment, and she licked my nose and then she was gone. I have I just I mean, I didn’t have any control over myself, you know, I picked her up. I’m like walking around the lobby with all these other pet owners, and I’m crying, and I’m bawling, and I’m holding her and her bowels dump, which happens after you die. And, you know, and they, they misspelled her name on the receipt, and I screamed at them, you know, it’s just it was it was awful. But the really cool story about Mitzi is I was the sports editor of this West Coast paper back then. And my columnists would pick all the weekend football games. And so I had Mitzi picking against them, and she was like, kicking their @$$3$. And, and she died mid season. And so I had put a reader note in that said, Mitzi was sick. And, you know, we were going to be saying goodbye to her. And the notes, the outpouring that I got, you know, people sent her toys, people, you know, just, I, every day, I would just have this sack of mail in my office. And so that all got buried with her, like, you know, we put her in this big toolbox, and we set all the letters and everything down in there with her. And yeah, it was, I mean, it was every end, every emotional end of what that’s like. You know, it’s like all the love all the heartache. Yeah, all of it.

Julie- They really do bring out the best in humanity, though.

Craig- They do. I, here’s, here’s something that I just kind of find generally hilarious, right? If you kill a dog in a book, which I’ve done, people get angry with you. Yeah, like, you can. You can, you can torch a school bus full of children in a book. And nobody cares.

Julie- You’re not gonna get hate mail. It’s just part of the story.

Craig- It’s amazing. It’s amazing. And it really, I mean, it says something about them. And what it says about the dogs is good. What it says about us might not be that great, you know, that, that? That that we ultimately if you want to move us to do the right thing, involve a dog. Because if you’re going to just involve a human, you might not get our best response, you know, and that’s,

Julie- Well, it’s funny, because of course, I’m, I apparently have a reputation as being a dog person.

Craig- I don’t know where that… where did this come from?

Julie-So you know, like, movies will come out and people will be like, “Oh, did you see this?” And I’m like, Are you kidding? I can’t go see a dog movie. I can’t. And a dear friend of mine, she… have you ever read racing in the rain? Okay. It’s a great book. But oh, my gosh, I listened to the audiobook and I was at work. And by the end of it I was ugly sobbing, I’m standing ugly sobbing and I’m like, Okay, I feel like an idiot. But I tell people, like I can’t, I can’t do a dog story. I can’t I can’t do a dog movie. I can’t do a dog story. And even like, some of the stories that people have been sharing, you know, my family’s like,”You can’t cry at all of them” and I’m like, “Oh, but I can”.

Craig- Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna, watch me. Yeah. Yeah. I was on a flight one time from… was a two parter. And it was like How was I doing this? I was like Minneapolis to Atlanta to Portland Maine. And I only had like three or four books that were not in the cloud. And there was no way that I was going to pay for internet access, and so on my Kindle, and so one of them was “Where the Red Fern Grows”.

Julie- Oh, gosh.

Craig- And so I started it, and I knew what was going to happen because I’ve read it before I’ve seen the movie and and sure enough, I’m sitting in the middle seat from Atlanta to Portland, Maine. When I get to the end of that book, and I’m just, I’m just a big sopping mess. Yeah. And, and so then I tell my seatmates, “Well, you know, I just read “Where the Red Fern Grows” and one of them was a middle aged woman, you know, sitting next to me, and she starts bawling just because I told her.

Julie- “Where the Red Fern Grows”, “Sounder”, “Old Yeller”, like yeah, did they hate us as children?! I remember at Snow Heights that, you know, we like read all of those. And yes, they’re great stories. But I just remember thinking, this is the worst pain I’ve ever known!

Craig- Yeah, you know, it taps into that. That thing about dogs. I mean, I I felt bad about this, but I wasn’t lying. I told my grandmother one time, you know, she was she was kind of good naturedly teasing me about how much I love my dog that I had at the time. Yeah. And I like looked at her and I go, ‘Yeah”, I said, “I love her way more than I love some family members”.

Julie- And sorry, not sorry. Yeah, no.

Craig- No, I’m not gonna apologize for it. Fretless came into my life. If I were making rational decisions, I probably would not have brought him aboard when I did. You know, we were living in Maine, it hadn’t really worked out. And, you know, which is just a hard situation in general, you’re, you know, trying to unwind a decision that you had been excited about. And, and then I’m like, “Well, I want this dog”. You know, he was, he was bought in from a breeder in a small Maine town. He was the last, he was one of five boys, he was the last one to leave. You know, so I get there. And I’m crying because I’ve wanted him so bad. And the, the owner’s granddaughter is crying because she’s become attached to the last, you know, everybody’s a mess. But Fretless was I don’t know that I would have gotten through those final months in Maine without him. He, you know, when when he got a little bigger we, he and I started going off on these, to these nature preserves long walks in the woods. And he was my little faithful buddy, you know. Like, he, he let me sort of come to terms with Maine, like, not hate it as I left, but love it, you know, and still know that I had to go. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of very human lessons in something like that, you know, I mean, yes. The things that we want that aren’t for us, and we have to let go. And it hurts us. You know, and dogs can help. Help us through those things. You know, you can, a dog will sit and listen to you and be fascinated. Yeah, you know, and we know, we have to pour it out. Right? Really, really have to pour it out? Yeah. I mean, I just have moments where he’ll be sitting on my lap, and I’ll look at him, and I’ll just be like, you know, this didn’t, this all didn’t come together without you, buddy, you know? Yeah. Well, I know, it’s amazing what fantastic communicators, they are. Like the fact that they don’t speak our language, but they sure understand everything, probably a lot of times better than people do. And they have, you know, I mean, I’ve read the science on this, you know, where were people who’ve clearly not spent a lot of time with dogs, right? Like, well, you know, dogs don’t love. Give me a break. Oh, my God, you know, they do and, and they’re empathetic. And they may not know what they may not be empathetic in the way humans are, where they can feel what you feel. But they feel that you are out of sorts, and they and they come to you. And they sit with you through that, you know, yeah. And we, you know, we also have a cat. The cat is, the cat is my wife’s. I love the cat. But my wife is the cat’s person. The dog is, I am the dog’s person. And, you know, I’m not saying cats are not capable of that. But dogs are remarkable in that. Hey, buddy, you’re not feeling so good. Let me come over there and see you through this.

Julie- Yes, yeah. Just their intuition. Just their, yeah, the way they pick up. And they know and sometimes it’s amazing how, like, they recognize that something is upsetting you before you sometimes it’s amazing how, like, they recognize that something is upsetting you before you even fully recognize some thing’s up, you know. Just sometimes, you know, the way that they’re extra affectionate or extra snuggly or whatever. And then you realize, you know, I’m really in a funk.

Craig- Yeah, yeah. Fretless, he’ll just come and he’ll just he’s like, you know, I I sense that you need me here. So I’m just gonna sit here. It’s much appreciated. Because, you’re right. Sometimes I can’t put words to what it is, you know, I’m waiting to sort it out for myself. And, and he’s there, you know?

Julie- Yeah, we kind of laugh because so, out of “the floofs”, Chuck is the one that I refer to as “the aloof floof”. And he’s, Barney is very much the derp, you know, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and always a big goofy grin. And Chuck adores Ricky, like Ricky is Chuck’s person. But it’s funny, because if I’m sad, or if I’m just, you know, stressed, whatever, you know, whatever it is, Chuck will come over and he will just, like, dramatically throw his big head across my lap. And he’s like, “I know, usually I don’t give you this much attention. But I can tell you need it.”

Craig- Yeah. Yeah, Fret will come and he’ll sit on my left thigh, and sit up like a prairie dog. And then, and then he’ll just, and then you know, like, the Leaning Tower of Pisa will just fall into my chest. And he’ll just put his head there, you know? And I’m just like, “Oh, yeah, I feel you buddy”. You know?

Julie- Well, and I know, I’ve seen you post some pictures too where he rocks those, like looking up with you, looking up at you eyes?

Craig- Oh, yeah. Well, it’s the doxie side eye? You know, yeah, he will. He’s got that going on, you know, so. And like I said, they’ve all every doxie I’ve had, they’ve all had these commonalities. So, you know, my attitude has always kind of been, if you lose a doxie, if you lose a dog, but I can speak to doxies. If you lose one, you know, you give yourself a little bit of time to just sort of lean into it. But the cure for that particular broken heart is another doxie. Because you will see, you will see reminders of what you just lost, and then you’ll get the particular personality things that only exists in that dog. And, you know, it’s amazing. It’s, you know…

Julie- Does he have certain little things that he does with you that crack you up, or that you know exactly what he saying?

Craig- He has two that I can think of, maybe three. So his potty signal is really funny. And doxies are hard to train. So you know, you have to be attentive to their patterns, and then you get it. So he’ll go stand by the door that I let him out into the backyard. And he’ll look at me. And I’ll say, do you gotta go outside? And if it’s Yes, he’ll trot toward me. And if it’s no, he’ll just sit there looking at me.

Julie- But he has his signals.

Craig- Yeah, yeah. And but he wants something. Sometimes it’s, “Okay, do you want me to come down on the floor and tug with your wooba?” Or, you know, but but trot toward me is “yes”, he’s gotta go pee or poop. So? Yeah, yeah. It’s just, it’s just weird. It’s just this language that we’ve developed. The other thing that he does, that’s pretty hilarious is, I don’t know where he got this, but he likes to set his back flank on top of my foot, and he’ll, and he’ll… and then I’ll lift him up, you know, and he’ll, and he’ll look like a seesaw. You know? And, but he’s, he’s kind of, I don’t know if I can say this on your podcast, but he’s, he’s a little bit whorish about it. You know, like… (Fretless enters the room) “Hey, come here. Come here. Come. Say hello. Come here. Come here. Come here. Come here. Why don’t you say hello to Julie.”

Julie- Oh, I gotta give you kisses, Daddy, I gotta give you kisses! Hey, buddy!

Craig- Hey, buddy. So this is this is kind of how he sits with me. H just sits up like a prairie dog. But anyway, he, he’s, he’s a little whorish about it, you know? So so I’ll see him sort of surreptitiously backing up to my foot. And I’ll move my foot around, like, I’ll make a parabola with it, you know, and move it over here. And he’ll go to sit down, it won’t be there. And he’ll, he’ll be looking, you know, like, what, what just happened, you know? And then the only other thing is when I’m playing with his wooba, which is just a little Kong toy. Yeah. So I’ll throw it over the couch so he can go fetch it. But occasionally, I’ll throw it into the couch and, and he’ll run around the back of the couch and he’ll be like this, and he won’t come looking for it on the couch until I say, until I go, “Uh oh!” He’ll come around, he’ll jump up on the couch, and go get it. And then I’ll tell him I’ll say, “Go down your ramp”, and then he’ll run down his ramp to protect his little back.

Julie- I just, I love that too. Like, I’ve never been really good about training my dogs, right. We can communicate, but, my, now that we expect them to have manners, but you know, it’s kind of joke I said, I mean, I’ve been raising my daughter to be a productive, like, I want her to go out and make the world a better place and be a productive member of society. I’m not raising my dogs to do that. They can do what they want, as long as I mean, yeah, within reason. But it’s so funny how there’s things like that, that they just, you know, like they learn you say certain things, and they’re like, Okay, I gotcha. I know what that means. But I always kind of laugh too, because I said, I’m not a good dog trainer, but my dogs are excellent people trainers! Okay. But like, it takes them a matter of minutes before they have me doing whatever, you know. 

Craig- Oh, yeah. Well, here’s, here’s another thing. And this is hilarious, because I love that dogs have rules for things. Like they have an order. So first thing in the morning, you know, I’ll come get him out of his kennel. I’ll take him outside so he can do his business. We’ll go up, I’ll prepare his breakfast, replace his water. He will not touch the breakfast until my wife comes downstairs and gives him one of those Greenie treats. You know the treats?

Julie- Yes.

Craig- And so she’ll make him sit and he’ll sit and he’ll look at her. And she’ll, she’ll give him the treat. And then he will take off downstairs like he’s getting away with something. Yeah, he’ll go down there. He’ll eat his Greenie and then he’ll come trotting up and eat his breakfast. And…

Julie- Hilarious!

Craig- Yeah, yeah. Like he knows the whole order. He will sit and watch me prepare his breakfast. I’ll set it down. And then he will go to the cabinet door where the Greenies are and wait for a lead.

Julie- This is what happens next. Yeah.

Craig- Yeah. Like he knows it. He knows it.

Julie- He’s so smart!

Craig- Well. I don’t know. There are, there other things that suggest, you know, he’s not the sharpest, sharpest bowling ball in the alley but, yeah, he yeah, he’s he’s got that down. He’s the first dog I’ve ever had who kind of has to have a walk up to mealtime. Most, most dogs are like, “Oh, great. We’re feeding me right? Yeah. I’m done. Later.” Yeah. Yeah. Fretless needs everything to be in order.

Julie- He’s more discriminating.

Craig- Yeah, it’s, it’s just funny. And that’s, and that’s what I mean, when they all have their peculiarities. They have the they have the breed. archetypes, but their own little things.

Julie- Yes, their personalities. Yeah, so we laugh because one, I’m not even sure which one, adopted this most obnoxious habit. But they’ve taught it. And everybody knows it now, but it’s really pretty handy. And it’s hilarious. So I tried this thing years ago. We were getting like the yellow patches in our backyard from where they were tinkling, you know, and it changes the pH or whatever. Yeah, so I found I found these things. And they I don’t know, honestly, they looked like maybe lava rocks or whatever. But they said, in theory, you put this in their water, and it changes the pH of the water enough that it prevents that from happening. But you have to change them out like every three months. That sounds like a marketing thing to me.

Craig- Yeah. All right. Yeah, ensure that you buy more through.

Julie- Yes, so their water bowl, though, is a big metal bowl. And we thought, well, we’ll give it a whirl. So we put them in there. Did not change them in three months, you know, now we’re going on years and it’s the same batch. So I’m sure but yeah, the funny thing is, they figured out quickly, that if the water level got too low for them, they bang those suckers around inside that bowl, and you can hear it through the whole house. Like I can be in any part of the house and I hear the rocks and I’m like, “I’m coming”. And everybody in the house knows and they all do it now. So yeah, so yeah, it’s and I’m like, “Okay, you have us trained and I’m glad we got these rocks. They’re totally not for the purpose we bought them for but now the water bowl never goes empty.

Craig- That’s just how your dogs are saying “Garcon!”

Julie- Yeah, I know sometimes I’m pretty sure they’re like “Get the lead out, snack lady!”

Craig- Yeah, that’s my joke with Fretless is that he refers to me as “Fat Boy”. You know, “Where you been? Fat Boy!”

Julie- We got stuff to do here. You got you have things to do for me. I need to hurry up. 

Craig- These trains are not running on time on their own, pal. Yeah, that’s hilarious. 

Julie- Well thank you so much for sharing time with me today.

Craig- Yeah, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to hear what you do with it. Yeah, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to hear what you do with it.

Julie- Yeah, absolutely.

Craig- Good luck cutting it up.

Julie- Thank you. I’m not gonna cut too much up. It’s just it’s just gonna be.

Craig- Just a freeform. Yeah.

Julie- Yeah. You know, it’s funny because everyone that I’ve said, “Hey, I would love to hear about your dogs. People are like, what time?”

Craig- I know. I know. I was like, when you told me to go on the thing and choose a time I’m like, like, well, can we do it right now? You know. Well, thanks so much, Julie. Bye!

Julie- Yes, take care! Bye! Thank you so much for being here and have a great one friends. Don’t forget to head over to Facebook and Instagram to see pup pictures. Head to the website for your free gift. Or if you would like to share a story, any story ideas or suggestions. And finally, if you want to receive this podcast automatically, please subscribe or like in your pod catcher. And if you like what I’m doing, please consider sharing and liking and maybe even being really wild and crazy and leaving a comment so other people can find out about it and we can share more stories. please always remember that you are as great as your dog thinks you are and smooch your pooch. Have a great one y’all!