Owen

In my prime, I was a savage, relentless hunter. Nothing was safe that entered my yard – nothing. Rats, mice, possums, squirrels, lizards, grasshoppers – I bagged them all. I also cornered a ferret once, but my parents locked me in the house and set the ferret free. I’m still mad about it.

I was so cocky that I used to howl back at the coyotes at night.

I LOVED food. ALL kinds of food. I could finish my breakfast kibble in under a minute. If anything – and I mean anything – hit the kitchen floor, it was MINE! The only things I didn’t like much were broccoli, cauliflower, and chilies. I would help mom clean out the cat box too. Cat poop is like a Tootsie Roll with crunchy bits! I also did enjoy a few licks of beer and whiskey from my dad here and there so that was a nice change of pace.

My nose was so good that I could sniff out a single molecule of food. Once, my mom had a small bag of chocolate chip cookies in her purse upstairs in the bedroom that she was saving for the kids. Well, I just couldn’t help myself, so I ran upstairs, pulled her purse off of the nightstand, and helped myself to every bit. I even ate most of the wrapper when my mom came into the bedroom and busted me. She was so mad she scolded me and put me outside!

Another time, someone left an unattended grocery bag with a bag of chocolate chips in it. Yeah, I know chocolate isn’t good for me but dang, it’s so tasty! Well, that was super easy for me to help myself to the chocolate chips, so I ate the entire 12-oz bag! When I got caught, my parents were afraid that I had poisoned myself, so my dad Googled something and began to administer small amounts of hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting. It was nasty. I tried so hard to keep it down, but by the third dose I had ballooned up to the point that I had to toss my chocolate chips all over the pool deck. I tried to clean it up myself, you know, by eating it again, but I was put back in the house and sadly watched my dad through the French door window scrape it up and hose it off.

Once, I also got hold of grandma’s favorite candy; chocolate covered cherries! My human left them in a bag in the office for a Christmas gift – lucky me! I ate through the cellophane shrink wrap. I ate through the cardboard box. I even ate the little paper cups that the candy sits in. My parents got so mad at me they put me outside for hours even despite my howls of discontent.

One day, my dad was cooking some pork strips on the barbecue grill. He was flipping them around while drinking a beer and one of them fell on the ground right in front of me! So, I tried to gobble it down quickly, but it was so damn hot it burned my mouth, so I spat it out and then tried eating it again and again until it was cool enough to swallow. I must have been making some funny grunting noises because my dad was looking at me and laughing pretty hard. I never had hot food before, and it was delicious!

I was also guilty of nosing through the trash whenever the opportunity presented itself. There was always something delicious in the trash and I never understood why my family didn’t eat it. It was a worthwhile endeavor and getting yelled at and put outside for a time out wasn’t so bad.

My parents had an RV, and we went to the beach and the mountains often. I liked to ride under the front seats. I didn’t like my first trip to the snow in Mammoth much. I mean, I’m only eight-inches tall, and that snow was so deep that I couldn’t see anything but snow, so I wouldn’t go to the bathroom, I just stood there in the snow freezing with my tail between my legs and shivering in my cute little snow jacket and harness. My mom said, “Owen, knock it off. There’s barely a foot of snow here!” By the second night I couldn’t hold it anymore and stood at the door of the RV crying…at around three o’clock in the morning! My mom put on her parka and snow boots, put the cute little snow jacket and harness back on me, and opened the RV door. With purpose I dove out into the cold snow and hopped over a few times until I found the perfect spot to relieve myself. It wasn’t so bad after that.

On an RV trip to Shaver Lake, my dad was driving the RV solo with only me and Charity, my yellow lab BFF from Guide Dogs of America. The rest of the family was driving up to the lake later on. We were somewhere along Highway 168 when one of the rear tires on the RV blew out and made such a loud noise that I leapt out from under the passenger seat and into my dad’s lap in one motion! Charity was there too! There we were, pulling over to the shoulder of Highway 168, my dad with us two dogs in his lap, him trying to keep his cool under pressure. When we finally got to the shoulder and parked the RV, my dad got out to assess the situation which was apparently pretty bad based on the loud new words I hadn’t heard before. He made a few phone calls, and then we waited for hours for the tow truck to arrive.

Well, I’m a small dog with a small bladder, although you wouldn’t know it if you took me for a walk because I have this crazy ability to pee on everything along the way, so I signaled to my dad that I had to go potty by walking over to the RV door and waiting there. So, my dad noticed me and started looking for my leash and couldn’t find it. He looked everywhere, and judging by more loud new words, he wasn’t happy about it. Good thing my dad has mad MacGyver type skills and improvised braided leashes for me and Charity with some cooking string. Later that night, my mom laughed about them and went over to the closet where our real leashes were hanging.

We lived in this nice house in Porter Ranch with a sloped, fenced yard. Well, the fence was good enough to keep Charity in the yard, but I was able to squeeze through the bars of the fence with no problem and go roaming in my neighbors’ backyards. I would come home with half-eaten lemons, and green, unripe stone fruits like apricots and peaches that the squirrels would drop on the ground. They were yummy! Sometimes the neighbors would find me in their yard and shoo me away. Sometimes they caught me and took me back home.

My wandering got pretty bad, so my dad put up some chicken wire to keep me from getting through the fences. This put an end to my wanderings. I was sad.

We had the same kind of fencing at a house in Simi Valley, so my dad put up some chicken wire there too, but my mom made the mistake of putting the cat food just outside the fence on the front patio. I wanted to eat that cat food so bad. After a few days, I just couldn’t take it any longer, so I chewed through the chicken wire and squeezed through the fence bars and ate all of the cat food. Every last morsel went down the hatch. The problem was that I had already put on a few inches since Porter Ranch and could barely get through the fence in Simi Valley, but by the time I gulped down that cat food, I couldn’t squeeze back through the fence into the yard. You should have seen the look on my parents faces when they opened the front door and found me standing there. It was priceless.

When Charity got sick and crossed over the rainbow bridge, I was sad that my BFF was gone and I went into a funk and started living like a fat, lazy housecat. I ate. I slept. I pooped. Repeat day-in and day-out.

The Family

We first met Owen at Petland inside the Northridge Fashion Center mall in December 2005. Petland was one of those old school pet stores where you could find rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, kittens, puppies, and live tropical fish to bring home. Pet stores in malls have fallen out of favor since then.

Owen was one of several mini-Dachshunds available and most likely came from some godawful puppy mill somewhere in flyover country, but damn, he was so cute we didn’t care where he came from! He was only 8-weeks old at the time, so he was born sometime in early October 2005. He was so small that he could fit in the palms of our hands. It was love at first sight.

We already had another dog named Charity, a sweet, beautiful yellow Labrador Retriever who we raised for Guide Dogs of America and adopted after she couldn’t advance in the training program. The folks at GDA call this “a career change.” We called it lucky because she was a great family pet. We wanted to find Charity a companion but wanted a smaller dog and Owen was a perfect fit.

He was named Owen DeVito by our son Travis after Danny DeVito’s character Owen in Throw Momma from the Train.

Owen loved to cuddle underneath the covers. He was also a great watchdog and hunter…and a mostly indiscriminate eater. Inside the house, he was always sniffing around for a morsel of anything. The kitchen floor was kept very clean due to his efforts. Anything that he caught in the yard was consumed. One morning after being let out to go potty, he came back to the door to be let in…with the back end of a half-eaten rat hanging out of his mouth. Hearing screaming at 06:30 is not the best way to start a day. He was a great family pet and always made the kids feel better with his cuddles if they were feeling under the weather. He was also a great traveling companion and loved going on road trips in the RV.

Owen and Charity loved chasing each other around the yard and Owen was almost always the instigator. Being as little as he was, Owen could easily take cover under the patio furniture which blocked Charity from getting to him. He was so clever and quick, that he could lunge out from under the patio furniture and nip at Charity’s back leg and be back under the protection of the patio furniture in a flash. In the open, however, Charity had the advantage and could easily outrun Owen, trip him, and have him on his back with her mouth around his neck and him trying to squirm out of it. It was always in play, and they never hurt each other. It was fun to watch them interact.

Unfortunately, in 2016 Charity got really sick and had to be put down. Everyone was heartbroken, especially Owen. He went into a deep funk and started living mostly like our housecat Bagheera; eating, sleeping, pooping, repeat, ad infinitum. It was sad to see him so upset.

In 2018, we got a new Aussie-Doodle dog and named her Sydney. Although she came from a questionable online source that required a cash payment and a rendezvous in a public park in another county, she’s been a great pet – and breathed new life into Owen that took him out of his cat-like funk and back into his normal self. It was awesome to see him snap back like that. They bonded quickly and Owen was back to his usual outdoor playtime antics.

Sadly, in 2022 Owen got really sick and passed away in his sleep at home and walked over the rainbow bridge at the ripe old age of 17 human years (119 dog years). He left an indelible mark on the family and his canine cohorts. We miss our beloved Owen. His loss had clearly left a hole in Sydney’s life too, but it has recently been filled with a rambunctious orange tabby rescue cat from Palm Springs named Cheeto, but that is a whole other story for another time.

Owen was a little dog with a bit impact.

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