As the dog Peabody told the boy Sherman in “Peabody’s Improbable History” on TV’s “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends” in the late 1950s and 1960s, “Every dog should have a boy.”
Tibby had me.
Tibby was a beagle. He wasn’t my dog. He belonged to my parents’ best friends, Dot and Bob Virag, who lived in Lake Success, New York, on Long Island. We lived in Hackensack, New Jersey, about an hour’s drive from Dot and Bob’s home.
My stepdog
We lived in the upper story of a two-story home. We rented from the landlords, who lived below. No pets allowed.
The Virags had a spacious home in a lovely neighborhood with big houses, big lawns, and no sidewalks. It was like going to the country.
We usually stayed overnight on the weekends when we visited, and I had the enjoyable task of taking Tibby for walks around the neighborhood. Rather, he took me. He was very strong. I was seven years old when we first met, and he pretty much dragged me around the block. When I grabbed the leash in the house to take him out, he would leap up almost to my face in excitement.
His master, Bob, had a fun routine with Tibby. Bob had purchased red boxing gloves. Whenever he put them on, Tibby knew it was time for their boxing match. Bob playfully punched Tibby (not really hard, but with enough force to get Tibby’s juices flowing). They would go at it for about ten minutes, and Tibby loved it, bouncing up and down at Bob as Bob warded him off with the gloves.
Hilarious!
Tibby also enjoyed barking his head off at passing dogs. Dot liked to alert him by yelling “Big dog!” when one passed by. Tibby would jump up to the big picture window in the family room, which had a view of the street, and howl until the dog passed by.
Stranded in my pajamas
One night, Bob, Dot, and my parents went out to dinner, while I stayed home alone at the Virags’ with Tibby. Their teenage daughter Kathy, the Virags told me, was babysitting across the street. After they left, sometime after dark, I took Tibby outside, just so he could pee. However, as I was standing on the front lawn in my pajamas, the door behind me slammed shut! I tried the doorknob, but the door was locked! So there I was, in my pajamas with Tibby. The bigger problem was that all I knew was that Kathy was across the street somewhere. Dot and Bob hadn’t told me which house! So I rang the bell of the house directly across the street. A woman answered, amused, I’m sure, when she saw Tibby and me. Wrong house!
I don’t remember if I tried another house, but eventually I did find the house where Kathy was babysitting, to my great relief, and she let me back into her home. How embarrassing!
Tibby’s great adventure
My family spent the summers in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. One summer, they invited Dot and Bob to spend some time with us there. The Virags rented a cottage in Monterey, the town where we rented ours. The Virags’ cottage was nestled among some fields and forests, a beautiful spot. Tibby thought so also. One afternoon, he escaped the house and went off into the country.
He didn’t return until two days later. We could hear him howling in the fields and woods, his beagle nose sniffing all the creatures he had never encountered in Lake Success. He finally returned on his own, his coat full of briars and burrs. But he looked so happy! This was like heaven for him.
Speaking of heavenly things, Phyllis Shomaker wrote, “God made dogs for us to have as companions and helpers, and for the immeasurable pleasure and happiness they give us.” As she noted, in 2017, there were over 74 million owned dogs in the United States, and 39 percent of American households owned at least one dog.
God and dogs
What can our love for dogs teach us about God’s love for us?
As Shomaker put it, “Dogs depend on us for everything. They yearn to bring us pleasure and to feel that we love them. Is that not how God wants us to be toward him? Can we say we love God as much as our dogs love us?”
She added, “Our dogs seem to accept our greater wisdom even if they can’t understand our ways. Do we do that with God?”
Another pearl from Ms. Shomaker: “Dogs belong to us. We own them. We call them ‘our’ dogs. And we belong to God because he has made us his own. We are told that God cares for us so much that he numbers the hairs on our heads. God has our names in his book. God knew us before we were born. He has watched over and guided us throughout the history of time.”
As she noted, “Perhaps it’s a stretch to think that dogs were also meant to teach us about God’s love. With all that dogs mean to us, is that too much to consider?”
I know that Tibby and I formed an inseparable bond, even though he wasn’t my dog. I still think about him. And, for anyone who has come to know Jesus, we too have an inseparable bond, one we will enjoy in heaven forever. I hope Tibby will be there as well.
Photo by Luke MacGillivray on Unsplash
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