Nipper
(Who also answers to "Chomps")
05/14/1998

My friend Cindy was standing at my front door when I looked out in response to her knock. I opened it fully and bid her "come in". She was wearing a gray, rather floppy sweater. As she stepped into my living room and I looked fully at her, for the first time, I noticed she had apparently grown a third breast. At this point, the third breast moved, and Cindy reached through the neck of her sweater and withdrew a five-week-old pit bull puppy, which she handed to me. I held the little ball of puppyhood close to my face and asked "do you wanna come live with me?" The puppy answered this by letting her head come to rest on my left shoulder. She showed all the telltale signs of moving in.

I had arrived in California almost seven years before (December 1st, 1980) with four bull terriers in tow. I soon came to the conclusion that California was unbelievably rough on bull terriers, as I had to bury one a year for the first three years that I lived here. For the next five years all was well. Then on April 1st, 1987 my last bull terrier, "Hopie" died of heart failure. That was five months and some odd days before Cindy appeared at my door with the puppy. Needless to say the puppy stayed. While I worked (swing shift) I left her with my parents (I would pick her up when I got off). They had a dog of their own - a boxer mix named Tawny. She had been spayed before my folks got her. Never having had any pups of her own, she decided this was her puppy. When the pup first approached her, she growled and the pup backed off. This went on for the next several times that the pup approached her. After that, they were inseparable.

For some obscure reason when I tried to name her, I went completely blank as to dog's names. It wasn't even that hard. With my bull terriers, I had to think of a rather 'flowery' name for registration with the AKC (American Kennel Club). Then a shorter "kennel" name was needed. Case in point; my last bull terrier. Although she was never registered I had the name all picked out. It was going to be "Kavalier's Great White Hope"(her being solid white). Of course, this shortened very nicely to "Hope" or "Hopie". With the pit bull pup all I needed was one name. Out of desperation, I asked my mother if she had any ideas. Without the slightest hesitation, she said "Nipper". So "Nipper" it was.

She was too young to eat solid food, at first, so my mother fed her with a miniature baby bottle when I was working. In no time at all (it seemed) she was eating solid food (and whatever else she could get hold of). This instance comes readily to mind.

When Nipper was a year or so old, on one particular day, my father had taken Tawny walking in the desert. On their walk, Tawny had caught and killed a kangaroo rat. My father had made her leave the prize where it fell. The next day, my father was again out walking in the desert; this time he had Tawny and Nipper with him. They went basically along the same route he had taken the day before with Tawny. I never got this one detail; either Tawny found her trophy from the previous day or Nipper found it. From what I was told, a great tug-of-war ensued. At the end of this contest, the pups had ripped the rat in half. My father bullied Tawny into dropping her half; however, Nipper ate hers (I spent some time working that out).

She made up a game of her own once (more like three of them that I can remember), so although I didn't see the tug-of-war, I could imagine it with no trouble at all. She was extremely playful. In the game that Nipper invented, I was sitting on the edge of the bed putting on a pair of socks when I heard a little growl and felt something come into contact with my heel. The top sheet of the bed was hanging to the floor and Nipper was under the bed, which put the sheet between my heel and Nipper. She would growl and bring her teeth into contact with my heel (through the sheet) but she would not apply any pressure. I reached my fingers down to my heel. Nipper brought her teeth gently into contact with them also through the sheet. Still she would apply no pressure. It became an ongoing tradition whenever Nipper was under the bed and you put a sheet or blanket between her and whatever extremities you had near the floor (were she could get to them) she would start her little 'game'. She would also go from sitting and seriously contemplating the universe to instant fun and games if you were to drop a sheet or blanket over her and start pushing her around through the cover. Before I forget about her other games, one involved grapes.

I gave her a grape and she immediately dropped it on the floor. I pointed to it and she decided it was to play with. She threw it across the room and chased it about three or four times before eating it. She did that for the next several grapes I gave her before she started simply eating them. Every time I gave her grapes it was the same thing. The other game (and she did this all by herself) was born when she saw a rubber band on the coffee table and helped herself to it. She held the rubber band with her paws and pulled it with her teeth. If I remember correctly, the first time or two she got her paws popped. The next time she got popped on the snoot. She did it again, and again. By her facial expression you could tell that she knew she was going to get popped on the nose but she seemed to get off on that sort of thing. From then on any time she found a rubber band, she would play her little game.

Aside from Tawny, there was also a cat; Squeaky. This cat had been de-clawed so when she swatted at Nipper, she thought the cat was playing with her and she learned to playfully swat at the cat. Squeaky had a marvelous toy; a carpet covered tube, about twenty inches long and ten inches across. Squeaky would occasionally sleep in it. Nipper learned she could also sleep there. She also learned she could chase Squeaky through it and Squeaky learned she could chase Nipper through it (although when she was grown she could barely fit her head into it) Fun, fun, fun!

My friend Cindy had a black pup (part Labrador and part God knows what) that was about one year old when I got Nipper. I don't remember why but for some reason she brought her dog to my place and left it with me for several hours when Nipper was about six weeks old. The dogs seemed to hit it off together except for one thing -- the big dog wanted to romp and play with Nipper who, at six weeks old, was still not too steady on her feet so she got knocked over a number of times. At first Nipper was good-natured about it but after about the second or third time she started getting irritable. Ultimately, Nipper ended up chasing the bigger dog around the yard.

The year before, I had met, fallen in love with (I didn't know you could love with that kind of intensity), and become engaged to a lady by the name of Margrit Long. I met her at work. It didn't last (apparently she wasn't as engaged as I was). Margrit had three kids -- the youngest of which, Christopher (Chris) would visit me once in a while after the engagement had ended. When he found out about Nipper, more importantly, when Nipper found out about him, well, do the math. Chris was nine and Nipper was between two and three months.

It came to pass that Nipper's mother "Keela" fell into the hands of 'The Animal Shelter' (a misleading name if there ever was one). That left me with two choices: I could adopt her thereby prolonging her life, or I could pretend I didn't know the situation thereby allowing 'The Animal Shelter' to kill her. To me, that sounded like no choice at all. I adopted Keela from 'The Animal Shelter', and took her home with me. Nipper was about nine months old and (since she had been with me from the time she was five weeks old) they no longer knew each other. The next thing I noticed was Keela pushing Nipper around -- she was the bigger dog and she was determined to have her way; even if she was the new kid on the block.

After they started getting used to each other, they began to play together. I got a number of pictures of the games they played. Tugging with a rubber ring, tugging with a rope that was tied around a tree, etc. Keela continued to push Nipper around, until at the age of one year (perhaps a little more) Nipper decided she had had enough. There came a day, and there came a fight, to end all days and all fights. I thought they were going to kill each other. I was physically unable to separate them. The fight couldn't have lasted more than five minutes however, on my end of it, it seemed more like three days. When I finally got them apart, I looked each of them over carefully. To my surprise, Nipper was in fine shape. Being the smaller dog, I was thinking that she would get the worst of it. Keela, on the other hand, was bleeding from inside her mouth (I couldn't see the source) and required an emergency trip to the vet's office. She came back looking like something out of Frankenstein. There were rubber drainage tubes coming out of her throat, and she needed to be flushed every so often. That made up my mind for me. From that time on, Keela would live in the kitchen, and Nipper would live in the living room. I also invested in a 'stun gun' the next time I went to a gun show (all the better to separate them).

Nipper was an accomplished escape artist and could get out of just about anything. I went to work one day, leaving her at home (inside the house). When I got back, there was no Nipper to be found. After looking over the whole house I discovered one window in the living room that was unlatched. These windows opened and closed, originally, with a cranking mechanism but the cranking mechanisms were badly worn and had been disconnected. Nipper had simply raised the latch, pushed the window open and left. This particular time, my father came by and then went looking for her. An hour or so he was back with her. It seems he checked a desert area about a mile from the house and there she was (she proved to be quite fond of that desert area as I found her there a number of times over the years). I also found tooth marks on the doorknob. Nipper really wanted to go somewhere bad.

Since I couldn't leave Nipper at home alone, for the next few days I took her to my parents' place when I had to go to work. A couple of days later, I drilled a hole through both of the window latches in the living-room (the ones that Nipper could reach), threaded the holes and put a screw through each one of them (it went through my head to hide all the screwdrivers but I drew the line at that point). I was grateful that she had not been able to unlock and turn the doorknob. If she could have done that, I don't know what I would have done. As the years passed, those two window latches first accumulated tooth marks, then they became bent and finally they became twisted but as long as I kept the screws in place, Nipper was never able to open those windows again.

After discovering that she was an escape artist, I got the idea to take Nipper to obedience school. Naturally, I had to go too, that's how that works. The first thing the trainer did was to teach Nipper how to walk on a leash. To my surprise, the command used to start her walking was not "heel"; it was "let's go". First, the trainer walked her around stopping several times, each stop accompanied by the command "sit". After several times around the yard, he had me do the same thing. That was the extent of the first days training. The next session (the following week), he introduced the command "heel" instead of "let's go" and we worked with it that day. The next week, Nipper learned the "sit" command followed by the "stay" command. She also learned something extremely important - the "sit" command followed by "down" and "stay." This had her lie down and stay where she was. This combination of commands proved very useful in the years to come. She never was real sharp on the lead with the "heel" command but that was my fault (I'm a little on the lazy side).

Before the "escape artist" episode, I acquired a roommate. I played in a country band that needed and got a new drummer. The drummer turned out to be female and on the attractive side (her name was Belinda) and at first, she didn't seem to be too bad on her instruments. She moved a couple of times after she joined our band finally moving in with a girlfriend and her fiance. That went OK for a while then the fiance started talking about throwing Belinda out. I never dreamed she would take me up on it but I told her she could come and stay at my place till she could find something else, if worst came to worst (after all, I joked to myself and the other band members, we can't have our new drummer living in a Dempster Dumpster or sleeping in pay toilets).

Belinda stayed with me for about a year after which, she moved in with a boy friend. The boy friend (whom she later married) bought her a puppy. They named the puppy "Abigail". Abigail or Abby was half cocker spaniel and half God knows what. Abby met Nipper when she (Abby) was eight weeks old and Nipper was about four years of age. I felt that I had to watch Nipper to be sure she didn't hurt Abby. I needn't have worried. They were buddies almost immediately. In 1991 Belinda's husband (a soldier) was transferred to Germany. Belinda and Abby went with him. Some months later, Belinda gave birth to a son. Some months after that, she contacted me and wanted to send Abby to me as they were getting ready to leave Germany and return to the States. Abby arrived and I just hoped she and Nipper would remember each other. Again I needn't have worried, they were still buddies. I have several pictures of them in the yard. They were always close together.

Belinda and her husband came back to The States but not California. They were sent to Washington, where I visited them in September of 1994 (having boarded the dogs with the vet). They decided that after they moved back to California (in about another six months) they would like to move back to my place. I didn't mention it before but my place was a duplex. My renters had moved a short time before and my rental unit was empty. In November of 1995 two things happened. One, I heard from Belinda and her husband that they would arrive at my place in January. Two, I had the opportunity to fill my rental unit right then and there. To my everlasting shame I opted to let the place stand empty for two months so it would be empty for Belinda and her husband (who had both become friends of mine) to move into when they arrived. As it turned out, Belinda and her little one were dropped off at my place. Her husband had three more months to do in Washington before he could move to California. Belinda proceeded to immediately become the tenant from Hell. Suddenly nothing was good enough for her. It was either too cold (I showed her how to light the wall heater) or it was too hot (the property management company that took care of that sort of thing and didn't appreciate being called to prep a swamp cooler in February was called) or a bathroom faucet was leaking (I fixed it). That was enough. I took to keeping to myself when I was home. After two and a half months she decided that she would move. They had signed a six month rental agreement when they moved in the property management firm went after them. I had two thoughts. I was very glad to see her go, and I couldn't help wondering how different things would have been if I had rented out the rental unit in November when I had the chance.

I asked Belinda what she wanted to do about Abby (who had been with me the entire two and a half months that she had lived in my rental unit); her answer was "I can't take care of her." I assumed that meant Abby was headed for "The Animal Shelter" so I told her I would take care of Abby. Abby is still with me.

When Nipper was about seven the vet operated on a growth on her left hind leg and found cancer. For the next four years we fought the disease. I thought we were winning but after three years the cancer surfaced again. Nipper passed away November 29 1998 at about seven twenty in the morning. I've had close relationships with numerous dogs since I was eight years old, and have owned more than a dozen of them over the years and though I've lost most of them, I have never missed any of them as much as I miss "My Baby Girl".

It sounds rather "hokey" but it's my prayer that someday I'll find her waiting for me at Rainbow Bridge when I get there.