It's Memorial Day Weekend, and Amy and I are entertaining my best friends from Chicago, college roomie Mike Brennan and his fiance Karen. They have both been won over by the domestic charms of Seamus, how he greets their every arrival with a full doggy wiggle and a ferocious wag of his muscular tail.
We are lucky enough to have commandeered my mother-in-law's lake house on fabulous Crystal Lake, and Mike, a lover of the opposite coast of Lake Michigan, has brought his paddle board. It is our first real day of spring's sunny glory, and I get my chance on the board, out on nine-mile long Crystal Lake, only a half mile inland from its immense big brother.
Seamus is curious as Mike hands the board off to me, and simply hates being left behind. We hear his toenails on the aluminum dock, and he wanders up to me as I prepare to board. I know that somewhere in Seamus' bio he has a history of traveling in water, so what the heck, Mike and I give it a shot, coaxing the versatile hound onto the board. Next thing you know...
Holy jumpin, that dog is OK! Team Brennan is in love with his canine host, and I must admit, he's surprised us once again. We had a great time exploring the shallow waters. Next stop, the Big Beach down in Elberta.
It's a sun-drenched fresh-water paradise down on Lake Michigan. It's hard to tell what is the more magnificent shade of blue, the water or the sky. That blessed glacier from 10,000 years ago did a helluva job dumping megatons of sand to create the phenomenal beaches in northwest Michigan. The place is nearly deserted, and I shed most my clothes and dive into the chilly turquoise to frolic with Seamus. I mistakenly wonder what could possible go wrong, and then I recognize a real-life movie scene starting to play out that is part Hitchcock, part Spielberg.
Another tiny nuclear family (I'm pretty sure they were Indian with a good command of English) are sharing this desolate paradise, 100 yards to the north. Two young parents with a cute seven-year-old daughter, accompanied by a yappy miniature dog. We did our best to avoid them, and clearly expressed to them that our dog is not good with others.
So as Seamus and I minded our own business, playing ball in the surf, the little dog comes down the beach, eager for a confrontation. Bad Idea. The young girl, not the parents, follows, but the little yapper is expanding its lead. He is determined to meet his maker.
I am waist-deep in water, and am slow to react. I'm watching the scene play out, and somehow remember the impeccable lighting. If this were in theaters, the theme from Jaws would be building to a crescendo. Fortunately, Amy has great maternal instincts, and I see her move towards the impending confrontation, I'm still unsure how this is going to play out.
Seamus has lost interest in our game of catch, and gets out of the water, ball still in mouth, eyes narrowing. Our guests start shouting out warnings to the girl, whose only reply is that her dog is feisty, or words to that effect. Her puffball has closed with 15 feet of Seamus, looking to dance. Seamus drops the tennis ball, clearing his prodigious jaws for action. Uh-oh. Maybe this is going to turn all Quentin Tarantino.
Suddenly Amy, her survival instincts operating at full throttle (or maybe it's a flashback from her former life as an attorney who owned a violent dog) jumps into the fray. She delivers a line for the ages to the naive girl in black curls. "MY DOG IS GOING TO EAT YOUR DOG!" Everyone gets out of their trance, dogs are diverted, and no blood is spilt. To me and Amy, it was not difficult to foresee the alternative ending to this mini-drama. But fortunately, that ending never played out.
We are lucky enough to have commandeered my mother-in-law's lake house on fabulous Crystal Lake, and Mike, a lover of the opposite coast of Lake Michigan, has brought his paddle board. It is our first real day of spring's sunny glory, and I get my chance on the board, out on nine-mile long Crystal Lake, only a half mile inland from its immense big brother.
Seamus is curious as Mike hands the board off to me, and simply hates being left behind. We hear his toenails on the aluminum dock, and he wanders up to me as I prepare to board. I know that somewhere in Seamus' bio he has a history of traveling in water, so what the heck, Mike and I give it a shot, coaxing the versatile hound onto the board. Next thing you know...
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| Helluva First Mate |
It's a sun-drenched fresh-water paradise down on Lake Michigan. It's hard to tell what is the more magnificent shade of blue, the water or the sky. That blessed glacier from 10,000 years ago did a helluva job dumping megatons of sand to create the phenomenal beaches in northwest Michigan. The place is nearly deserted, and I shed most my clothes and dive into the chilly turquoise to frolic with Seamus. I mistakenly wonder what could possible go wrong, and then I recognize a real-life movie scene starting to play out that is part Hitchcock, part Spielberg.
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| Beach Day Gone Wrong? |
So as Seamus and I minded our own business, playing ball in the surf, the little dog comes down the beach, eager for a confrontation. Bad Idea. The young girl, not the parents, follows, but the little yapper is expanding its lead. He is determined to meet his maker.
I am waist-deep in water, and am slow to react. I'm watching the scene play out, and somehow remember the impeccable lighting. If this were in theaters, the theme from Jaws would be building to a crescendo. Fortunately, Amy has great maternal instincts, and I see her move towards the impending confrontation, I'm still unsure how this is going to play out.
Seamus has lost interest in our game of catch, and gets out of the water, ball still in mouth, eyes narrowing. Our guests start shouting out warnings to the girl, whose only reply is that her dog is feisty, or words to that effect. Her puffball has closed with 15 feet of Seamus, looking to dance. Seamus drops the tennis ball, clearing his prodigious jaws for action. Uh-oh. Maybe this is going to turn all Quentin Tarantino.
Suddenly Amy, her survival instincts operating at full throttle (or maybe it's a flashback from her former life as an attorney who owned a violent dog) jumps into the fray. She delivers a line for the ages to the naive girl in black curls. "MY DOG IS GOING TO EAT YOUR DOG!" Everyone gets out of their trance, dogs are diverted, and no blood is spilt. To me and Amy, it was not difficult to foresee the alternative ending to this mini-drama. But fortunately, that ending never played out.
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It's the end of the glorious long weekend, and four humans and a dog are taking a sentimental hike up the hill between Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan on this sun-splashed Memorial Day. Amy has planted a tree 23 years ago at the crest of the hill to honor her late brother John, and we quietly admire and appreciate the growth of the red-leaf maple in full bloom. Seamus is off the leash, and once again, he bolts after the scent of an unidentified wild mammal.
Oh for an Opposable Thumb!
Our first reaction is to let him run off all that steam, because he's not going to catch a deer, is he? And the two women head the half mile back down the hill toward the house. Mike and I decide to try tracking our little wild man, just so we don't have to waste half a day waiting for Seamus to reappear. Amy holds off, and surveys the partially wooded landscape. After fifteen minutes of fruitless scrambling through the woods, I return to the clearing and the red maple, when Amy shouts to me that she saw something brown darting 100 yards in another direction. I break into a run through moderate brush, and hear a muted bark. It sounds like Seamus, but it is traced with what sounds like doggy despair. I pick up the pace.
As I close in, I hear thrashing and squealing, and a minute later I discover what looks like an eight-foot pugil ring. Seamus is barking in anguish, and I can only see his backside. I figure he's got some animal cornered, maybe a porcupine like the one he scared into a dead tree stump the week before. Then the full, gory scene reveals itself. Seamus is in a death match with Mr. Porky Q. Pine, the Q standing for Quill of course. It's straight out of National Geographic's X-rated stash: Seamus looking like he's got a Santa Claus beard full of Mr. Pine's quills, yelping in pain, but his jaws of death have latched on the to unlucky critter, and he's in full neck-snap mode. I'm pretty sure I see the life leaking out of ol' Porky Pine, blood seeping from his neck.
Once again, I use my boots to separate to combatants, Seamus is mad with both both blood-lust and confused pain. I leash him up and muscle him back to the path on a forced march, trying to keep him from pawing at the quills in his snout, on his tongue and in the roof of his mouth. It's a mad rush the mile back to the house, and the four adults reconvene as I pass them, their mouths agape. Karen from Chicago has the phone and the wherewithal to search for available vets on Memorial Day. Our only option is a 50-minute drive to Traverse City. Amy and I nearly burst our lungs as we jog/sprint home, grab our stuff and blow out of Benzie. On the way out of Frankfort we slow for Mike and Karen with our windows down to say a hurried goodbye. Mike leaves us with a final shouted alert, "Tape his paws together to keep him from scratching... and then we are out of earshot.
I check the rearview and see blood on the headrest of the back seat. Amy climbs over and tries to comfort the crazed canine. I take another look minutes later and am caught off guard by the surreal bearded hound that fills the 2x6 inch screen. This is wild programming I gotta say. We get to the animal hospital in record time.
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| Ouch Babe |
At 11 a.m. we drag Seamus into the vets E-Room, and he goes right to the head of the line; the entire waiting room stares in wonder. "This is one of the worst cases we've ever seen," said the attending nurse, "but it's not the very worst." I guess we took some comfort from that. Minutes later Seamus went under full anesthesia and the docs went to work de-quilling what we thought were 500 quills (I took the over on this estimate). Amy and I shuffled two doors down, and power down some Cerveza's at a Tex-Mex joint, trying to calm our nerves. We discussed some crucial intel that we gleaned from the waiting room: One of the animal owners waiting in the lobby volunteered that he had a dog that also had a penchant for porcupines, and that no matter how many times he got quilled up, he kept coming back for more. Amy and I nodded, other than swimming at the beach and spinning figure-eights in our back yard, Seamus was now relegated to the leash.
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| Staple Center |
Poor pooch was woozy when we picked him up, with three metal staples in his cheek from some serious digging. A few hours later Seamus was stationed back in front of our big front window, yearning to snag a pesky chipmunk.
The post-script to this story was Seamus' next trip to the Lake House a week later. Amy was walking the muscular fellow (on a leash!) down the coast road and happened by the trailhead up to the red maple. He sat down at the entrance and refused to budge. That crazy critter had blood lust again, and we're pretty sure he wanted to dash up the hill and finish the job on Mister Porky Quill Pine.
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