Twenty Years with Charlie

#globalite Harold has a very special friend for the last 20 years Charlie. #sundayoneday #bestfriendsforlife #bff

A short time after my wife, Mickey, and I were married her Scotty dog Molly died. Mickey’s way of relieving her sorrow was to get a new doggie.  Since Molly was an only dog and Mickey worked, Molly had many lonely days.  We did not want that for a dog so we decided to get two dogs to keep each other company.

First Mickey bought a Westie.  We then went to the San Pedro Animal Shelter. I went in to see what was available.  There was a small gray terrier in a cage. He had a piece of rope hanging from his collar he had chewed off.  We looked at each other.  I went out to the car and asked Mickey to come in and check out this dog.

We paid the fees for Charlie and he had to be neutered.  A few days later we went back and got him.  He had a funnel on his head.

A big mistake we made was that we got two male dogs.  The Westie was really mean to Charlie.  We were afraid he would hurt him so Charlie was closed up in the library.  One of the dogs had to go.  Since Mickey had paid a lot of money for the Westie I thought Charlie was a goner.

Mickey did not want any part of that mean dog.  Charlie was saved.  Now we only had one dog.  Since I owned my own business I decided to take Charlie with me every day.  He has been with me almost every day for twenty years.

We needed a name for our new dog.  At the time I was reading books by four famous American authors that traveled across America to see what it was like, ”On The Road With Jack London”1884, Henry Miller “The Air Conditioned Nightmare”1945, Jack Kerouac “On The Road”1962 and John Steinbeck “Travels With Charlie”1960.  Charlie seemed like a good name for our new doggie.

When Charlie was young everyone thought he looked like Toto in the Wizard of Oz.  People wanted to touch Charlie. If they did he would nip them.  I had to tell them, “Don’t touch Charlie. He bites”.  The only problem I had was with people that considered themselves dog experts.  They insisted on touching Charlie. He would bite them.

One of my fondest memories of Charlie was after we had him for a while I took my wife Mickey, one of my sons, his wife and Charlie on my boat to the isthmus at Catalina Island.  The island is only a few hundred yards wide at the Isthmus.  We went ashore and walked toward Cat Harbor on the other side.  Charlie was loose and ran far ahead of us.  When we got close to the other side we wanted to go back.

I yelled for Charlie to come back. He immediately went the other way.  We all turned around and started walking back.  After a few steps I peeked over my shoulder to see what Charlie was doing.  He was running towards us as fast as he could.  He was a gray streak trailing a cloud of dust.  He was not going to let us leave him on that island alone.

Charlie and I are old now. I have to hold him up so he can eat and pee.  His hind legs don’t work.

Buddhists say hold your dog tight and he will let you know if he wants to go.

If Charlie was my Grand Daddy and his legs didn’t work I certainly would not put Grand Pa to sleep.

I don’t know what will happen.  I do know I am not going to do anything about it today.

Harold with Charlie and the newest member of the family – Jake