Laurel L. Russwurm

"What's So Funny" Cover Art

“LOL” means “Laugh out Loud”.

In reality though, people aren’t really laughing out loud.
But since body language doesn’t doesn’t come across in a text message, LOL indicates that you’ve found something funny. You may in actuality be smiling or even grinning but rarely is anyone really laughing out loud.

However, in the real world whenever I am reading a Dortmunder novel, quite often I find myself actually laughing out loud.

LOL

I know this because my husband or son will interrupt my reading by demanding to know “What’s so funny?“

And my answer is invariably, “Dortmunder.”

“So,” you might ask, “What exactly is a Dortmunder?”

And I’d have to tell you that a Dortmunder is a terribly funny comic crime novel written by the extremely talented comic novelist Donald E. Westlake. And the Dortmunder Novels are Westlake’s best loved comic caper series, named for the crucial common denominator as well as the closest thing the series gets to a leading man.

O.K., then who is Dortmunder?

Dortmunder's Debut

In the New York City crime community, John Archibald Dortmunder is a specialist. He’s a planner, and his plans are unquestionably ingenious… brilliant even.

But John Dortmunder is certainly not by any means the typical leading man.

“Dortmunder blows his nose.”
The Hot Rock

This is the first line of The Hot Rock, the very first time we meet Dortmunder.

Talk about an unprepossessing beginning.

But with this one line Westlake made Dortmunder real.

A peek at some of the other first lines:

"Bank Shot" Cover Art

“Yes,” Dortmunder said, “You can reserve all of this, for yourself and your family, for simply a ten dollar deposit.”
Bank Shot

Of course the deposit will actually go straight into Dortmunder’s own pocket.

Because Dortmunder is a thief. A professional criminal.

Between big capers– just like any other independent contractor, legitimate or not — Dortmunder has to find other ways to keep body and soul together. Because he is too proud to comfortably live off his girlfriend May, he’ll turn his hand to any other criminal enterprises that come to hand.

A classic Dortmunder scam is to walk into the typing pool of a large corporation carrying a clipboard. The mark will actually GIVE him all the typewriters in need of maintenance. And anyone who has ever worked in an office knows that there is ALWAYS a backlog for equipment repairs and maintenance.

"Nobody's Perfect" Cover Art

And for Dortmunder this is a pretty safe “filler” job. It’s brilliant because so much time will have passed in any big bureaucracy before they even notice the stuff is missing.

“Dortmunder slumped on the hard wooden chair, watching his attorney try to open a black attaché case.”
Nobody’s Perfect

Which tells us quite a lot about Dortmunder and the type of “luck” that is his lot.

If Dortmunder gets caught, this is the type of lawyer he gets.

“Hello,” said the telephone cheerfully into Dortmunder’s ear,
“this is Andy Kelp.”

“This is Dort–” Dortmunder started to say, but the telephone was still talking in his ear. It was saying:

“I’m not home right now, but –”

“Andy? Hello?”

"Why Me?" Cover Art

“–you can leave a message on this recording machine–”

“It’s John, Andy. John Dortmunder.”

“and I’ll call you back just as soon as I can.”

“Andy! Hey! Can you hear me?”

“Leave your message after you hear the beep. And do have a nice day.”

Dortmunder held both hands cupped around the mouthpiece of the phone and roared down it’s throat:

“”HELLO!”

Why Me

"Good Behaviour" Cover Art

Although a brilliant innovative thinker, Dortmunder is far from the technological edge.

His best friend and associate Andy Kelp tries with little success to bring Dortmunder into the modern world.

A determined techno-philistine, Dortmunder has one black dial phone in the kitchen… and if Dortmunder is in the kitchen, chances are that his mouth is full.

“Dortmunder opened the door
and a distant burglar alarm went CLANGangangangangang…”
Good Behavior

You might even say that Dortmunder lives Murphy’s Law.

Stuck in traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge out of lower Manhattan in a stolen frozen fish truck full of stolen frozen fish at 1:30 on a bright June afternoon, with construction out

The Cover of "Don't Ask"

ahead of them forever on the Brooklyn Queen’s Expressway, with Stan Murch on Dortmunder’s left complaining about how there are no decent routes anymore from anywhere to anywhere in New York City — “If there ain’t snow on the road, there’s construction crews” — and with Andy Kelp on Dortmunder’s right prattling along happily about global warming and how much nicer it will be when there isn’t any winter, Dortmunder also had to contend with an air conditioner dripping on his ankles.
Don’t Ask

Any questions?

Dortmunder is undoubtedly a genius. But somehow the caper never comes out quite the way Dortmunder envisions it.

Of course there are very good reasons for this. Just having a brilliant plan go terribly wrong can be in itself terribly funny. These are comic crime novels after all. From a moral standpoint, criminals aren’t supposed to triumph. Then again, from a working writer’s point of view, if Dortmunder’s brilliant schemes are allowed to succeed, Dortmunder would most assuredly retire. Ooops… end of series! And Mr. Westlake was far too brilliant himself to allow Dortmunder to get away with any crime as heinous as that!

I was a teenager when I first saw the film version of Donald E. Westlake’s The Hot Rock. It was my first exposure to Westlake and I really loved it. But since I wasn’t yet reading film credits I didn’t realize that I was a Westlake fan until several years later when I stumbled upon the novel. The Hot Rock movie was a great caper movie. Probably because amazingly enough the filmmakers actually followed Westlake’s book.
(O.K., I’m sure it didn’t hurt that William Goldman wrote the screenplay… )

Lobby Card from "The Hot Rock"

The Hot Rock casting was quite good. In spite of having to overcome the double barreled handicap of being both too young and too handsome, Robert Redford’s comedic genius allowed him to bring Dortmunder to life. He WAS Dortmunder. He may have been young and handsome but he sure played the heck out of “hangdog”. George Segal made a good Andy Kelp, and I thought Ron Liebman created a creditable Stan Murch, although harder edged than I now see the character. After fifteen books my picture of Stan is somehow softer and… fluffier.

But then The Hot Rock was after all both the first Dortmunder novel and the first Dortmunder movie. And Dortmunder and company have in fact changed and grown a lot over the years.

So although it was the best screen version of a Dortmunder novel, the book was infinitely better.

Curious.

There have been lots of attempts at translating Westlake books to film but it rarely works. No one seems to understand why. The caper is always flawlessly planned, the action is usually quite visual and should in fact lend itself to the screen. And of course the characters are brilliantly drawn. So how can Hollywood miss?

But they do.

"Bad News" Cover Art

And I think I’ve solved the puzzle.
It’s all down to Donald E. Westlake’s prose.

How can you film funny descriptive prose?

He was slumped over his cereal bowl, looking down into it, at the sugar and the milk and the cornflakes all massing together in there, all in a soggy clump, turning gray somehow. His breakfast had never turned gray before. He held the spoon angled into the gob, as though he might use the stuff to patch a road somewhere, but not as though he had any intention of eating it.
Bad News

Westlake doesn’t just write about funny things happening.

Westlake doesn’t just write about funny characters.

Westlake just plain writes funny.

"What's The Worst That Could Happen" Cover Art

“All suburbs look like paintings from before the discovery of perspective.”
What’s the Worst That Could Happen

How do you film a funny observation?

You know what a chain link fence is? A ladder.
Don’t Ask

So even if they follow the ingenious plot to the letter, it’s inevitable that there will be no way to film most of the funny bits. So although it could be a very good movie, it can never be as funny as the book.

Sometimes Westlake’s unfilmable humour is cumulative… Say something that isn’t funny sets up an extremely funny joke. One of my favorite examples of this is from Bad News.

On page 31 (paperback version) we find Dortmunder and Kelp subcontracting a job in a cemetery:

As they grasped handfuls of daisies, Dortmunder said,
without moving his lips, “A car followed us.”
Bad News

Skipping ahead to page 197, they’re back in the cemetery again:

“It’s just a little ways along here,” Dortmunder said, moving his lips.
Bad News

Placed so far away from the set up line it’s completely unexpected, and therefore much funnier. And it’s so deliciously subtle that you might miss the joke entirely. (A compelling reason for re-reading Westlake is to find the gems I missed the first time.)

Here’s something else I love. Most series authors– even the very best– will fall into the trap of using almost the exact same descriptions of their series characters in each of the books. And I admit, for most of the world it isn’t a big deal. But if you’re someone like me who will re-read the whole series, you notice it.

But although Westlake may re-use an adjective here and there, he seems to have a great deal of fun trying to describe the indescribable Tiny by creating completely fresh virtuoso descriptions every time. Here’s one of my favorites:

The speaker, who looked mostly like a hillside brought to life by Claymation, was a man monster– or monster man– named Tiny Bulcher by someone with a grim sense of humor, or fast legs, or both.

In the company of human beings of normal size and shape. Tiny Bulcher looked…different. He reminded most people of the thing they used to believe lived in their bedroom closet at night, when they were very small, and they would wake up, and it would be really really dark in the whole house, and they would lie in bed and know just how small they were, and the closet door was the only thing in the entire vast universe they could see, and they just knew that inside that closet right now, reaching for the doorknob on the inside there, was… Tiny Bulcher.
Don’t Ask

Sometimes the humor is in seeing the world from the point of view of one of the characters, like Guy Claverick’s take on Dortmunder and Kelp:

“Sloping, suspicious, dubious, ramshackle people, dressed as though for a long bus ride somewhere in the third world, they were about as far from the general idea of Raffles, the gentleman thief, as one could get without actually entering prison.

“Come in gentlemen. ” Guy said, which was his idea of a joke.
Don’t Ask

"Bank Shot" Author Photo by Jerry Bauer 1972

Dortmunder doesn’t belong to a gang, per se. Each plan, for each caper, requires different specialists. When creating a plan, Dortmunder recruits from the pool of available talent (also known as “known associates”). His rule of thumb is that the “string” needed for any job should include no more than a maximum of five men. Of course like most rules, there have been a few exceptions over the years. Say the lockman you want is in jail because he absentmindedly picked the locks on the lion’s cage– then Dortmunder would have to choose an alternate.

These guys are professionals. And the world they inhabit is a little different than our own.

Different Worlds

When a FedX package arrives at the apartment for Dortmunder’s lady friend May, Dortmunder is taken aback. When May gets home from her supermarket cashier’s job, it isn’t a problem for her, as she is used to functioning in both worlds. Dortmunder watches as,

“With hardly any hesitation at all, she pulled the tab along the top, reached inside, and withdrew a folded sheet of top-quality letterhead stationery and a small box, such as earrings might come in, or a kidnap victim’s finger.”
What’s the Worst That Could Happen

Westlake provides lots of subtle little humorous touches to emphasize these different worlds. Sometimes it can really sneak up on you, like:

“See John,” Andy said, happy as could be, taking somebody’s cellular phone out of his pocket, “already I’m a help.”
What’s the Worst That Could Happen

Sometimes the differences in our perspectives lead to funny bits.

“I’m sorry, May, ” Dortmunder told her, as he dropped twenty-eight thousand dollars in cash on the coffee table. “I’ve got bad news.”
What’s the Worst That Could Happen

We can believe in John Dortmunder, and his world, because Donald Westlake has done such a good job in showing it to us.

They were walking home from the movies in the rain. May liked the movies, so they went from time to time, though Dortmunder couldn’t see what they were all about, except people who didn’t need a lucky ring. When those people in movies got to a bus stop, the bus was just pulling in. When they rang a doorbell, the person they were coming to see had to have been leaning against the door on the inside, that’s how fast they opened up. When they went to rob a bank, these movie people, there was always a place to park out front. When they fell off a building, which they did frequently, they didn’t even bother to look, they just held out a hand, and somebody’d already put a flagpole sticking out of the building right there; nice to hold onto until the hay truck drives by, down below.
Dortmunder could remember a lot of falls, but no hay trucks.”
What’s the Worst That Could Happen

Beyond providing me with wonderful entertainment over the years, I’ve also learned important things about home security from Dortmunder and Westlake:

Happily, this was another place that left a light on for burglars, so they wouldn’t hurt themselves tripping over things in the dark.
What’s the Worst That Could Happen.

In other words, A “burglar light” may be good for Dortmunder and his friends but not for the householder.

It has been said that Westlake’s Parker is the dark side of Dortmunder. But I don’t think that’s true. Parker is certainly much nastier, and the books he is in are definitely much darker, but Dortmunder could never be Parker. Because Parker is truly a lone wolf. A sociopath. The closest Dortmunder can ever get to Parker was in Jimmy The Kid, Westlakes ultimate “in joke”. If you haven’t read it you have to, because I’ll never tell.

"Jimmy the Kid", "Drowned Hopes", Road To Ruin", and "Watch Your Back"

And although Dortmunder thinks he is a lone wolf, he is in reality a man who is at a loss without his community. (Something that became very clear in Why Me.) After all, who can think of Dortmunder without Kelp? Or Murch, Or Tiny. And May is a very important part of his existence. And if Dortmunder was not a “humanitarian”, the story in Drowned Hopes wouldn’t have happened. Dortmunder is a man operating by his own code of ethics, in his own world. The fact that his world is part of our world allows Westlake to have some fun with social commentary.

Although Dortmunder is a criminal, and he’s brilliant, things go wrong for him. (I don’t know about you, but >I< can surely empathize with that!) And I especially love it when Dortmunder gets mad. Which is probably why What’s the Worst that Could Happen will always be my personal favorite. Although John Dortmunder may seem like a downtrodden sad sack, you really don’t want to get him mad at you.

[Please don't confuse the Danny DeVito film of the same name with the Dortmunder Novel. There is NO comparison. Which is really too bad, because if they had actually followed the story instead of just pulling out the bits they liked, it might have been pretty good.]

The new Dortmunder is on the shelves.

Regrettably it is also the final Dortmunder. It’s bittersweet knowing there will be no more after this one, but that didn’t stop my smile the first time I saw the cover art online a few months ago.

Cover art for the final Dortmunder book "Get Real"

I pre-ordered my copy from Wordsworth Books, and they called me when it came in.

I’ve already finished it. Who could stop? So I’ve read it and it was wonderful. Well of course Donald Westlake’s comic novels are so smooth they just slide on down. So now I can get back to finishing my re-read of the rest of the series.

I will not give you any spoilers (I HATE spoilers).

I’ve had so much fun reading the Dortmunder series over the years.

I loved noticing when Westlake would slip fictitious automobile names into his stories. Like the luxury car he called a “Caliber”, just so he could later make a pun by referring to Stan’s Ex-Caliber… And this one became funnier since Dodge introduced a new economy car they named the “Caliber”.

The hilarious interplay between the regulars at the OJ were always good for a LOL. Or seeing Dortmunder’s confusion the few times when May is driven to actually interfere in his life. Or watching Anne Marie attempt to civilize the guys with far out ideas like Thanksgiving Dinner. Seeing Dortmunder get a free ride in Murch’s Mom’s cab.

Then there are all the in jokes. Like the fictitious Veenbes painting “Folly Leads To Man’s Ruin” (painted by the ficticious Renaissance Master Veenbes) that Westlake created in one book getting a passing mention in another, or crossover chapters like my favorite in Drowned Hopes where a Joe Gores’ car hawk tries to reposesses the car Kelp has stolen (for which we can find the DKA version appearing in Joe Gores‘ 32 Cadillacs).

But I think that the real reason that the Dortmunder books are so much fun is that Donald Westlake had as much fun writing them as we do reading them.

I will quote one lovely bit from Get Real which rather sums up the Dortmunder philosophy:

“Money from wages,” Dortmunder said,
“is not the same as the same money from theft.
Money from theft is purer.

There’s no indentured servitude on it,
no knuckling under to whatever anybody else wants,
no obedience.

It isn’t yours because you swapped it for your own time and work,
it’s yours because you took it.”
–John Archibald Dortmunder
Get Real

"Get Real" Dust Jacket Portrait by Abby Adams

Visit Donald E. Westlake’s Website

I  haven’t been able to concentrate on anything today, and my sister suggested that this might help.   So I’m taking a mental health day here, and I’m going to use it to tell you about a very special guy.

He was born a purebred collie in a breeder’s establishment.  He received some obedience training, but he didn’t conform to the physical standards they sought in a show dog. So even though he was a very good dog, they packed him off to an animal shelter.

The elderly lady who adopted him loved collies.  She brought him to what would be his third home.  She fed him people food and love. But the lady wasn’t up to walking him so the only outdoor world he knew was her fenced back yard. Even so, he would have been happy to stay there forever, but the lady was old and she passed away.  And although her relations knew and loved him, no one had room to house such a large dog.  So he was left all alone in his third home for a week.  People came in and fed him, but then left him by himself again.

All alone.

Then my sister agreed to take him.  Since she worked from home  and had space,  she would  always be with him so he wouldn’t be lonely anymore.   He rediscovered the joys of walks, which he hadn’t had since being a puppy.  It was a good fourth home and he was happy.  But his world changed again when she moved house to go back to school.  Suddenly he was left alone all day long in a new place.   He barked and cried at the door all day when she was gone.   So the landlord gave her an ultimatum: the dog goes or she would have to move.

A boy and his dog.

So she brought him to our house for the weekend of my son’s tenth birthday.   Since this nearly hundred pound dog had no experience with children, we didn’t allow him to join in the birthday party games.    He fell madly in love with my sister-in-law’s dog who was also there for the party. He was friendly and happy and pretty well behaved.  We had no intention of getting a dog who outweighed our boy, but we agreed to try to find him a home.  And really, what it came down to, we didn’t pick out a dog, the dog picked us.

We started to advertise, but my husband really wanted a dog. His only childhood pet had been a guinea pig.  I would have preferred a puppy who could grow up with our son. And besides, I was a mutt person.  There are far too many health problems with purebreds.

But our son had started life in a home with four feline “siblings”.   And now we were down to one.  Our son did not want a dog at all.   He had loved his aunt’s previous dog, but he didn’t want to fall in love with this dog and then lose it too.

The other problem was that we had lots of squirrels and birds visiting our yard. Our cat was too old and slow to be a menace to them, and he worried that if we kept this collie he might eat these little woodland critters. But Dad really wanted a dog.

Really really really.

And as a mother, I worried about how our son would have to cope with the loss of our remaining cat.   Having a dog to cuddle would help him get through that when the time came. So after we solemnly vowed that we would never allow this dog to eat any of our wild friends, finally our son agreed to have a dog.  So Cody joined our family.

Cody wanted to be a member of our pack.  From the very first he wanted to fit in and do whatever it took to make us happy.   On that first weekend he tried once to go upstairs, but he encountered our little old cat coming down the stairs. She hissed imperiously at him and he backed away.  He was told, and he was smart so he listened. He never went upstairs.  (Quite an amazing amount of his fur managed to find its way upstairs over the years.)

He always loved cats and so wanted to be friends with them, but the feeling was never mutual – they always hated him.  From a cat’s perspective he was a monster.  The sister we got him from had cats who ensured that he knew his place.  So he was always respectful towards cats, and was clever enough to stay out of claw range.  But he was always sad that cats rebuffed him.  When he became part of our family he met my parents’ cat and over time was accepted by him.

I grew up with a german shepherd/border collie cross who was marvelous.  He formed my ideal of doggie pulchritude.  Personally, I am not a big collie fan because I find their noses too long and pointy. But this dog was beautiful.  His nose was much shorter and rounder– more like my childhood dog (which was quite probably why the breeder flunked him).   The vet told us that this was a good thing for him health wise.  Quite often purebred collies have vision problems because of the signature long pointy nose thing.   (And people have done this to dogs on purpose!)  He was quite long and broad as well.  He’d stand up in two parts like an articulated bus: first the front would stand up, and then the message finally hits the hindquarters and they would get up too.   He was always a tad overweight, and flatfooted.    We were cautioned to try to keep him from jumping too much.

Cody was a full grown dog in his prime, and he had no experience with kids.  He’d done some playful no-hold-barred wrestling with my sister’s adult male friends, and we really didn’t want that happening with children.  The only toy he ever enjoyed playing with was his rope.  Tug of war with plenty of snarling and growling.  A bit intimidating, especially for children.

So we embarked on some obedience training where we learned some valuable lessons.  The humans must be the alpha dogs, so that we can keep our pet under control. The alpha dogs eat in a different place.   No dogs allowed underfoot when humans are eating.  The dog eating place should be separate.  The dog sleeping place should be also be separate.  So our geriatric cat’s decision to keep the interloper dog downstairs (so she could have a dog free zone) was a good thing for the obedience training.

Probably the biggest thing is that the dog does not get to do is make decisions.  He must always defer to the people (we are the top dogs).  This is really important because if the dog is allowed to make decisions, he is then within his rights to decide who to bite.  And that is a definite no no.  So dogs should never be allowed to win tug-of-war. Cheat if necessary, but the winner is the alpha, so the humans have to win.

This also translates into not letting dogs go through the door ahead of you, not allowing him to choose which direction to go, and not letting him bark whenever he wants to. After the training sinks in, you may relax some of these things, but if unsuitable behavior happens you have to get firm again.  So although all of that was valuable, we had a major philosophical disagreement with the trainer.  She told us that our son would not be able to control the dog until he got bigger because the dog was too big. Our thinking was that if it was just down to brute force, we wouldn’t have bothered to go for obedience training. My husband and I could control the dog by using our weight against him.   The whole reason we were there was so that our son would be able to keep control of the family dog.  So although we stopped going for training, our son learned the lessons the best of all (and in fact took great delight in correcting his parents when we did things incorrectly).  He was handily controlling his dog (funny how quickly that happened) long before he outweighed him.

So Cody was our fifth hand dog.  One of the sad things about adopting a “used” pet is that they come stuck with somebody else’s idea of a name. So although I called him Cody because it was the name he knew to be his own, it was a name he’d been given by total strangers, so I more often called him by my own pet name: Fuzz.

Bathtime

Collies have a lot of fuzz. His outer coat was long silky fur, (perfect for sweeping up all the debris on the forest floor) with an undercoat of thick and dense fuzz (perfect for sticking all that wonderful forest debris to so that you can bring it home).  He was not a water dog.  He could live with getting his feet wet, but he hated going out in the rain. He hated getting wet. Even if he needed to go out pretty badly, if it was raining hard he’d try to hold it until the rain stopped.  But if it started drizzling on a walk, it could be an awfully long time before he would even notice because he had so much fur.  It took a long time for water to penetrate all the way through to his skin when giving him a bath. And if there was a burr within twenty miles, it would find his fuzz to stick to.

He must have been severely paper trained.   He never had an accident in the house except when seriously ill, and he never wanted to do his business in our yard.  He’d always hold out until we were at least a block away.  I think that was partly due to natural doggie territorial urges, but I think he wanted to make sure that he would continue to get taken for walks and never have his world reduced down to a mere back yard again.

Another sad thing I learned about our fuzzy puppy was that he was afraid of small white dogs.  I first noticed this when we were walking home from school, and he started going slower and slower… down to a crawl.  A cute little fluffy dog ahead.  (One of the nicest most well socialized dogs I’ve ever met).  But our Fuzz didn’t want to get anywhere near that guy.   He was scared stiff.

Meeting new friends.

When my childhood dog first met our neighbor’s barn cats they viciously attacked him, even though he was much bigger and could have eaten them easily. But at the time he was a puppy and they were adults. (He continued to hate cats his whole life. When he was grown they certainly had to run for it when he saw them.)

So our best guess is that Cody was probably tormented by a small dog or dogs, most probably when he was a puppy in the shelter.  So we worked hard socializing Cody with other dogs.  If he was standing, especially if it was a smaller dog, which was almost always the case, he would make friendly overtures but at the same time use his hindquarters to kind of quietly body check the smaller dog to prove that he was the boss.  My favorite technique was getting him to sit and allowing the other dog to come to him.  He would be fine then.   It was necessary to be extremely vigilant in the beginning, but for the most part Cody wanted to be sociable, and to have doggie friends.

He became best friends with a miniature schnauzer down the street. When they first met the schnauzer was a puppy and they would romp together every time they’d pass our house or we’d pass theirs. What was funny was that when the puppy grew up it was Cody who wanted to keep playing, creaky old guy that he was, but now his much younger buddy just wanted a quick sniff and to be off again.

And girlfriends! He loved girl doggies and mostly they loved him back. His a most enduring romance was with his “cousin” Pif.   He would run and play and generally bend to her will in all things.  The first time he woke up lame was after a family visit, and I took him to the vet but he had simply over exerted himself trying to impress Miss Pif by being Joe Studly.

But if another dog was agressive, he was ready to give it right back.  Two little dogs down the street always barked furiously at him.  So he’d bark back.  Once when we hadn’t made sure the screen door was secure, he nudged it open and ran out to chase those two little dogs.  They were being walked by their owner (fortunately a very nice lady indeed) and of course Cody really had no idea what to do with them other than chasing them around.   So they ran around and around winding their mistress up like a maypole before I got there to drag the miscreant back home.  But he didn’t hurt them at all.  He just had to show them that he was tougher than they were.  Nya nya.

We always tried to bring him with us whenever we went anywhere.  After all, isn’t that the point of having a dog?  Yet there were times he couldn’t come with us.  Because of his multiple owners in his early years, I think it took most of the time we had him before he trusted that we would really always come back for him.  And that he was really a full fledged member of our pack.

Because he is such a big dog, he had a big bark, so I spent a lot of time training him not to bark all the time.  But there were times when he insisted on barking. If you sing happy birthday (or anything else) its barking time.  Cheering and applauding at a soccer game. Bark! Bark! Bark!  Given his way he would have barked his way through the entire game, but we worked hard to limit it to a bark or two at appropriate times.  After all, it wouldn’t have been fair to let him frighten the other players.

He payed absolutely no heed to the television, except once or twice when a particularly compelling dog voice got his attention. Until our son took up the saxophone. Suddenly, this was music to hum along with. Humming and howling. After that, any time even the barest note or two of sax music popped up in a movie score and doggie humming would ensue.

Boy and dog at play.

Cody loved going for rides in the car. Once when my husband was walking him he saw a parked car with its lights on. He opened the unlocked door to turn the lights off and our Fuzz launched himself into the car. Of course it was very different configuration than our mini van and Cody tangled on the seatbelt and tripped into the seat and my husband. But darn it he wasn’t about to miss out on a potential car ride.

And he adored camping. Hiking, meeting new dogs, interesting sounds and smells, sleeping in a tent with his very own pack! What could be better. Of course when camping with your dog it becomes a challenge being able to go out for dinner. We really liked camping at Cypress Lake Park and if we wanted a meal out the Leeside had a lovely patio we could even bring the Fuzz to.

Really, that’s probably the main thing that made camping so important to him. He wanted to be with us always, and with camping, we were never out of his sight.

A real family restaurant.

At home, people would go off to work, or school or shopping. Even when we were all at home I think his biggest challenge was trying to figure out where to lay so he could make sure he knew about it if one of us slipped away. All the exits had to be in sight before he could get in a peaceful doggie snooze. So naturally he would unerringly sleep in the center of a path. You have to realize that he was a very big dog. So you could step over him, but it was a very big step. And heaven forbid: if he decided that you might step on him when you were making that giant step over him, he might decided to stand up and get out of the way…. lets just say it wasn’t pretty.

So he was trained to vacate at the command “excuse me”. This command was ennacted simply by carrying the laundry basket down the stairs toward him. Since I couldn’t see him over the laundry there were a few stepping-on incidents.  So I said “excuse me” and he’d get clear. Even if I forgot to say excuse me coming down,  the creaking wicker of the basket was usually enough incentive for him to relocate. He was really smart. If it was in his own best interest and you communicated it to him, he’d learn it right off.

He loved pleasing us. He wanted to do things that would make use of his abilities. He liked to learn tricks. He didn’t really like dog cookies, but he’d eat them if he had earned it doing a trick for you. That was the price that he paid for the fun of getting to do a trick. The first time I bought him dog cookies he would only eat them after his boy pretended to eat them first. If the kid ate them they must be good. (Okay, he was really smart but he was a dog. And our son is a budding actor.)

He was probably zealously trained not to lick faces. My sister in law tried and tried to get doggie kisses. And sometimes she even succeeded. He was always gentle. He never wanted to take things from your hand. Even if he really wanted it he was always happier picking it up off the floor. He never quite understood children’s games, and was a little sad that he couldn’t rough and tumble with the boy and his friends, but he accepted it gracefully. Boy and dog played rope together, with lots of growling on both sides, and chase games too. They even developed the “catch the squirt gun stream” game which was always good for a bark and a laugh or two. And the dog would sometimes wrestle with his doggie friends. Whenever father and son would wrestle, Cody would always bark at the Dad.

Whenever one of us was out, he would stand guard by the door, very subdued, waiting for his whole pack to be back together again. That was when he was happiest. Although he’d be sad if Dad was away for a night, he didn’t pine as nearly as much as he would when his boy was away on a sleepover. If we had to all be away without him for a day, I think he just slept until we came back. And I do think that after a few years he began to trust that we would always come back.

He was a good dog.

I was still a smoker when the Fuzz came to be part of my family. I didn’t smoke in the house because I figured that when I tried to quit it would be easier if I wasn’t used to smoking in the house. (And it did help enormously when I was finally was able to quit).  So the front porch was my smoking lounge. And naturally, if I was going through that door I would have fuzzy company.   The porch appeal was also in the visits by all manner of native wild life.  I would sit there and read (and smoke), and because we would sit quietly we were visited by various little critters who would come by for the bird seed we put out.

Cody was OK with squirrels, unless they digressed into chasing each other around. At that point, ol’ Fuzz would want to bark at them. My husband’s theory is that what he really wanted to do is get down there and herd them, since herding is what collies were originally bred to do. Of course, the squirrels would have taken a very dim view of that. And the idea was to not scare away the wildlife, so the barking was discouraged. The consequence of barking was being sentenced to go back in the house. It wasn’t too long until he didn’t bother to bark… if the critters antics were driving him nuts, he’d just get up, and turn around to face the door so I could let him in and remove him from temptation. What was funniest of all was that sometimes when the provocation was too great, he’d be quiet until I’d let him in, and when safely inside he’d bark his head off.

I think because he’d earlier lived with a caged bunny, he showed absolutely no interest in the local rabbits. There were many times when walking with my Fuzz in the twilight I’d see a bunny frozen in immobility and he wouldn’t even glance at it. He laid quietly on the porch, just watching bunnies hanging out in our yard. There was one we called the Brave Little Bunny, who would sit in dog munching range in our yard while one of us would wander past with the dog en route to a walk. Personally I am certain that this is one of our very local rabbits (probably resident in the mini-forest across the street) who correctly assessed our dog as non-threatening.

Good thing that nobody wanted him to be a hunting dog because he takes even less interest in birds. We think that birds and squirrels were a feature of the back yard of his first home, so they don’t make him nervous.

Chipmunks, on the other hand, could drive him absolutely– excuse the expression– nuts. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe its that they are so darned fast and that they startle him when he’s just dozing. Maybe its that they jump on his porch and come drink from his water bowl when he is right there. Regardless, he was never comfortable with chipmunks. And of course we probably made his chipmunk antipathy even worse by adopting the orphaned baby chipmunk I found stumbling around on the street with its eyes still closed. I brought it into our house to raise for a few weeks until it was old enough to release back into the urban wild. It certainly made our poor dog nervous having that thing in the house, even if it was in a cage. Adding insult to injury, the cage got to live upstairs. Cody was certainly happy the day our littlest boarder moved outdoors again.

The other animals who would irritate Cody… no this was much worse, raccoons sent him into a frenzy is what it was. You knew there was a raccoon in the tree if Fuzz went batty underneath it. We didn’t ever want to risk him getting into an actual fight with a raccoon for his own safety, although he would have joyfully gone at it given a chance. But we didn’t really want to encourage the raccoons to move into our neighborhood either, so allowing him the opportunity to yell at them for a bit let him get some of his macho dog feelings out, then we’d take him inside to give the raccoons a chance to beat a hasty retreat. OK, maybe they just sauntered, but they did leave.

Go dog go!

Our Fuzz was never really keen on dog food. But because they have been overbred, collies have exceptionally sensitive stomachs. So even though he’d been fed human food when just a youngster, any deviation from his standard diet could cause him tummy trouble. Yet every time we fed him we’d get the look that said “Dog Food?  Again???”  . We learned early on that it wasn’t a good idea to leave a bread bag too close to the table’s edge. The only clue to the culprit in the case of the missing loaf of bread is finding the licked clean bread bag in the living room. OK, I admit it, it took us two loaves to learn this one.

When he got a nasty rash on his nether parts last year following an inadvertent trek through a pesticided lawn, he had to go on antibiotics. We assumed that being a dog he would eat anything, but just for safety sake we thought we’d try embedding the antibiotic pill into a bit of wiener. Now, for a dog with a sensitive stomach, we didn’t know if this would be a good idea or not. But the wieners I used were the ones from the butcher with no preservatives. They won’t even last a week in the fridge before they spoil, so I thought in might be a good way to get the pills in. So I sliced into a chunk of wiener and slid the pill inside out of site. So our terribly clever pooch carefully sucked the wiener off the pill and promptly spit the pill out.

Now I can understand a cat doing this but a dog?  I mean have you ever watched a dog eat?  They just inhale.  I mean most of it can’t even touch the taste buds it goes down so fast.  Our son suggested that the silly dog was channeling Clancy, our previous cat who had been the Houdini of hiding the pill you put in in his cheek and spitting it out twenty minutes later behind the potted plant when you weren’t looking. As it turned out, the only way these pills would go in Cody and stay in was by tossing them down his throat and clamping his mouth shut until swallowing. (Just like we learned to do with Clancy in fact.)

Of course Cody had to take the pills twice a day with food, so since he was resistant to the idea of eating more than one meal a day, we started mixing bits of butcher wienie in with his breakfast. So he ended up getting the wieners after all. Amazingly, even in conjunction with the medication, they did not bother his stomach, so we began including them with his breakfast every day forever afterward.

He was getting old, and since most other treats bothered him, it was worth it to increase his quality of life. When we got Cody we were told that he was approximately 3½ years old, but no paperwork had been found. But after only a couple of years he started getting listless and slow. So we started him on senior dog food and glucosamine supplements about three years earlier than he should have needed them for a dog his size. Since it helped restore him to his energetic self so dramatically we are sure that he was at least 2 or maybe 3 years older than we’d previously thought.

Like most pets (and kids) he went through his “acting out” times. Whenever he behaved badly I know he knew it, but I swear he was doing it to make his life more interesting. When he first got here probably the hardest thing to get used to was horse drawn buggies. Coming from suburban Montreal he had no idea what these creatures were. They would send into a barking frenzy. After a while he got to meet a few buggy-less horses and he liked them just fine. So I think what he was mostly doing when barking at buggies was protesting against those loud nasty buggies chasing his friends the horses. Eventually he didn’t even bark at them at all anymore. Except when life was boring and he wasn’t getting enough attention, it gave him something tangible to get excited about.

Whenever we took him to any large human gathering, like a parade, a fair, or a festival. his behavior was exemplary. (Even the time when the lady in spike heels tromped his tail at the parade. Just a yelp of pain and a soulful look of reproach. What a good dog.) Maybe when we were at one of those things there was so much going on and life was so much fun that Cody just didn’t have the time to test our authority, or maybe he was enjoying things so much he didn’t need any extra attention.

And of course being beautiful he just always had people stopping and patting him and complimenting him for being beautiful, which he always ate up with a spoon. And every now and again some wag would tell him: “Lassie! Timmy’s in the well!” But he always knew they were just joking and simply basked in the attention.

Last winter the cold started to bother him for the first time.   He was certainly getting old now.  And over the last year or so he’ d decline to eat a meal here and there. He was getting really creaky. He couldn’t jump into the minivan anymore so we bought a shorter car for him. Pretty soon that was too much so we bought him an extensible dog ramp. So he could still go places with his pack. But he was getting slower. The walks were getting shorter, and play became more difficult.

On Friday night he declined to eat his dinner. On Saturday he still wouldn’t eat his breakfast. My husband saw a flea on Cody, and we told ourselves that he was feeling anemic.  One year when we were camping the deer flies targeted Cody and he became really lethargic. So we took him home and he recovered. Our cat Buddy had had the same reaction to fleas. But after a flea bath he was better. So although Cody was shaky on his feet, we gave him a flea bath. By the end he couldn’t stand up and he spent the afternoon in the sun.

We hoped he’d feel better after drying off, but he wouldn’t shake off, so it took even longer than usual. My husband carried him inside when the sun started to go and it got cooler. He could hobble a little and made for the fleece blanket I’d made a bed for him to lay on while drying off in the kitchen. He would never lay in his bed when he was wet. Even out in the yard that night he could hardly stand on his own, and although he squatted and staggered nothing came out. After he gave up Bob carried him back inside.

We left paper on the floor for him because we know he badly doesn’t want to have an accident. We hadn’t wanted to take him for a long drive to a vet he wouldn’t know at an emergency clinic he’d never been to. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, just totally lethargic. So we decided to wait until Monday to take him to the local clinic where he knew everyone and was comfortable. Maybe he would get better.

He’d dragged himself into his bed over night. When it had warmed up we took him outside for most of the day, and took turns sitting with him. He was very subdued and pretty unresponsive. He’d drink a little but still wouldn’t eat.

On Monday we knew we had to take him to the vet, although our boy was still being incredibly optimistic. But our precious Fuzz still couldn’t walk. Sitting outside with him for the early part of the afternoon he seemed much brighter.  He drank more, and sat up and looked around more. He responded to us, and seemed to enjoy the extra attention. When we took him to the vet he was relaxed. When the vet examined him she found a number of other things we had no idea were wrong.  But then he alertness started to fade.  He just didn’t have the energy.  And even though we could have tests done and some treatments made, his quality of life would not improve. It would only get worse.

He’d given up days before and now we had to let him go.

We stayed with him until the end. He was a good dog.

When we came home I packed up his well worn bed and threw out all the partially gnawed chew toys.   His cousin Pif can inherit his toys. But I keep expecting him to be there. And every time I’m not thinking about him, something reminds me.

We don’t have to give the screen that extra tug so that he’s not tempted to chase after a horse drawn buggy. It isn’t vitally important to close the toilet lid anymore. We don’t need to hoard plastic bags any more. I don’t have to be careful not to step on him or trip over him anymore.

But I have two regrets. Because I was allergic, I didn’t pet him enough. I would only pet him if I could wash my hands right away when they’d start to itch. Of course he was a dog so he never understood that. And I know he would have been happier if I had petted him more. And because I’m a human, I regret it.

The other thing I regret is that I didn’t get him his very own kitten. I had always planned to. He wanted a cat to like him, and if we had gotten a kitten they would have bonded. We’ve wanted another cat for a long time, but there were always reasons not to. So I put it off and put it off. But he would have been so happy to have a kitten to mother. He would have loved it so much.

So it makes me sad that I didn’t do this for him. Because he was such a good dog. He may have been a fifth hand dog but he was first in our hearts. I miss him already. And I’ll always love him. He was a good dog. He was the best.

[Thanks to my sister Nicole... this has helped.]

It's lovely walking in the forest.

In these tough  times, at first blush selling off parkland

might seem like a good solution for a municipality trying to make ends meet. But it can’t be good business for the municipality to promote hiking trails on the one hand while bulldozing parkland with the other.

Victoria Glen Park is right next to the Kissing Bridge trail, so you’d think its continued existence would be important to the health of the  community for tourism if nothing else.  We don’t live next door to Victoria Glen Park, but that doesn’t make it any less important to my family.  It’s part of our natural environment.

There are trees and wildlife in abundance.

A family of ducks travel down the creek that runs through it.

Just last weekend we dropped by for a stroll.

The weather started turning and we had to beat a hasty retreat, but in the half hour or so we were there we saw a thriving family of ducks on the river, as well as other birds in the trees and the skies above.

Ahead of us  on the trail a huge raccoon scootched up a really big tree.   I left the path in an attempt to get close enough to the tree to get a good photograph, but in trying to work my way through the undergrowth, I  completely lost track of his tree!

This is a real forest.

And for sure it’s taken a long time to get this way.

Victoria Glen Park provides a valuable refuge  for birds, raccoons and  other animals whose natural habitat is displaced  due to  development.

I was always so impressed at how neat the Victoria Glen forest is. Even though there aren’t any parks department garbage cans, I’ve seen next to no litter there.

As it turns out the local residents are so invested in this little piece of heaven that they trim the pathways and pick-up the litter. Talk about low maintenance for the municipality, right?

Except the town is looking at selling this little gem of a park to make way for even more housing.

Oops, I forgot… it is NOT  parkland.

The township of Woolwich purchased this seven acre woodlot to be used as parkland for something like two hundred dollars close to a century ago.

Shortly  after World War II the municipality rezoned it as residential because returning veterans faced a housing shortage.  At that time it was thought to be  better to situate housing on park land than  on valuable farmland.

But you know they managed to preserve Victoria Glen Park for future generations.

(That’s us.)

But now the municipality  thinks  that they might get a million or more if they sell off part of the forest for housing.

The  current crop of politicians is looking at Victoria Glen Park as though they’re selling off residential land, not park land even though…

Victoria Glen Park has only ever been used as park land.

Ironically, the town is growing faster than ever before.

With the former fair grounds and a substantial amount of farmland around town being developed into residential subdivisions,

A bird soars over Victoria Glen Park. If even part of this habitat is destroyed, there is no best case scenario. The ecosystem will be seriously damaged.

every inch of park land in Woolwich Township will be even more precious.

For more information:
Preserve Victoria Glen Park