Penny the Dachshund or Cujo’s Mini-Me?

Close your eyes and breathe slowly... deeply. You are warm and relaxed, and you are floating effortlessly. I am with you, holding your hand, leading you back through time. We are almost there.

Open your eyes now, and see that it is dark. We are drifting toward a blue light ahead of us and the darkness is melting away. The blue light begins to swirl, wrapping around us until it fills the sky above our heads. It is late afternoon of a mid-summer day, sometime around 1964.

We are standing on green grass, near the back side of a big two-story house. Two igloo-shaped woodpiles are on our right, and a tall hedge stands behind us along a narrow sidewalk. It leads to a white garage just a few steps away.

I motion you to our left, and we begin to walk around the house. It rests on a corner lot, and there are giant elm trees, towering higher than the peak of the roof. We climb three cement steps and are now standing on the rough wooden porch of a back door. You can see an old silver-colored milk box to our right as we enter. A note for the milkman pokes out from the closed lid.

Now we are in a pantry, and there are white painted cupboards hanging over an even whiter porcelain sink. I tell you that in the cupboards, on the top shelf, there are two coffee cans. One is filled with old wristwatches and pocket watches. The other holds a collection of age worn pocketknives. Both cans are fascinating for little boys with wild imaginations.

I open a door at the rear of the pantry and walk down some stairs. The light is dim and you detect a slight musty smell. It is the smell of old, as the house is old even now in 1964.

We move across the cement floor of the basement past an old black wind-up phonograph cabinet with a horn speaker. There is a 72-rpm record on the turntable, and you strain to read the label. I take your hand and guide you through a dark passageway. To our left is an even darker nook. I quicken our pace to get by them faster.

A wide room looms as we pass through a doorway. It is my father’s wood-shop, and the scent of sawdust takes the place of the old must smell. I like to be in this room; although, the dark passage is always there, guarding it like a sentry that challenges my courage each time I come for a visit.

We hear a growling above our heads as I wave my hands in air, searching for a string. I find it eventually, and give it a pull. Welcome light fills the wood-shop. Along the rear wall, above one of the workbenches is a cage. It is about two feet tall, covered in chicken wire, and it hangs securely from the ceiling.

Eyes are peering at us from within, and you see that the growling comes from behind tiny white fangs that belong to a brown, short-haired dachshund. It is Penny, the first pet I have known, and she does not appreciate our intrusion.

My father built the cage around a small doggy door in the foundation of the house. Penny was able to spend time outside in her kennel, or she could come inside and hang out in the warmth of the basement.

We look at each other, a chill runs up our spines as the little dog continues to growl. The room begins to spin as time decides to move us forward. Again, we find ourselves standing on the back lawn. This time there are people there.

A little boy stands near-by, and there are two young girls running wildly toward the house, yelling for their mother. Penny is also there, near the woodpiles, eating something.

The young girls, I tell you, are my sisters. They are shouting and crying about Penny, and the kittens. The little boy is me at five-years-old. He realizes in horror what Penny is eating, and it angers him. Penny has found the kittens that everyone knew had been born in the woodpile, and she has killed all of them.

Instinctively, the boy begins to swat at the dog with a twig, hoping to drive her away from the kittens. He doesn't understand that it is too late. Penny turns away from her snack, and confronts him, growling and snapping at the stick.

Suddenly, she lunges up and grabs the boy’s tiny forearm in her teeth. He screams in agony as the little white fangs puncture his skin. Blood runs down his arm as the dog finally drops off and scampers away.

I tell you, as the light begins to swirl around us again, that I never saw Penny again after that day. Was there something in the dark passageway in that basement that tormented Penny, and turned her into a homicidal maniac? The mind of the little boy wondered sometimes.

You are waking up now, and you feel completely refreshed. Thoughts of vicious kitten-eating dachshunds, once again are forty-three years old, and there is no danger at all. You are completely at peace.

Grrrrrrr...

©2007 by Phil Harris

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Comments

[Pawhealer]

Hi,

Nice to see another site that tells dog stories...I do the same thing...not many of us around.

I love my dogs and weave my blog around my life with my dogs...its lots of fun.

I will watch your blog...

Good luck...

[Pah]

Thanks Pawhealer,

I will watch yours as well.

Take Care,

Phil

[Trevor]

nice dad i like this site

u should write about husker

[Phil]

Thanks Trev...

I certainly will, but I am going through time from way back to now. So it will be awhile before I get to Husker.