Wallace and the Beagle

Wallace and the Beagle

My dad, Roger Wallace, had a very great fondness for dogs, small dogs mostly, but all dogs. He had a terrier as a child who dug out of the yard and was killed by a car. I don’t at this point in time remember the dog’s name, but I heard the story many times. The pain of his childhood loss was still fresh half a century later. When my mom and dad got married they moved into a small house in El Sobrante California, a small town to the east of San Francisco on highway 80 towards Sacramento. They were married for ten years prior to starting a family. My mom worked as a teacher, went to graduate school in history, and my dad was in graduate school working on his Ph.D. in physics. All the while they had dogs, as my dad would say, to practice for the children to come. Dogs were another member of the family and in this early case, a substitute for babies and children. It was an openly specified substitution. 

The first dog I remember as a child was a cocker spaniel named Muffin. Muffin had a few freckles on her belly that reminded me of a blue berry muffin. At one point she was stung by a bee on the belly, my dad pulled the singer from her soft underbelly as she lay there in pain from the sting. She also had a tendency to protect her food when she ate. As a very young child I knew this tendency. I would enter the kitchen and creep with my back to the wall whenever muffin was eating dinner. If she would see me, she would attack. Many times I was picked up crying, bleeding from a dog bite, and taken to my parent’s bathroom for a dog bite wash out. Muffin eventually was given to a nice childless, single lady a block from the house. Muffin no longer was able to bite me on a routine basis. 

My dad then got a gray miniature poodle named Brigitte after Brigitte Bardo. My dad very much liked French movie actresses, so our dog was named after one. Brigitte was a good dog. She would play fetch with a tennis ball indefinitely. One time my brother and I took turns throwing the tennis ball to see when she would tire and give up the game of fetch. Three hours later Brigitte was still going strong, Doug and I on the other hand, were exhausted. When we would go to Donner lake and stay on the lake front, Brigette would play water catch essentially indefinitely. You could throw the ball as far into the water as you wanted and she would return it. When you tired of the game, Brigette would drop the ball on the pathway to the lake. The ball would roll down hill, across the dock, and then fall into the cold lake water. Brigitte would then jump from the dock and retrieve the ball. She had created her own tennis ball machine using the path, dock, lake, and gravity. 

Brigitte Bardo, the movie actress, not our dog.

At first my dad thought that a French poodle should have a French Poodle hair cut. He got caulk, and a hair cutter. We would draw out the saddle pattern on the dog with a French curve, and he would trim the dog like you see in the movies. This only happened a few times and then the kids were assigned the job of clipping the dog. Needless to say, the French curve was gone, the dog was shaved like a lamb. The dog needed dignity not some poofy hair cut. My dad bred Brigette a number of times and we raised puppies. Many went to friends, some to the Maiden Lane Pet store in San Francisco. One was adopted by Hans Mark, one of my dad’s friends and later the Secretary of the Air Force and a Deputy Administrator of NASA. Hans’ dog would jump off the diving board into their pool to swim. We kept one of the puppies and named her Coco, after Coco Chanel. I am not sure how these French women would feel about having our dog named after them, but my dad was very clear, dogs got human names. The dog would be insulted if it got a “dog” name.

Coco Chanel, also not our dog.

In 1963 the movie Tom Jones came out. It is an adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), starring Albert Finney as the titular hero and was one of the most critically acclaimed and popular comedies of its time,^[1] winning four Academy Awards. Tom Jones fundamentally changed my dad’s view of dogs. Tom is a bawdy English “gentleman” but at one point he is injured. According to my father’s often told rendition, he is brought into a dining room where a number of people are eating. Dogs are sitting at the table eating as well. The food is pushed off the table onto the floor and Tom is laid down on the table to be treated. The dogs continue to eat from the floor. This one scene provided the basis for Wallace dogs eating at the table. Besides, if they are sitting at the table, the don’t beg, according to my father. It is amazingly easy to train a dog to sit in a chair, at the dinner table, and eat from a plate. It was one of the very few things my dad ever taught a dog.

Tom Jones the Movie, you can see the appeal to my father.

In middle school, I got the idea that a Siberian husky was a good dog. We searched out Siberian husky breeders. We went to a sled dog race up at Tahoe. That was wonderful, lots of dogs running in the snow. We adopted a puppy named and named her Natasha. She was the first large dog we had had. I took her to dog school, and trained her. When she went into heat, she got out, and ran the neighborhood doing was dogs do. My dad took her in to the vet to get the morning after shot. The next day she got into a fight with Coco and killed her. My dad took Natasha to the vet and put her down. We lost two dogs that day. 

A while later, I was sitting in my best friend;s custom van in Rockridge Oakland, Roger Van Maren. Roger was the son of a gynecologic surgeon. They had everything, absolutely everything including: an airplane, open ocean fishing boat, street motorcycles (3), minibikes (4), off road motorcycles (3), guns, a pool with an inflatable dome, a tennis court, pong machine, custom van, custom cars, gold lame tuxedos, scuba equipment (3), etc. And when I say scuba equipment for example, they had the tanks, regulators, etc. but then they had the plastic housings for the tanks like Jacques Cousteau, as well as the underwater motorized torpedoes like James Bond. The Van Marens had everything. They had the first microwave oven and digital clock anyone had ever seen. They also had a wonderful great dane named Countess. She had her own freezer for dog food. Well, we were sitting in Roger’s driveway in the custom van getting ready for some trip. This van had TV, cassette, 8 track, a winch, a custom paint job. It was a $25,000 custom van in the days when a van cost $4000. This little beagle like dog jumped into the front seat. We looked at her tag. Phineas had a tag from Madison Wisconsin. Well, we were 2,088 miles from Madison Wisconsin. Phineas was an extremely nice dog. We called the number on the tag, but didn’t get an answer, and then we wrote a letter, yes in those days there was no email, this was a physical letter to an address in Madison. A month or so later, a graduate student couple showed up who were Phineas’s owners. They took the dog for a day or so and then brought her back saying they really couldn’t take care of her in Berkeley. So, we had a new dog!

The problem, according to my dad, was Phineas was a male name, and Phineas, the dog was female. Gender confusion was a very serious worry of my father, and you know, the dog, might, well, it is insulting to the dog to have a male’s name. The dog was renamed Lucy, after Charlie Brown’s nemesis in Peanuts, and I spent more time in dog school. Lucy, while an extremely nice dog, and a mix of beagle, and I think a bit of golden retriever, looked like a beagle but with a thinner snout. She was not a good student at dog school. We went to the John F Kennedy University in Orinda California for dog school. Lucy is the only graduate I know of this fine university, and she was held back several times for “sniffing”. Apparently in obedience school, dogs are not supposed to sniff the ground while walking. Beagles sniff, we worked on this problem for a long time, and she eventually graduated, but it was a problem.

Lucy's Alma Mater

The Greek god, Phineas, note, the god is male, which would cause gender confusion and be insulting to the dog, who was neither Greek, nor a god, nor male. 

Lucy was a nice enough dog that my dad shifted from poodle enthusiast with French movie actress names, to Beagles, with American Movie actress names. The problem with beagles is they actually are hard to train and my dad never bothered to train any of them. Lucy, was not a pure beagle, she was a beagle mix, and I trained her. His next beagle was a rescue beagle named Pamela who was untrained, and never listened to any command, let alone, go outside to use the bathroom, but I digress. My dad would faithfully bring Pamela with him whenever he visited. Unfortunately, if Pamela shot out a door, getting her to come back was a major undertaking. The word COME, was not in Pamela’s vocabulary. House breaking was never accomplished. For a guy who insisted dogs should have gender appropriate human names, sit at the table, and travel with you at all times, he really didn’t train them.

When Alfia was pregnant with our first child, we purchased a house in San Rafael. It was a wonderful house with a back yard and I wanted a dog. My office mate, Gretchen Hollingsworth also wanted a dog. I had had a black Labrador in medical school named Kobi. Kobi, named after Kobi beef, was adopted after Linnaea found her hit by a car. She had been “tenderized” by a car, she would be named Kobi. Not a classic Roger Wallace naming system, but I digress. So, I wanted a black Labrador. Gretchen knew of a litter of free puppies from a very nice dog named Dinette in Corte Madera. The dog was a local legend for being nice and was “huge” like a Dinette set. The owner of the dog managed a night club in San Francisco and two of the puppies from the litter of 14 went to Robin Williams. If they puppies were good enough for him, we wanted one. So Alfia, who was now two days from delivery and in no capacity to object to a puppy, and I went to Corte Madera to pick up a free puppy. We picked an all black one and Gretchen picked second and got a brindle dog that eventually looked like a hyena. Jenny, the black mastiff-lab mix eventually weighed 150 lbs and was about the size of a great dane. She looked liked a black lab that just kept growing, and growing. Maggie, Gretchen’s dog was similar in size but brindle. When the two played together they looked like something from the lair of a James Bond Villian. 

Well Jenny spent 18 months in dog school, and while being a very slow learner, was perfectly behaved. At one point in dog school, a black lab like dog ran underneath Jenny, using her as an overpass. I asked the owner what type of dog had just done this. Oh, a black lab. “How did your black lab run under my black lab?” “Mister, that isn’t a black lab.” I hadn’t noticed how large she was. Jenny knew about 30 words and never had any accidents. You could give commands in sentences such as “Jenny, go into the kichen and lie down on your bed.” “Jenny, back up.” Jenny was not a rocket scientist, and her CPU ran slow, but my dad’s dog was another story. Our house has wooden floors in much of it. On the top floor, the former owners had covered the wood floors with vile 1960’s carpeting. We tore it out to find wood floors, which we had resurfaced. This resurfacing required us to live in a hotel for a week and suffer through saw dust, and sanding, etc. So, the floors were perfect. They were done! Something came up and Alfia had to fly to Florida to take care of her dad, I had to fly somewhere for a business trip. We were both gone at the same time. My dad and Marjorie decided to stay in our house, and baby sit the kids. I came back after two days. There was Andrew, who was just walking, but he was all wet. I picked him up only to realize he had fallen in a puddle of dog urine. I cleaned him up. I then proceeded to find 15 “accidents” on my brand new floors and carpeting from Pamela. We had only been gone 48 hours, what had they been feeding this dog? Moreover, we had a dog door that a 150 pound mastador could use, and a beagle couldn’t find its way outside? Pamela was banned from our house. 

When my dad met Gretchen McDonald, she had a number of Maltese mixes. These dogs also had human names like Harry, when my dad named them, or Giggs, when they were named prior to my dad’s influence. They were smart enough to come, sit, and stay out of the road. Pamela, my dad’s beagle, wasn’t smart enough to stay off of the Trans Canada Highway, and met a tragic, but completely expected end. I never quite figured out why my dad never trained the dogs, we always had a dog door. We always had dogs, but he just didn’t feel the need to train them. My dad was an enormous advocate for education. He read, studied, tutored, and lectured. He sent people to medical school, and graduate school. He sent me to dog obedience school a number of times with a number of dogs. Dogs ate at the dining room table, lived in the house, had human gender appropriate names, but he didn’t bother to train them.