Tails #6, Bear, The Bowling Dog

  Okay, I am falling in a rut when is comes to starting my blog post. I get the feeling that I am started them all the same way or at least is seems like it to me. It is hard to say: when I, once when I, and there was this time.  My blog is about my past and sometimes what is happening right here in the here and now.
  I get it, I hope my readers get it, that this blog is about history: of family, friends and pets, some alive, some since gone. Most stories will make a person laugh and some will make them cry. But my goal in the end is to come to an understanding with the reader of who I was and who I am, and who I will be come. I just don't want to bore my readers, so for the lack of a better way to start, Here is Bear, the bowling Dog.

  Once when I was 12 my mother decided that I needed a dog of my own, but not just any dog would do. Both my parents were avid readers of the Daily news paper. It was one of those hometown news rags that would advertisement on the front page. They read the classifieds looking for good deals and sometime they found treasures for free.
  That day my mother found an advisement for free puppies. They were Doberman and German shepherd mix, 6 weeks old and ready now.  My mother without a word ran off and got me a puppy. That was why we named ‘Bear’ from the fact that he looked like a bear cub, especially when he rolled up into a ball.
  I remember the first day that I came home and found that rather large ball a fur on the back step. He was brown and tan, with long fur. I love the surprise and the dog became an icon of my parents’ back yard for 10 or so years.
  The cabled him to a large stringer from the house to the light pole that stood in my parents back yard. I can remember how he would run back and forth wearing a hole in the ruts into my dad perfect grass. It turned out to be a long oval shape in which he poop into the middle. We would let him off the chain and he would still run that oval. It was quite funny to watch him run.

  His favorite toy was a ball that he played with. He would move it around the yard play and even carrying it. Everyone thought it was quite a feat, but I will get to that.  I still remember the day that my dad's friend, Barney, (not his real name.) walked over, moved the ball around and kicked it as hard as he could. The ball moved about a foot, and he walked away limping. What he had kicked was a bowling ball.
  We laughed as the man who was now in obvious pain.
  He responded by saying, "I thought that it rolled funny."
  This caused the group to laugh harder. My parents teased the man about it for years. Somewhere that bowling ball sits as and monument to a great dog and a great moment in my life.