Barney and Rex Trailer

Our usual dog park that we visit daily with Auggie has been temporarily closed for maintenance, so this morning we plopped him in the bike basket and rode to a farther one (have I mentioned that this RV resort has EIGHT dog parks?) We visited with a nice woman who brought her Westie, then rode to the agility park and let Auggie run through the obstacles. There we saw a most lovely white standard poodle, who was just the sweetest dog.

On my fifth birthday my parents got me a dog. I remember the car ride; I was so excited to find out I was getting a poodle puppy. We arrived at the breeder's home, and sat down in her living room. The door opened and this huge brown dog ran into the room and knocked me down. We were on the way home with the dog before I thought to ask, "But what about my poodle puppy?" My dad said, "This is a poodle puppy! He's a standard poodle--they are big dogs." We named him Barney.  I wanted to call him Brownie but my folks vetoed me. I was starting to get the idea that maybe my birthday was just an excuse for THEM to get a dog.

Poodles require a lot of grooming. As I got older I learned to use the clippers on Barney and loved shaping him differently each time I trimmed him. For a while I thought I'd become a professional dog groomer. Sometimes he looked like a bear and other times like a fancy poodle.

Now these were the old days when dogs were not required to be leashed, so Barney enjoyed the freedom of being off-leash when we hiked in the woods or anytime we were on a walk.  I recall the day he actually chased Rex Trailer's horse (Rex Trailer was a local celebrity in the Boston area who had his own cowboy show called Boomtown on Saturday mornings.)

Rex lived in Sudbury, MA not far from the Wayside Inn which was a popular place to hike around.  We were so excited to see Rex riding his beautiful palomino horse, Gold Rush, the same one he rode on his show.  Barney was excited to see the horse, too, and chased him across the fields while we screamed at him to come back.  The horse was faster than Barney, thankfully.

We used to see Rex at different events around town; bowling alley openings, car dealership events, things like that.  I met him several times, but never dared to tell him we were the ones with the dog that tried to attack his horse.

And I made sure Barney always looked different so Rex could not identify him if we ran across him again.