Day NINE of Confinement...examining my roots--MEMORIES OF MY DAD

The days of my confinement drag on...and on and on and on...

Lately, I have been thinking about Dad. Actually, I've only run into him a couple of times in my life. He's a career dog...not the fatherly type at all. He fell hard for my Mom, but it was a doomed romance. Too much of his heart was already occupied by his job and too much of Mom's heart could never be tamed.

Dad has lived a colorful life. He started out in undercover work. Now he is semi-retired, working as a rent-a-cop. Back in his hey-day, he helped take down a major drug king-pin. He stayed DEEP undercover for years working as the drug lord's body-guard. My dad was the best in the business. He made Kujo look friendly! And Dad is TALL. Though he has amazingly handsome lines, he's too tall to have ever qualified in the conformation portion any dog show. But that's okay because he wouldn't have had the patience for life on a pageant runway, anyway. He was born the edgy sort...has always needed to be in the midst of danger to really feel alive. He's all about taking down the enemy and extra height is a real bonus when you are leaping onto an enemy to rip them to shreds. Dad's work was always his life.

Dad went undercover very early in his career and stayed there so long that he almost never found his way out. Dad didn't leave until long after the drug lord he had shadowed (as "body-guard") for so many years had been arrested and buried in prison. Unfortunately for Dad, it turned out that getting out afterwards wasn't as easy as he had planned. Some of the drug lord's relatives suspected he had had a hand in ratting out the drug lord and they took it out on him. They kept him under lock and key and systematically starved him from his fit and trim 90 pounds clear down to a bone protruding 60 pounds before someone sent by the Greater Kansas City German Shepherd Rescue Society was able to bring him out of there.

It was while he was recovering from that near death experience that he met my mom...an iron-willed Latino beauty sporting a shiny new Green card. Her fiery temperament intrigued him. Her exotic beauty haunted his dreams. Her seductive accent lingered in his ears. She mesmerized him and made him feel alive once more. Their passion burned fierce and deep... They both genuinely believed in their hearts that they would be inseparable for life...but as Dad regained his strength, life without daily danger became tedious...even with the exotic Hispanic beauty by his side. For Mom's part, she was always such a free spirit, herself, that I suspect it was probably a relief to her when Dad left one day and never came back home again. They left friends. They will always love only each other. But, neither of them ever had a strong pack drive. They were both lone wolves, from beginning to end...




......................(our last picture of Dad just before he left Mom)....................
Dad is hard as flint, more relentless than Kujo when on the attack, yet, underneath it all, so deep down that few ever see it, he really does have a tender heart. And my dad is truly the most HANDSOME German Shepherd I have ever known.