My dad feared dogs. He called them a Yiddish word, “hunt.” “Jews don’t like dogs!" he’d declare, “Dogs eat Jews.”
He’d go on with a performance rant. “Look at that rotten hunt,” he’d tease, pointing at a neighbor’s miniature schnauzer. “That’s not a dog, it’s a rat. That hunt will kill you. It’s a vicious animal; it smells bad and looks even uglier. Who needs one of those in the house? Get yourself a pet cockroach!”
My father’s physical antics trying to avoid dogs often made us laugh. Once he literally threw my mother between him and a Great Dane. “Take her,” he pleaded. He’d hide behind walls, and sneak around corners at friends’ houses to avoid the dreaded kelev, the Hebrew word for dog, which also means, “bad.” One of the most offensive insults in Yiddish, is du bist a hunt mit di oyern (you are a dog with ears). I’m sure my dad used it.
“That hunt,” he’d say to a disbelieving pet owner, “It should be poisoned, right away.” And the dog, as if knowing it had to convert a detractor, would amble right up to my dad, and lick him, wanting to make fast friends.
My dad told me and my sisters, who always begged to get a family dog, that dogs were not to be trusted, and that according to Jewish lore, embodied evil. Dybbuks. “They chase you down the street and tear off your limbs,” his own mother warned him as a child. And she was right to instill fear, sort of. In Poland where she had lived before WW2, and in Germany during the Holocaust, dogs were used to hunt down Jews, intimidate, and kill them. “Really, dad?” we’d protest, hugging every canine that crossed our paths.
My dad had to get over his epigenetics, when at a synagogue auction, as a joke, someone raised his hand to bid on what was supposed to be a pedigree poodle puppy.
We “won” the dog to my sisters' and my glee, but it stunned my dad . Yet, he didn’t make us give the small brown mutt (his pedigree didn’t pan out) back. When we took the puppy home and played with him, my dad joined us, wearing a pair of thick ski mittens.
He never stopped commenting on hunts, even though two lived under our roof, while I was growing up. He never genuinely liked a dog he met, except for our King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, Picasso. Our daughter had lobbied hard for Picasso to join our family, and my dad initially felt betrayed. My sister had cats, who my dad feared even more than dogs because they pounced, then attacked. He made her shut them into a bedroom whenever he visited her house.
Picasso, oblivious to my father’s animal phobias, would jump up on our couch where my dad occasionally napped, and curl up by his feet. After a while, my dad admitted that he liked lying with the hunt; eventually he even admitted that he liked Picasso.
This past week, on the 7 year anniversary of my dad’s death, I sat on the floor, sobbing over the prospect of losing Picasso. Our 13 year old sweet baby had hurt his back, was in horrible pain, and couldn’t walk. Until we sorted him out, I thought Picasso would be joining my dad in the next realm.
But that didn’t happen. The little trouper pulled through and he’s almost back to his jaunty, sunny self. Some losses seem unbearable. But I have learned how to endure them by remembering stories like these, that lay at my feet like our precious hunts.
