The Flozberk Way has a notable and diverse poor history with dogs.

1975:  Bone 
My alleged grandmother Mutchie had a small mob of dogs and cats. As a 2nd grader, I grew especially close to one, a white pup I called "Bone."

Mutchie worked at a restaurant downtown near the courthouse. It was said she was the manager, but I still have a rough time swallowing that. I'm not sure what she did there, but one thing's for sure - she brought home a hell of a lot of food. Often, she'd push dusty old candy bars or petrified pink peanut patties at me saying, "You take - eees goood."

She brought home bags of chicken bones and stale french fries from customers' plates as a large part of her dogs' diet. We begged her not to feed them bones, especially chicken bones. She brushed it off - "No! Eees fine!"

One day we stopped by after school.  Bone was absent from the yelping bunch at the chain link gate. Mutchie said "He make run away." There was a large red stain where she typically fed the animals. "Eees cat-soop from fries." Didn't look like no damn ketchup to me.

I really missed Bone.

1976:  Ollie 
The next year I bonded with another of Mutchie's mutts, a tiny puppy I named Ollie.

Ollie had been old enough to be mobile for just a couple weeks when again we stopped by after school. We were in a hurry, so I waited in the car. Mom emerged, carrying what looked like a hat box that obstructed her view. Down the steps she went and next thing I knew Ollie was impaled on her shoe heel.

A little ruckus broke out with Mom and Mutchie often looking my way and blocking my view. Mutchie retreated into the house carrying a little bundle and Mom returned to the car saying all was well. Had she cleaned her shoe first, she would have been more convincing.

Next time, I asked Mutchie where Ollie was.

"He make run away."

1977:  Kixel
Kixel was our dog, the first in a line of 5 cookie-cutter German Shepherd Dogs ending with Tasha. Strangely, I don't remember being real close to her.

Her ignoble end came at the hands of underbelly cancer in a slow, agonizing decline that hammered us all, especially Dad. We had to take her out on a curtain used as a stretcher and she suffered terribly standing and squatting.

This started our horrific family tradition of forcing our old dogs to suffer to death.

1975 - 1983:  Playboy 
This filthy cur poodle was a stray Neila brought home. He and I often got along poorly.

Why?

He coated our house from ground level to six inches up with piss, making us laughing stocks. On one walk around the block he could piss two dozen times. He was the pissingest sombitch I've ever seen, and the horniest, too, throwing the household into disarray when he went into heat. He was sort of a shaggy version of Aydin.

Upon moving to our new house in 1981, Dad laid down the law and banished his nasty ass to the back yard, building him an insulated house from a serving cart.

That havoc-wreaking monster died in said cart house in his sleep, avoiding bone stabbings, footwear impalement, and being eaten alive by cancer. The worst dog got the best outcome. It figures.

1977 - 1991:  Kook(y Kixie) 
This was my dog, chosen by me from a large litter. Mom, already focused on avoiding change, insisted on a female GSD duplicate of Kixel and even gave her a similar name. She had enormous ears that she later grew into, resembling a character called Kooky Kangaroo in a deck of kiddie cards I had, so Dad and I called her Kook.

Armed with library knowledge, I trained Kook and she was a great, great dog, my adored sidekick through the second half of youth.

She became old and infirm years after I left home and was forced to slowly suffer to death.

~1977: Satanica (sp?)
This was either a full or halfbreed wolf Neila and Reagan got around the time of their first wedding, a questionable decision right off the bat. Wolves and wolfhounds tend to be difficult, dangerous pets, but I loved that animal. We were buds...for a short time.

I guess you can see where this is going.

In another questionable decision, Reagan left that very spirited, genetically undomesticated animal tethered to, I believe a tree, leading to a shocking, cruel, fatal hanging that bummed me out something awful.

I'm still unable to engage any reference to gallows, hanging, wolves, or Satan without thinking about that beautiful beast.

1991-1993: Kixie
Kooky Kixie's kreepy karbon kopy doggleganger was a pretty cool dog, but suddenly, as a young adult, she started limping. Bone cancer in the rear left quarter.

Euthanize the poor dear and try again, right? Oh, fuck  no - Mom insisted on surgery. I had a Bronco II with fold-down rear seats, so I was the poor sod in charge of transport home.

From the second she was hauled out of the clinic one day post-op, it was gut-wrenching. Her hip and leg were shaved and a savage curved scar a foot long stabbed our eyes. Merely lifting her to get her into the back of the Bronc was a cruel ordeal that shaken, pallid Dad handled like a champ as Kix screamed bloody murder through the very necessary muzzle as she, beyond desperate, futilely tried to sink her teeth into her master.

Going home on the highway after much route deliberation, some dipfuck tried to change lanes on top of us. The resulting evasive maneuver caused her to topple over even as Dad sat in the back with her giving support. The result was one of the two or three worst moments of my life.  I'll leave it at that.

The surgery failed and she was forced to suffer to death in a circus of cruelty that wreaked havoc on all, especially poor Dad. This was a truly obscene failure of leadership that still pains me badly. Creatures that cannot reason, understand, or help their caretakers should not be subjected to such rolls of the dice. I can't grasp how miserable and bewildered poor Kix had to have been.

1993 - 2005: Kixie 
No, not a typo. Another Kixie. Same gender, same colors.

This one was a sweet pooch, but a neurotic tornado of insanity. When seeing me, she would go haywire, scarring my arms with layered lightning bolts of scratches. When going to class, they would glow under the fluorescent lights, prompting peers to ask who I tried to abduct.

She would often piss from sheer hysterical abandon when excited by a favored guest, then hop around in it on the entry hall tile, all slipping and knocking her knees, then back on the guest, who would leave covered in long, rough dog hair semi-glued on by piss.

I was in the habit of wearing shoes unti they disintegrated and liked a tight fit, so my favorite two pairs had holes over the big toes. This Kixie mastered the art of shooting a stream of AKC-registered wee wee right into my shoe through said holes while ravaging me up high with her front half as Mom and/or Dad screamed at her. It was something else.

She lived pretty long, got cancer, and was forced to suffer to death, ultimately dragging herself about 60' across the den and up the hall to the master bedroom doorway before expiring, trying to reach her master, in a final stand Mom characterized as valiant. Dad almost tripped over her corpse the next morning. headed to the coffee maker.

~1995: Thumper (I think)
Let's hop back to the Flozberks for a moment. I'm unsure of the year. Mid-90s, I believe. Thumper played a damn mean game of fetch and was a good dog. Reagan let him run loose. The Flozzies lived a block away from a very busy road.

Figure it out.

They had two young kids, too. It's fair to say that was difficult for them. I think there might have been a second one that got plowed, too, but I just can't clearly remember.

1998 - 2003: Sierra
She was my first dog in my own home. A wonderfully, perfectly-trained dog, she suddenly developed severe epilepsy, scaring the hell out of me, and then trashed our lives for a few years. Some of the stories are actually hilarious, in a horrifying way.

I was able to win the battle for many months by cleaning up her diet and life, enlightenment that led to The Dog Food Follies with Mom, but, in a heart-shattering surprise, the seizures returned and she convulsed to death in my lap on Father's Day after a 3 day ultra-meltdown.

~2001: That Poor, Poor Dog aka "Skateboard"
Mutchie's dog, whose name I can't remember, taken to be euthanized by Dad after neglect by The Flozberks, who were entrusted with its care. Never did I see Dad more to-the-bone pissed off about anything. Read the disgraceful account on Neila's Kooks page.

2005 - 2019: Tasha Kix
Tasha was the last in Mom and Dad's pentalogy of cookie-cutter female German Shepherd Dogs. She was a very interesting, neurotic dog who was out of control early and uncooperative later. Lisa and I became her buddies.

She chewed her tail badly enough to require amputation and was nauseus and vomiting for about a decade due to an apparent food allergy Mom oddly resisted resolving. When Mom died and we, going through a medical disaster that has us barely functional, got more involved with Dad, 10-year-old Tasha was in bad shape under the watch of the very well-paid Flozberks.

We took over, straightened things out, and she made it to 13 years and change, barely outliving Dad. After a very mindful campaign to keep her up and running, she rapidly declined with multiple serious conditions. I had her euthanized, ending the cruel family tradition of forcing our dogs to suffer to death.

2016+: Bella
Neila's little dog, one of a gaggle of maddeningly loud, chaotic dogs she and Reagan had.

They let Bella's mouth rot out to an extent I've never remotely witnessed in any other animal. One Thanksgiving before the schism when Dad and I were over there, the wicked-ass stank of death exploding from that dog had us bowled over. Like, as in stop eating bowled over, for you couldn't eat there without Bella parking by you and, as one would expect, breathing.

Later, after the conflict broke out, Dad told us Bella had to have a bunch of doggie dentistry done and it was a bummer. I don't know the circumstances real well, but while that dog rotted, they were spending serious money on things like restaurant food and Neila was making it to the hair and nail salon OK.

I'd love to know more about how the Bella story has played out, but, for some odd reason, I ain't holdin' my breath.

Wow. Like, Seriously...Wow! Just, Wow.
This was yet another deal in which I didn't quite realize the sheer brutality of the journey until it was laid out before me. The amount of suffering generated for all involved has been immense. These people are unfit to care for dogs, much less humans.

We like animals and having a dog was a staple of my early life, but never would we again consider it unless old, lonely, and badly curtailed from doing things more fulfilling than dealing with an inherently-stupid dog. The stranglehold they can put on life is nothing to sneeze at, and the cumulative tribulations often end up taking a lot of the luster off the high of bringing home an adorable, hilarious puppy.

And then there's that thing where you get your heart ripped out every 12 years or so...per dog.

If your aim is to spend life watching bad TV and often talking to a dog, hey, knock yer sox off. If you're aiming elsewhere, perhaps higher, and prefer true reasoning with another over the immature desire for unconditional love, you might want to think twice or thrice before pulling that trigger.

Oh, wait - Trigger was a horse.

Every moment spent on a lesser takes away from the greater. In many, but certainly not all situations, a dog is a lesser.

Return to Appendices
More canine madness in The Dog Food Follies