Ernie the Enigma Pt. I: Person or Pup?

Now, not to change the tone of these tales, but I must digress from these short stories of Ernie's life to tell you some strange details about his person. Perhaps literally. The first part of the series I will affectionately call Ernie the Enigma Pt. I: Person or Pup?. Under this section will follow subsections introducing a three-pronged presentation of evidence: Ernie's Medical Maladies, Ernie's Knowing Eyes and Ernie, Can You Hear Me?.

I preface the evidence with an explanation of the accusations. I'll be direct. Most who have met him would posit that Ernie Foster, the basset hound now familiar to you, is not in fact a dog at all, but a human being. I and my family are of this number of nay-sayers to his pedigree. We feel that up a little country road on a little country hill on a little puppy farm, we were lied to. Here are the strongest of our arguments, but mind you, there are more than these. The life jacket Ernie is wearing in the above picture should make that obvious.

I. Ernie's Medical Maladies
As was previously made clear in the tale of monstrous Hell the Airedale in Ernie's Brush With Death, Ernie's life, though charmed, has not been without tribulation. While some of the medical problems that Ernie has encountered have been both routinely canine and beyond his control (Hell's attack and some unrequested neutering), others have been neither routine nor canine nor perhaps completely accidental. In short, he has had more human-like injuries than dogish. Case in point:

A. Ernie pierced his bottom lip with a yellow fishing lure while we were at church in 2004. According to dog years, he would have been approximately 17 at this point. Coincidence?

B. Ernie tore his ACL on a walk last spring. According to www.EHealthMD.com, the major causes of a tear in the anterior cruciate ligament are injuries sustained during: football, tennis, basketball, soccer, wrestling, gymnastics, or martial arts. Which raises the question, what did it for Ernie- the high bars? The half-nelson? Perhaps the roundhouse kicks.

C. Ernie takes Benadryl for his allergies. Seasonal allergies? Suspect.

II. Ernie's Knowing Eyes
On a visit to a place that is my second true love (after puppy farms) two years ago, I saw an anomily that haunts me to the present. After chatting with my wild Uncle Richard Day one afternoon as my mother and I were leaving the Episcopal Church Home, I saw a perversion of breeding.

Through the closing doors of an elevator like a bolt of lightning flashed the eyes of a hound. That was not the disturbing part at all, however. What repulsed me was what I found when the doors were opened: a terrier.(Do remember that Airedales are of the terrier breed, but that was not the reason for my grievance). THE REASON, however, was that I had seen a hounds eyes flash and now a terrier stood before me WITH the hounds eyes (as it was a terrier/basset mix). That explained the long bottom but not the sensation I had that Kirk Cameron would burst from the pup any moment. And since that day I have understood in my deepest consciousness that hounds eyes belong on hounds and hounds alone. They are simply too emotively human for lesser mutts to operate.

And of the eyes of hounds, the eyes of Ernie the hound are the most human there could be. I have no way of proving this too you empirically. All I have are a few photographs and as they would not be in context, they would mean nothing. So I cannot prove that when you take his muddy bone he looks at you with disdain. Or the joy that swells within him and sends clear radiant light from his deep, chocolately irises when he opens his stocking on Christmas morning. I can't even force you to understand the resentment that glares out at you when you bore him or tell an inappropriate joke. But you would do well to believe me as I am not the only one who's seen it.

And now, the final piece.

III. Ernie, Can You Hear Me?
On the evening of December 24, 2007 my family and I were in our living room snuggled and bundled on a frosty Christmas Eve reading our annual Christmas book, Bill Frog to the Rescue. Our three brown little heads were close together with Dad's gray snowglobe of a noggin in the center on my grandmother's yellow feather couch- all fluffy and warm. Ernie was on the floor. Afterall, I SAID the couch was yellow down. Person or no person, he has dirty feet. ANYWAY, in the middle of page 11, I looked over at Ernie (who true to his breed, can't stand to be alone or left out), and he was eyeing the green chair (also of goose feathers) adjacent to the yellow down couch as if he'd quite like to nestle into it. Reading his thoughts and feeling a bit bored, I decided to tell him "Go ahead Ernie, you can get up there" because:

A. It was Christmas and I wanted him to be comfortable
B. I SAID I was bored

With one quick nod Ernie looked from my approval to the green down chair. He reared back on his haunches as if to leap up and then soared through the Christmas night into the green down chair. He was immediately scolded and removed, probably in a great sense of confusion and injustice as he had just accepted my permission. POINT BEING: Yes, Ernie can hear me because Ernie speaks English. And I don't mean that he understands the simple imperative words and two-word phrases that your pup probably knows like "sit" and "roll over." My dog, Ernie Foster, can understand and respond non-verbally to fluent, conversational English. This is not the only incident of it at all.

More identity disputes to come in Ernie the Enigma Pt. II: Beagle or Basset?