In February, 1972, Mom and Dad brought home a little fuzzball to join our family. She was off-white (a color the AKC called “champagne”), a little bigger than a softball, with bright, intelligent eyes. She was a poodle, half miniature and half toy, and she was the cutest thing I had ever seen.
Rather than walking, she fairly pranced around the house, so we called her “Prissy.” She was born on Christmas day, so her middle name became “Nicole” in honor of Saint Nicholas. Her solemn and full name was “Priscilla Nicole Hendricks,” but we never called her that no matter how much trouble she got into.
A couple of days after we got her, we brought Prissy along on a day trip to the Mountain View Folk Festival. We all took turns carrying her, and she was the darling of the day, winning the hearts of everyone who saw her. In the afternoon, the weather turned, and we were caught in a downpour without umbrellas. Dad stuffed Prissy in his jacket where she rode happily with just her tiny, wet head peering out.
We called Prissy the best doorbell on four legs because anyone at the door would set off her canine alarm system, and she would race to the kitchen barking. When the door opened to reveal a human rather than a monster, she would dance around, wiggling her whole body with ecstasy. My friend David Stebbins always wore sandals when he came to visit. Prissy would lick his toes, causing him to jump about like a cowboy when a movie villain fired hot lead at his boots. “It tickles!” David would exclaim as he danced across the kitchen floor.
Prissy was extremely fast for such a small dog. I have a single picture of her streaking along in the back yard, but she is just a white blur. She loved to run all-out, especially after a narrow escape from death in two inches of warm bath water.
One time Mom was having a snack while talking with Prissy in her lap. Using her long, skinny tongue, the dog adroitly scooped out a morsel from Mom’s mouth between syllables. Mom was both amazed and disgusted. The moral of the story: don’t talk with your mouth full, not with a fast dog nearby.
A couple of years earlier we had planted a pecan tree in the back yard. Little did we know that we were aiding and abetting Prissy’s future arch-nemesis. Prissy despised the squirrel that stole all the pecans from the tree. She would bark at the critter from the sliding glass door that looked out onto the back yard. The squirrel would happily ignore her until we opened the door, and then the race was on. Prissy would zoom out just as the squirrel made a spectacular jump to the fence and raced away. Although she never gave up trying, she was definitely not the best squirrel deterrent, because we never got a single pecan from that damned tree.
While still a puppy, Prissy started sleeping in my bedroom. She would cuddle up in my arms at night, where she slept like a favorite teddy bear. If the weather was hot, she would sleep on my pillow, her back against the crown of my head.
Home floorplans of early seventies commonly included a serving bar connected to a pass-through from the kitchen to the living room. We had four avocado colored stools at the bar where we enjoyed all meals except those on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
One morning, Mom awoke to find Prissy nose-deep in a jar of peanut butter on the kitchen counter. She had jumped on the couch in the living room, stepped over onto a side table, hopped onto a bar stool, climbed onto the bar, and walked over to the kitchen counter where her favorite snack awaited, lid conveniently unscrewed.
As well as JIF, Prissy loved every food she ever tried with only a few exceptions. She did not like pickles or olives and would carry them from room to room before finally abandoning them. She liked M&Ms, but not the kind with peanuts. If given a peanut M&M, she would lick the chocolate off the outside and leave the peanut. She loved peanut butter, so I have no idea why she disliked peanuts.
One Saturday, Mom’s brother Anthony stopped in to say hi. Prissy had been working on some peanut M&Ms. Anthony was sitting on a bar stool while Mom picked up leftover peanuts from the floor and dropped them in a bowl, awaiting transfer to the trash can. After a few minutes, Anthony absent-mindedly reached into the bowl and tossed a handful of the peanuts into his mouth. Mom’s jaw dropped as she watched Anthony realize what he had done. His eyes opened wide and he muttered, “Oh, God. Those are dog peanuts, aren’t they?”
At that time, Mom drove a new two-tone Electra 225, which was Buick’s answer to the aircraft carrier. It was 19 feet long with a shelf under the rear window big enough for emergency napping. Prissy claimed this area as her own whenever we took a drive. She would jump from the front seat to the back seat to the shelf, check the vicinity out the back window, then reverse the trip to catch the action out front. Watching her hop back and forth was like having primo courtside seats at Wimbledon.
We never figured out how she knew what day it was, but every Christmas morning (which was also her birthday), she would run excitedly from room to room and wake us up. We joked that she was the best darned alarm clock, although for only one day a year.
After being awakened, Randy, Mom, Dad and I would follow her to the living room and sit around the tree. There Prissy would receive the first gift, which had been loosely wrapped and placed on a tree branch. She would tear open and then parade her gift, usually a squeaky toy, around the room for all to admire.
Her favorite toy was a little rubber alligator she got one Christmas. Whenever she felt bad, she would sit at the end of the coffee table and slowly squeeze him, making sorrowful little squeaks until she felt better.
Prissy greeted me at the door and slept at my side whenever I came home from college or was visiting from California. By the time I went to grad school, she was slower to meet me in the kitchen and she no longer wiggled her body with uncontrolled joy. I had to lift her up on the bed at night because she could no longer run down the hall and fly from the door to my side. She was almost completely blind, and so she no longer took offense at squirrels raiding the pecan tree.
I knew that our time with Prissy was growing short, and I was ready when I answered the phone call from Mom one evening.
When I next visited Mom and Dad, I looked out the sliding glass door. There was a little dirt mound there near the pecan tree. I opened the door and walked over. Standing there remembering all those sweet moments, I was all hollowed out with emotion. As is often the case with loss, I was wrong in thinking myself truly ready.
While I stood there, Mom came up from the house to stand with me. She put her arm around me and said simply, “She was a good dog.”
“Yes,” I whispered, “she was the best.”
