Remembering Angus and the UPS man

Jan is away at Quilting with Machines this week, Tom went home to southwestern Ohio for his brother’s wedding, and took Euba with him; the girls and I are home alone.  Laura and Emily have a list of things to remember posted on the cupboard door.  Bring in the mail.  Lock the doors.  Emily eyed the list with suspicion last night.  No cooking.  Grandma has that covered; a nice family restaurant down the road.  They will be so pleased.

The UPS man brought a delivery today, and took a biscuit from his pocket for Euba.  She took it away without even saying Thank You.  He looked sadly at her and said he missed those other two.

Euba

It’s been a year since Angus left to join Fiona.  They always heard the UPS truck pull in.  Two little faces were in the window as he came up the sidewalk, up the ramp, and rang the doorbell.  As if he needed to do that.  The barking and the jumping for joy alerted the house. 

Two biscuits were in his shirt pocket.  One went first to Fiona, who went straight to her place and kept her biscuit between her feet until long after Angus finished his.  She tormented Angus exquisitely.    Angus’ biscuit was next.  The UPS man broke it in half and gave Angus one at a time cautioning “Chew it up, now.”  Of course Angus swallowed them whole.

When no one was home the package and two biscuits were left on the little table on the porch. Two Cairns met the rude persons who had not been there for the delivery and herded them to the front door, clamoring for the biscuits on the front porch.

Fiona

One day the UPS man pulled out one biscuit and looked around.  “Where’s the little one?”  Jan explained Fiona had run the last great run of her bad heart the previous Saturday, and laid down and died. 

The poor fellow said “Oh.”  Blankly he handed Angus the biscuit in his hand.  Angus dispatched it in one swallow.  The UPS man turned and went back down the ramp, slowly patting the other biscuit in his pocket.  Jan watched him go, with no words to say.  Angus went down the ramp with him, bouncing on his Tigger springs.  You have another biscuit.  I could eat two!  The UPS man was still patting his pocket when he got back to his truck.

Angus

Angus and Fiona dispatch varmits

We live in the woods.  We have critters.  Enough chipmunks and mice outside to entertain Purrl.  Fortunately for him, he never had a chipmunk fasten itself flat across his face, velcroed on by twenty tiny claws, and take him for a merry run.  That happened to a cat of Patti’s.  Anyway.

We live in the woods. We have mice in the house.  We know the cats actually brought some, back when we still let them use the cat door, and dropped them off for future amusement.  But, there are enough cracks in our old house and mice hate wintering outside enough that an even larger population brought themselves in.

Poppy II was a terrier, but not into rodent vermin.  He once took on a contractor’s German Sheppard and sent it down the street, tail between his legs.  He considered that vermin.  Handle your own mice.  So we did.  We kept the mouse traps primed and in those mousie runways, and we probably kept even.  However, we cleaned mouse souvenirs from drawers often enough to know we weren’t ahead.

When Angus arrived he was interested in the mouse traffic, but otherwise clueless.  Like running after a ball.  He’d pick it up and then look around for an idea of the next move.  Fiona sized up the situation the first time a mouse crossed her path.  She barked.  She pointed.  She steered.  She flushed.  Angus watched.  Finally Fiona kicked his butt.  Listen, fool.  We’re terriers.  We have a job.  I’m going to flush that sucker from behind the dog food can one more time and you’re going to snap its neck.  Got it?  Don’t make me do everything!

Fiona would have preferred the neck snapping job herself, but she let Angie go into action when she had the varmit in the open.  It was to bolster his ego. You could read it in every muscle, tail up, front quarters down, keeping that mouse trapped right in the middle of the floor while she urged Angus to do it now!  Then she’d turn to him, standing there with his mouth in a little O before, pthooi, he spit the corpse on the floor.  Well, she’d say, I got another one.

Angus and Fiona hang out

In the beginning Angus’ separation anxiety was heart rending.  He would not be separated from Jan.  He was a lucky dog; Jan worked from home and he was seldom separated.  We were lucky people; because he needed to know where we were at all times, he never ran away.  Tom taught him the boundaries of the yard in one evening and that was that.  Even when the groundhog popped out from the culvert under the drive.  That was a game.  The groundhog knew Angus knew where he had to stop.  So, Angie wore a path across the lawn and pounded a hard dirt path in his skid down the hill to the culvert, where he braked and stopped on a dime while the groundhog hurried through the pipe and came out the other end.  On someone else’s property.  Flipped Angie off and ambled down the road.

Fiona was the brains of the pair.  She would have been the alpha dog except for the unfortunate fact of showing up second.  She grasped almost from the outset that terrier antics such as running off didn’t happen in Angie’s house.  In fact she did run once, for a half mile through the woods to the next street and terrorized herself so that when someone brought her back she admitted her mistake and never repeated it.  Running alone was scary and stupid, when you could run up the street with Mom every morning to Uncle Skip’s or Uncle Joe’s, accompanied by all the cats, get a biscuit from Uncle Joe and an amble around Uncle Skip’s field.

Tom and Jan went to Canton one weekend to visit Tommy T.  They took Angie and Fiona, who were always up for a ride.  At Tommy’s house they left the two in the back yard with Tommy’s dog, and went to see a ball game.  Coming back up the street hours later they could see the gate was open and there were no dogs in the back yard.  Tommy was beside himself.  Bad enough his dog, but his dad’s dogs too!  Jan suggested they not worry until they had to.  They pulled in the drive and saw Angus on the back porch.  They walked around the house and found Fiona on the front porch.  Jan figures Fiona went around to the front door because it was the last door she saw them go through.  Dogs and all, they piled back in the car and went looking for Tommy T’s dog.  When he hopped in, blocks and blocks later, Angie and Fiona gave him what for.

Angus and Fiona work the studio

At the peak of our weaving business we had ten weavers and three sewers.  It was win win for all of us.  It was a full time job for Jan and me and part time for those who worked with us.  We live in an arty little pocket of Ohio. Artists, artisans, and dabblers.  I was always proud that we could offer part time work to people who wanted only part time work, for a decent wage and a fun environment.  Or, as I used to say, it’s not a sweat shop, we have an air conditioner in the studio.

Waiting for weavers

Angus arrived here in 1999, Fiona in 2000.  Calling them people dogs is an understatement.  From the first morning, Hi, I’m Angus.  Let me escort you into the studio.  OK, I’m leaving now, I hear someone else coming in.  I’ll be right back with them, you just wait here. Fiona, of course, took her greeter responsibilities equally seriously.

Hard work

Angus never was a foolish puppy, but Fiona was, and led Angus on many memorable chases through the studio, squeezing through the narrow spaces between our back to back looms, and especially through the tiny triangle formed by 360 warp ends passing from the bottom of the creel over the back beams of the rug loom.  If only they could have warped looms and wound bobbins and shuttles.

Waiting for Sue

They had favorites, of course.  Angus loved Jeanie, who took him outside on smoke breaks.  But both of them adored Sue, and it wasn’t just the biscuits. There were two Siruba sergers, an industrial Singer (it went fast!) and a Consew.  Fiona and Angus climbed over each other to sit on Sue’s station.  Fortunately Sue wasn’t on piece work.

Angus and Fiona

Angus and Fiona were once in a lifetime dogs.  After little Poppy II, the Yorkie, we didn’t have a dog for a awhile.  It transpired Jan was researching, and settled on a Cairn. She followed up on a newspaper classified and found Angus and his littermates living in a cage in a strip mall hairdresser shop.  With hairdresser kids tormenting them.  She sat down on the floor with the lot and studied them for some time.  Then she picked Angus.

None of us are dog behavior experts.  As when dog does this, human does that.  Somehow we’ve muddled through it, together with a little coaching from our dog rescue friends, Ann and Pat.  Angus was three or four months when he came home.  House training was an exercise in overcoming his extreme separation anxiety.  He stuck to Jan so fiercely he had no time to stop and do doggie business.  But, stuck to Jan, he never got into any trouble on the side.  Almost like the first kid.  Be quiet.  Look around.  See how it’s done and then make them proud. 

Well, scratch the quiet part.  He loved the weavers and the sewers who came to the studio.  He greeted each at the door with HAR-rrrooouuuu, and escorted them to loom or sewing machine.  He was always up for a biscuit from the jar and sat on his hiney to let you know.  “Like a Teddy Bear,” Tom said.  He had that Cairn lilt to his walk and tilt to his head.  Then those big brown eyes…..

Angie was so used to getting his biscuit at the bank drive through we almost lost him in the New York Thruway booth the first year we went to Syracuse to Linda’s for New Year.  Hi!  I’m Angus!  You know me!  Why isn’t there a biscuit for me?  To anyone in the car:  She must be new.  Set her straight.

He was little that first time to Linda’s, not a year.  Angus and Tom sat in the living room watching football.  Then Angus disappeared.  He’d followed his nose to the pot of venison chili and struck up a lasting relationship in the kitchen with Linda.  It didn’t hurt that Linda ate anise cookies in bed at night and Angie’s nose took him there, too.

Alberta, Joanne and Angus at Linda's, 1999

Fiona arrived a year later, to keep Angus company.  Jan wanted another Scott name and I suggested Fiona.  “Not if you call her Fi-Fi!”  That never crossed my mind.  Tom and I always called her Flony, or Fony.  She didn’t care.  She looked up with her big Betty Davis eyes and wiggled.  She was energy on wheels.  Trouble, too.  She chewed every table leg and a hole in the back door.  But we got over it. 

Flony went to Syracuse, the next New Year’s Eve.  Together she and Angus converted Alberta, who doesn’t quite like her own daughter’s dogs, but brags on those two little dogs “who know what you tell them and DO IT.”  That because at meal time Tom would say “Get in the room” and the two little beggars would retreat to the dining room entrance and lie there with noses on paws extended less than 1/16” into the dining room.  “Bring the ball” was another example of their post graduate education for Alberta, but to Fiona was her end of keeping the human tossing it.  She really got Alberta with the game of rolling the ball down the steps for the human to throw up to be caught at the top and rolled down again.

The stair games at Linda's

Angus was the best big brother.  He let Fiona get to the ball first, almost every time.  If he picked it up and stood on four legs with the ball in his mouth Fiona would feint and dart, snatching the ball from under his whiskers the instant he slackened his jaw.  Angus was so fond of Fiona he took her to the kitchen in Syracuse to make friends with Linda and venison, and then upstairs in the middle of the night when he heard anise cookie crumbs falling onto a bed. He knew the toll lady was too cheap to hand over biscuits and told Fiona, We don’t bother ourselves for her.

Angus

Fiona