I admit to spoiling Zinnia and the other dogs, but on the other hand, Zinnia does a lot of good for many different people and for me. She deserves it, and I love her dearly.

In the daytime and when I am in my study, Zinnia is always next to me or curled up in the big soft bed I bought for her.

When she’s in the living room, where she often is at night,  hanging out next to Bud, she has to curl up to squeeze into the bed in there. It doesn’t look big enough. Otherwise, there is no bed for her, poor thing, in our house that’s close to abuse.

I’ve spent a few minutes trawling around online for a good Lab bed, and I found one on  Chewy.com. It’s an orthopedic bed, with a soft layer underneath the bed. Zinnia is a big girl, and I see her moving around a lot, trying to get comfortable.

It costs 62 dollars.

This week, I got an excellent new mattress; why shouldn’t she have a nice bed in the living room?

Maria agrees but is worried a larger bed will take up too much space. Bud may have to give up his wicker throne; he usually prefers the sofa anyway or lies close to the woodstove.

Whenever I purchase something like this for a dog, I feel guilty, even embarrassed. But I promised to be honest on the blog, and here it is.

I think of King, the german shepherd my father got at a kennel in Providence when I was young. King slept in the basement, he never set foot in our house, and he had to make himself comfortable. My mother tossed in an old blanket, and that was his bed. The basement was cold, dark, grumpy, and noisy. My mother vowed to never set foot in the basement her whole life, and she didn’t.

I went down there with my sister once in a while to look for ghosts. It was pretty bad down there.

King had a different life than Zinnia in almost every way. He never saw a vet, ate table scraps only (no dog food), and when he was sick, he just had to get better—no vet visits or bills. My father said it was ridiculous to take a dog to a vet. If they couldn’t manage to be healthy, they could go somewhere else.

My grandmother, who was from Russia, was horrified at the very idea of owning a dog. They couldn’t even be eaten, she said. They were useless and filthy.

King was let out in the morning and let in at night when it got dark and if he came to the door when my father came out. My father said he wasn’t going to sound like a fool, calling the dog’s name at night, waking up the neighbors. If he came home late, he had to sleep in the garage and skip dinner.

I threw another old blanket next to the car just in case. It was a secret.

King often terrorized the milk and mail carriers and came home with some pants leg fabric. and sometimes somebody else’s mail.

He impregnated any female he came near; there were little Kings all over the neighborhood.  My father was not about to spend money getting him neutered.

King loved grabbing our neighbor’s garbage and spreading it all over the community. He also nailed the occasional rat or squirrel and tried to bring it home.

King didn’t come home one day, and my father said he had gone to a farm in New Hampshire to live. My mother admitted years later that King was hit by a truck and they hauled his body to the town dump.

King would have loved an orthopedic bed; I can imagine my father’s face at the thought of it.

The love of dogs and their lives have changed beyond imagination; my father would never have spent one minute of his life looking for a soft dog bed for King from a store called “Chewy.” I was sad when King died, but then again, I hardly knew him.

I do remember the milkman dashing for the front door with his rattling bottles as if his life depended on it (it did) and running back to the truck, waving a big stick or swinging a milk basket behind him to fend King off until he got inside. King was not easily discouraged.

Most of the time, the milkman made it. Sometimes, he didn’t. We often found a pants leg fabric out on the lawn. We always got our milk.

The mailman was tougher. He came up the walk waving his giant mailbag like a club, and if necessary, he’d swing it and hit King right on the head with it. He also had a homemade can of mace or something like it that he sprayed.

King didn’t seem to notice it.

King’s favorite thing was to hunt the milkman and mailman. He would hide in the bushes until the milk truck came up, or the milkman came whistling down the street. We urged him not to whistle near our house, King could hear it for miles, but he said it was an old habit and he wouldn’t let any dog stop him from doing it.

My mother said she hoped the post office was reimbursing him for those pants.

These defenses didn’t deter King, but they did slow him down sometimes. The post office complained to my father, but he just ignored them.

But we always got the mail. Crazy dogs were just part of the job.

I don’t think anyone in the neighborhood ever heard of a lawsuit, and it was taboo to call the police on another neighbor short of homicide, and even that was a tough decision.

Zinnia,  you are a great dog, but you’ve got it good, and you have a great big sap for an owner. Sorry, Dad, another disappointment from your youngest. What could you expect from some weird kid who was determined to be a writer and wouldn’t play sports?

We’ll figure out the new floor plan. Maria is a genius when it comes to organizing things.