Skip the Conqueror

Living where we do, the approach of Spring should have made me cautious to the dangers of waking wild life around our home long before Skip came to live with us. But along with other life lessons such as ~ everybody deserves a second chance ~ one's perspective can be directly affected by one's
willingness to put in an effort ~ and my personal favorite...sometimes it IS genetics (see exercise blog) ~ Skip has also taught me that "attitude is everything."

Last Spring I had just gotten home from work and as always was welcomed by an excited, barking , twirling poodle. I let him out the door and he proceeded as always to run as fast as he could to the back of the barn where he would usually run into Zeb and continue barking. Skip has done this every day since he started relaxing into our home so I didn't think anything of it and as is my usual, I proceeded to gradually make my way down there to join him. I was about halfway down the length of the barn when I saw Skip tearing after a very large and I suspect more surprised than frightened black bear who had been sunning himself on the back deck. Zeb apparently in his quiet "live and let live" sort of way, had been lying under a tree and watching the bear without any interaction. Skip having a bit of a Napoleon complex ,
could not see fit to let the bear alone and quickly had him cornered up against the side of the chicken coup where the bear found himself surrounded on three sides by either coup, fence or poodle.
     Throughout my career I have spent years responding to both medical and psychiatric emergencies and I'm happy to say I've been pretty fortunate because I managed to keep my head and not act like a panicked fool. Well, this time it was just "dumb luck."

    By the time I got to the coup the bear was up on two legs and towering over my miniature 15lb multi-thousand dollar investment (ok that's an exaggeration, but still...). I suspect in an effort to look larger himself and to appear more intimidating, Skip also decided to go up on two legs. Now I gotta say, that bear on two legs was pretty imposing, Skip on the other hand...well, Skip was pretty much doing the poodle dance. So while the bear, Zeb and myself saw this:

Skip was sure he was looking like this...

Long story short, I slowly stepped up behind my dog as the bear licked him the entire length of his belly to chin...I'm pretty sure Skip enjoyed this because when I picked him up and slowly began backing away he did what was then still a classic Skippy maneuver...he bit me...hard...luckily the bear had started moving away or else he would have gotten knocked in the head by a flying poodle when I tossed Skip over my shoulder hollering, "...He's tasting you, you idiot! Home! Now!" To which Skip responded by going back after the bear before he stopped in his tracks, looked back at me, and realized there may be greater consequences than losing a bear... So once again life lesson learned from the adventures of Skip: Caniche Avec L'attitude (poodle with attitude)..."Courage... is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway..." Atticus Finch, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' 

(Yeah, that was a long way to go for a "licked" pun and believe me I didn't set it up that way...but ya gotta admit, it kinda works!)