Grandmothers and Bulldogs

My American Bulldog was named after my G-G-Grandmother who's maiden name was Phoebe Dove. My Grandmother smoked a corncob pipe and used to earn money fortune-telling to local people and railroad men passing through town. She lived to a ripe old age and got to see many great-grandchildren born. Once the local doctor used her kitchen table to amputate a boy's leg who got hit by a train.

She was a tough ole' lady and for that I named my female American Bulldog after her in hopes that she might live long and be strong.

My dog's registered name is actually "Mitch's Lona-Girt-Pearl" which is a combination of the names of the grandmothers who were exceptionally gritty in my life.

Lona was my father's mother. She taught me to swim in a lake and took me fishing as a boy. Girt was my wife's grandmother who had a heart of gold, but cussed like a sailer. Every kid and most every adult was scared of her in the neighborhood, but I fell in love with her and saw her deep gruffy caring spirit right off. She loved me too. Pearl is my wife's other grandmother who was just naturally classy, southern and gritty having been married to a share-cropper in Alabama and raising five boys on virturally no money and whatever crop they could raise.

My dog is of course spoiled but still gritty. She whimpers like a pup sometimes. She nags me like crazy - barking when she's outside wanting me to come out and play. Her "play" is "tug-o-war" with a rope or a basketball that she's demolished. It lasts about one minute before you're wiped out. She always wins. You can't wear her out.

Her other favorite game is tearing up trees. I'll hook up a tire and use her aggression to actually pull stumps around the property. But sometimes she quits pulling and just starts clawing and chewing the stump to death.

When I was cutting timber and using logs for building the cabin, I taught her to strip the bark of the logs by exciting her and saying, "Strip 'er down, Stip 'er down!" and she'd tear into it for an hour just gnawing and pulling bark off of them cedar logs. You had to be careful you didn't get your hand in there. She seems to go into a "zone" when she starts to get wound up. I have to be very careful and not get her too excited. I really wouldn't want to see it.

She loves to swim and fishes by herself splashing about on top of the fish she spots while wading in the water. She caught a squirrel once. We couldn't get it away from her. She carried it around proudly for a few days and eventually ate it.