Something is on the Fritz

I had a friend named Laura who I went through middle and high school with. She lived on a quiet street next to the city park. In her front yard grew a Japanese Akebono cherry tree whose soft pink flowers bloomed brightly every spring and caused passers-by to slow and gaze at its colorful wonder.

Laura’s family was 100% musical. Her dad was a professional oboist who not only performed but taught lessons. He also directed the community orchestra. Laura’s mother was a professional pianist who played for the orchestra and taught 100’s of students from a grand piano in her living room. Laura had a brother who played French horn and a sister who played cello. Laura herself was a violinist who also played in the community orchestra. I’m sure that on warm summer evenings, the place to be in the neighborhood was sitting under the Akebono to listen to the sounds of the family quintet. Laura, also after college, sang in my gospel performance group.

I really am not sure how I came to know Laura, but it must have been through the music departments at the schools we both attended; I was playing trombone in band and Laura, her violin in orchestra. Although two separate entities, we were combined to sit in the orchestra pit for high school musicals.

It was during my first visit to Laura’s home that I met the sixth and only non-musical member of the Bussard family. It was before Mrs. Bussard’s first scheduled student was to arrive when I entered the house with Laura to see her mom’s grand piano which I was eager to play. Stepping into the living room, I had no idea that the house had an alarm system. From some room in the back of the house came a sound which causes me to shiver even today. It was like the Hound of the Baskervilles.

“Barr! Barr! Barr!” It was deep. It was mean. It was running through the house toward the piano room, to me, to eat me.

“What manner of demon beast could this be?” I wondered. “German shepherd, English Sheepdog, Anatolia Shepherd, Bullmastiff, Great Dane?” Looking around the room I wondered if jumping up on the dining room table would be high enough to keep me from the jaws and certain death. Certainly, the top of the grand piano would be inappropriate, but I did see other shoe marks on top of the veneered lid. I thought it odd that Laura wasn’t at all worried about the approaching attack but maybe she regularly invited friends over to become chew toys.

Then at that last possible moment, that moment when you think that I might just possibly wet myself, into the room charges a dachshund, a wiener-dog. His belly hung so low on his short little legs that he was dragging it across the floor. He jumped over a pair of slippers lying on the floor but didn’t quite clear them. He instead came down on top of them and became high centered. His little legs now had no traction at all. With all the fierce barking out of him and embarrassed because of his current situation, he looked up at Laura and whined.

“Oh Fritz, you little toughie,” Laura said giggling. She reached down and lifted him off the slippers. Fritz glared at me with his lips snarled like he wanted to bark again.

The first thing I noticed about the dog was that he resembled a balloon animal with a rupture. On the end of his nose, he had a large boil.

“Something is on the Fritz,” I pointed out. “It’s the size of a black ping pong ball.”

“Yes, we need to take him to the vet to get it lanced again,” Laura said. It happens every year for some reason. It could be irritated by all the holes he digs in the backyard. He is murder on moles.

As we talked about the peculiar attributes of this dog, Laura mentioned the Italian Prune Plum tree in the backyard.

“Every September, the ripe plums will fall to the ground. Nobody thought anything about it but soon we realized that they were gone, and no one admitted picking them up. We did notice that Fritz was getting fatter and fatter. Then, mom was watching Fritz in the backyard one morning and she saw that he was under the plum tree eating the ripe fruit off the ground.”

“Picking him up was painful for him and if we shook him, he sounded like a Spanish Maracas. It was evident that he was full of pits which he couldn’t get rid of. So, every fall he goes to the vet to get the pits removed and his nose lanced.”

“And the ears?” I asked.

“What about his ears?” she asked defensively.

“They’re kind of frayed around the edges.”

“Two reasons,” she said. “First, they drag on the ground and he either trips over them or he claws them as he is chasing after one of the music students. Second, I guess, he loves to hang his head out the car window when we go for rides. He good up to about 50 mph, then we bring him inside. It’s like taking a flag down in a hurricane. Sometimes his tongue gets caught in his collar too.”

“So, what you are saying is that each fall you take Fritz to the vet to have the pits removed from his stomach, get his nose lanced, and have his frayed ears trimmed?”

“Yes, and to give his voice box a steroid shot.”

“What?”

“Well,  you didn’t know he was a dachshund, did you? It’s the only way we can help our little guard dog feel like he is a Pitbull.”

I carefully climbed off the dining room table as I heard the first piano student knock on the front door. Immediately Fritz began his big boy bark and he leapt over the slippers . . . only to get high centered on the slippers.

“Oh Fritz. You little toughie,” Laura said giggling. She lifted him off the slippers and put his feet and belly back on the ground.

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