Memory Monday # 9

Me with my dog Fuzzy

      In an earlier memory blog, I told of getting a puppy...a border collie.... when I was probably about four.  When I was six, Fuzzy would have been two.  We were still living just two doors down from the school.  I am sitting in front of the house that was between my home and the school.

     So another memory that I have when I was still in the first grade involved my furry friend, Fuzzy!  When all of us kids were outside for recess, some of the dogs that lived nearby would come into the schoolyard to play also. This would have been well before "lease laws".  I loved it when Fuzzy would come down to see me!!

     But apparently not everyone was as excited to have the dogs in the playground because one day the Superintendent came to our classroom to announce that we were to go home and tell our parents that the dogs just HAD to be kept away from the school!!  Now I don't know...there may have been a problem and he had the safety of the children in his care to be concerned about....but in order to really impress us with the need to keep the dogs at home, he said that the next time any dogs were found in the school yard, they would be SHOT!!  Well, I was a total mess, running home crying to my mom that Mr. V. was going to shoot Fuzzy!!

     My parents who grew up in the same town that I did, and went to the same schools I did, were also friends of Mr. V...knowing him when they were all young people.  So my mom immediately contacted him and, very respectfully, told him off!!!  That he should be ashamed of scaring little children....that she understood the need to keep the dogs away from the playground...but he didn't need to be so insensitive to say the dogs would be shot!!  As a result, he came back to the classrooms and rephrased his mandate....that the dogs would be captured and held until the owners could claim them!! A much kinder solution in my mind!!