DOGS: Cherokee's Memory Book, Chapter 5 (last)

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     Now I want you to take a good look at this picture:  Look how big I am and look how little my dog door is. It looks like it is only big enough for dogs like Keno. People who saw me dash through that door for the first time were always amazed that I could go out that tiny hole without getting stuck. I will show you my secret, how I would fit through that door. See what happens when Grandma gives me a bath.

     I am really just a small Pomeranian-sized dog with lots of fur. There is one other way to show how small I really am.

     One summer Grandpa and Grandma decided to give me a haircut so I wouldn't be so hot. That was a Very Bad Idea. The woman who trimmed my fur that day forgot she was just supposed to give me a bear cut. You can see it was kind of cute--but then she forgot and gave me a lion cut, shaving me right down to my skin and only leaving my head fluffy. I was so embarrassed. Everyone laughed at me. I felt naked. It took a long time but finally my fur grew out and I was beautiful again.

     Katherine, I want to thank you for helping me find my way around when I got old and blind. I couldn't see or hear and my legs got stiff and sore so I couldn't run. Life wasn't much fun for me anymore. I was ready to leave that life and come home to heaven. Now I feel young and strong again. Someday when it's time for you to come to heaven, we can play together again forever.


Love,
Cherokee

"If we need our pets when we get to heaven, the Lord will make sure they are there." Katie Thiel, mother of three.

Today I am thankful that in God's presence there is fullness of joy and at His right hand are pleasures forever. 


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--GOOD RESOURCE: Radiation Network 

Cherokee's Memory Book, Chapter 4

     On March 2, 2004 something very exciting happened in our family.  A new puppy--I mean, a new baby--was born. Your Daddy and Mommy named you Katherine Jessica Padilla. This is when Grandma Jessica became Grandma. Before that she was just Jessica.
     By this time Grandpa Rick was in heaven but soon you had Grandpa Jerry.
     Grandpa and Grandma went to Oklahoma to see you as often as they could. Then they brought you out to California and that's when you met me.

     Grandpa Jerry already had three grandchildren, Cheyl, Jessica, and Jacob. They came over to play in the Jacuzzi with Andrew. Of course I had to check them out, too. I love to play with children. We would play tug of war with an old towel or they would throw tennis balls for me to chase. When I brought the ball back to them I didn't want to let go. The harder they tugged on the ball, the harder I would bite down on it.

     My favorite game of all was escaping out the front door whenever I could and having as many people as possible chase me. I would run all over the neighborhood. chasing cats and barking at other dogs. At first Grandma and Grandpa and friends, and neighbors would run after me, offering me cookies and holding my leash, asking if I wanted to go for a walk. I finally learned if they ignored me it wouldn't be any fun for me any more so I would just come home and sit on the porch with my big blueberry-colored tongue hanging out--you can always tell if a dog is a chow because only chows have blue tongues--and wait for someone to open the door and let me in.

     Grandpa and Grandma took me for a walk along the beach on their second anniversary. I liked that. I tried to chase the sea gulls.
     Another time we walked to the park to listen to a concert. Lots of people were sitting on the grass and almost everyone had a dog, all kinds of dogs. I got so excited I jumped and lunged and barked so loudly no one could hear the music so we had to go home.
     Sometimes I would run upstairs which was a big no-no!!! The cat would run under the bed.      Once I sneaked upstairs and found two stuffed bears to steal. I took each one downstairs and out my dog door. That was the only way Grandma knew I had been upstairs.
     The only other times I went upstairs was when there was thunder. I was afraid of loud noises and I ran upstairs when I heard them so I could be near Grandpa and Grandma. They would pat me and tell me everything was all right.

        This picture was taken the only time I ever went to church. It was for the church directory. The photographer took this with a loud noise and a bright flash of light. I was so startled I jumped and turned completely around. If the photographer had taken the picture one second later, it would have been a picture of my fluffy bottom.













Today I am thankful for walks in our neighborhood.

Cherokee's Memory Book, Chapter 3

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      Something else I liked was anything little and soft. Like any baby I liked putting things in my mouth. Sometimes someone dropped a sock out of the laundry or left a slipper on the floor. It would disappear. I would pick it up gently and take it out through my dog door. Then I'd dig a hole and bury it.
     When your daddy proposed to your mommy he gave her a diamond ring. They were sitting in our living room and they were so happy neither of them noticed when I sneaked into the room, picked the ring box up off the coffee table, and tiptoed outside with it. Later Becky looked and looked for the little box. She finally found it in the back yard, half-buried in dirt.
     Pretty soon when Grandma Jessica or Grandpa Rick lost anything, the first place they looked would be the back yard. They found all kinds of things out there--Teddy bears and scrunchies and handkerchiefs.
     The best time of the year was Christmas. There were always Santa hats and cloth-covered decorations stuffed with cotton and Christmas stockings. All the little toys and dolls on the Christmas tree as high as I could reach and pieces of the Christmas puzzle.
Most of the time I could sneak these things  through my dog door when no one was looking. That was lots of fun.
     When Grandma caught me she would say, "Give" and hold out her hand. I would gently let go of my prize so she could take it and put it back where it belonged.

    I also liked to steal food whenever I got the chance. I figured if it was down on my level it was supposed to be for me and if it wasn't on my level I could always stand on my hind legs and then it was on my level or I was on its level and then it was for me. 

     Ben was especially helpful because he would put a plate of food by the couch and leave it there while he checked on his laundry or watched TV.

I got lots of treats that way. At Christmas, I could usually find his mug of eggnog and finish it off for him. (Katherine, while reading this to me: "Mommy, you've gotta see this picture! It's hilarious!")
     One day day Grandma and Grandpa left some slices of bread on the kitchen counter.
     They wanted the bread to dry out a little so it would make good French toast. But the bread kept disappearing. Grandma thought Grandpa had taken it, although she couldn't understand why. So she put out some more. That disappeared, too. Grandpa thought that Grandma had taken it though he didn't understand why so he put out more. I ate almost a whole loaf of bread before they compared notes with each other!

     Here I am right before the New Year's party trying to figure out how to get the sandwiches and cookies down to my level.


Today I am thankful for parties.


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Cherokee's Memory Book, Chapter 2

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Hanging out with Uncle Tim

     Grandma and Grandpa named me Cherokee the Chow because it sounded noble and because the Cherokees are red people and I am red. One friend, Marvin, said Cherokee was too long a name for a dog. He always called me Rusty.
     Everybody liked me, even people who usually were scared of dogs because I was always so gentle and friendly. One couple, Tom and Bonnie, liked me so much they went out and got two puppies for themselves, even though the wife had never liked animals before.
     I loved everybody. Most chow-chows are one-person dogs. That means they love and protect their owners but they are mean to everyone else.
     I didn't see anybody as a stranger or an enemy. Grandma joked that if a burglar ever sneaked into our house, I would probably put my paws on his chest to greet him and say, "Would you like the TV? How about the VCR? Help yourself."

Carol, who had cancer, found me comforting

     Whatever the action was, wherever the people were, that's where I wanted to be. I'm a people dog! Besides people I liked going on walks and going for rides in the car. Whenever Grandma and Grandpa started out the front door for a walk, picked up the car key to go for a drive, even the grocery store, I wanted to go along. Remember how I said I could talk with my eyes? I had big, beautiful brown eyes that looked like they had eyeliner highlighting them. If I saw someone start to leave the house without me, my big fluffy tail would drop down and I would look at them with my big beautiful brown eyes until the person said I could go, too. It almost always worked.

     Sometimes Grandma even let me drive the car. Just kidding.











Today I am thankful for wheels.

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Cherokee's Memory Book, Chapter 1

MANY JAPAN-RELATED POSTS BELOW    
     I don't remember my first home. But when I was six months old I ran away and got lost. I ended up in a big cage at the pound.
     When people came through the pound looking for a dog to adopt, all the other puppies jumped up against the cage and made a lot of noise, saying, "Take me! Take me!" I just stayed on my all-fours and said, "Take me!" quietly with my eyes.
     One day a man and a woman came into the pound. They looked at all the other dogs and then stopped at my cage. I could tell they liked me. "This one is so pretty!" said the woman. "And she is so quiet and well-behaved!"
     When the woman squatted down and reached through the cage to touch me I licked her hand. "She's really friendly for a chow!" she exclaimed. "I want her." I found out her name was Grandma Jessica and her husband's name was Grandpa Rick. The pound would let me be adopted in three days.
     I was so excited when that day came!!! Grandma Jessica was, too. She was afraid someone else might want me too so she might not get me, but no one else did. If no one wanted me at all, I would have been put to sleep but Grandma Jessica and Grandpa Rick wanted me! So the pound keeper attached a rope to my collar and handed it to Grandma Jessica.
     Oh my! I was so happy to be out of that cage I forgot all about being quiet and well-behaved! There were so many wonderful sights and sounds and smells to check out, I took off running. I nearly pulled Grandma Jessica over! She could barely keep up with me! When we got to her car she helped me scramble up into the back seat.

     A car ride! That was exciting too. When the car started moving, I raced back and forth from window to window. I wanted to see everything. While driving, Grandma Jessica turned around to be sure I was all right. She was startled. She couldn't see me anywhere. Then she looked up above the back seat and there I was, right in the window! People in the cars we passed laughed and pointed at me because I was so cute! They thought I must be a stuffed animal.

     When we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house, Grandma let me out of the car. I ran into the house, tearing through every room looking out the windows, trying to see everything at once. Suddenly I had to go potty. I hadn't gone potty before I left the pound and I had to go NOW. By the time Grandma caught up with me, I had made a big puddle on the living room carpet. I mean, BIG. Grandma had to mop it all up with lots of towels.
     But she didn't scold me. So I didn't care. I kept exploring. I found a pet door I could use to go out into the back yard where there were lots of bushes and grass. That's where I should have gone potty. Oops!

     I ran back inside and found Grandpa Rick resting on the living room floor. I was so glad to see him I jumped on top of him and he played with me. I wanted to check out the upstairs but Grandma and Grandpa said no. They had a cat who was scared of me. When I moved in she ran upstairs and never came down. I was NOT allowed to chase our cat but sometimes I did when no one was watching.

     That first night I felt so safe and comfortable I slept in my favorite position, on my back. I liked being at the foot of the stairs. If anyone walked past, came in the front door, or went up or downstairs I would know about it and could protect my new family. That's what a good watch dog does, even if she's upside down.












Today I am thankful for castles.

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DOGS: Which one was the pit bull? (Part 2 of 2)

     Cecil helped Safeway put in new stores around Southern California. It was his job to talk every single homeowner within a certain area (a larger area than Safeway expected to need) into selling his/her house and moving out so Safeway could tear it down and move in. Cecil wasn't paid a cent unless he got 100% participation. 
     Often there was a little old lady who had grown up and raised a family of her own in a house she absolutely refused to part with. It would have horizontal pencil lines in a doorway marking the heights of generations of  kids and grandkids and she couldn't bear to move to Leisure World and leave all that behind.
     But Cecil would have made Dale Carnegie proud. He would befriend her and keep sweetening the pot until it was worth her while and she would accept his offer and let the deal go through. Then he would be paid plus he would also have first option to buy parcels of land around the new store which Safeway wasn't going to use. He would put in strip malls of his own with doughnut shops and hair salons or free-standing hamburger stands. (Once he had to decide which of two potential tenants to go with. He'd never heard of either one of them but he was more impressed with Rally's product so he turned McDonalds down.)
     Once he was at it for a year and a half and at the end the little old lady adamantly refused to sell. He and his wife Marjorie (Rick's mother) went out to dinner to "celebrate."
     They didn't go out to dinner if he did make the sale. "Why do we need to go out to dinner to cheer ourselves up? We made the deal!"
      Cecil and Marge never bought anything until they could afford to pay cash for it. They started out living in a single room--the back half of his small real estate office. They scrimped and saved, only moving to something slightly bigger when Marge was pregnant with Rick and couldn't squeeze between the stove and the refrigerator any more. (Also they'd stuck so much stuff behind the couch, it was in the middle of the room.)
     When they'd saved up enough money, Cecil bought a couple of acres in the exclusive, gated community of Rolling Hills. He oversaw the building of a ranch-style home--complete with swimming pool, paddle tennis court and corral, palomino, turquoise Mercedes-Benz, and a view from Catalina, which the smog did not obscure in those days. When everything was ready they leaped socio-economic levels in a single bound. They moved in just before Christmas and Marge bought a flocked Christmas tree and decorated it with pink balls and bows.
     Rick's sister Linda was nine, the age her dad had been when he was selling potato chips to employees in big office buildings all over Los Angeles, when his family of four suddenly started living like rich people.
     Those were the opportunities in California back in the days of the orange groves. That was what entrepreneurs could do with initiative and hard work. Even if they were only nine years old.
     So what I want to know is, when Cecil got bitten by the dog, which one was the pit bull?

Today I am thankful for people's stories.

DOGS: Which one was the pit bull? (part 1 of 2)

     Cecil Shaver, my first father-in-law, had the dogged tenacity of a pit bull. He had come out to Southern California when the oncoming Depression hit Idaho and his father's investments tanked.
     Even though Cecil was only nine at the time (1922), he set to work on his own to help support the family. First, he sold bags of potato chips door to door in residential neighborhoods and in office buildings He would take the street car all over Los Angeles by himself. We parents today would be appalled at the thought of letting our nine-year old roam around L.A. on his own.Yikes!
     But they let him. He didn't mind and he was extremely self-sufficient. One morning while he was on the Red Line and standing at the front of the car, a large lady climbed on. In getting her change out of her purse as the car jerked forward, she lost her balance and landed on top of Cecil's whole day's stock of merchandise.
     He didn't let that faze him. He sold every single bag of crumbs before he went home that night.
     Then he graduated to peanut brittle. He knew a man who made the candy and before long, he had mastered the recipe and was making it himself, cutting out the middle man.
     One day he was carrying his wares around a neighborhood and a pit bull dashed out of a front yard, leaped on him and bit his cheek just below the eye. (Cecil was a short man.) Not only bit him but hung on until the dog's horrified owner could run out and somehow persuade it to let go.
     "Let me drive you to the hospital," the man urged.
     Cecil stood there bleeding and needing stitches but he wouldn't move. "I haven't sold all my peanut brittle yet."
     The man could not persuade him to forget about the peanut brittle. Finally, he said, "Here, I'll buy it all! Now can I take you to the hospital?"
     Only then would Cecil let go. That was the kind of boy he was and that was the kind of man he became.

(To be continued)  

Today I am thankful for hospitals.

CATS: I prayed for a cat

"When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up." Psalm 27:10

     I was 19, newly born again. I loved my family so much, I immediately wrote to share the good news with them. I copied out Bible passages to explain what had happened to me, because the Bible expressed what I was experiencing so much better than I could. Instead of ending life I had found it. God had met me at the point of suicide and allowed me to start over with Him. I urged them to come to Jesus, too.
     My intellectual brothers wrote back, telling me (disdainfully, I thought) to keep an open mind. My father dismissed my words with, "I could have been a good father to you if you hadn't chosen God for your Father."
     I took the train from International Christian University in Tokyo (which was really not Christian at all, but Marxist) home to Hiroshima, where my mother was still living on the Phoenix. I tried to tell her about Jesus and pray with her. She stopped me abruptly by standing up and saying coldly that she had read the Bible. She walked up the companionway and disappeared. I was trying to learn to stay within earshot of the Lord minute by minute. So I kept sitting on the couch, waiting to see if she would come back, searching my heart to see what I had done wrong. She didn't.
     Mum was getting ready to go on a big world tour with 25 survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had told them I wouldn't be going with them as an interpreter after all because God wasn't in this trip. I didn't mean to be arrogant or critical. I just sensed that was what I was supposed to tell them. Mum was upset with me and a still, small voice counseled me to be submissive to her in loving little ways. So I tried to help her get ready for the trip by mending her stockings.
     But our relationship was strained and I don't like having people mad at me, never have. So one evening I slipped out of the house where the preparations for the trip had everything in turmoil. I wandered the tidy Japanese neighborhood, down narrow paths between high walls with irrigation ditches running along them, and I prayed. I searched my heart to see if I needed to apologize for anything, trying to find my way back to that place of peace which had become the norm for me.
     My prayers were very child-like and naive back then. I had walked a long time and it was getting chilly and dark. I realized I had no idea where I was but I wasn't ready to go back anyway. I needed comfort. So I started praying for a cat, a cat I could hold. There is nothing more comforting for a wounded heart than an armful of soft cat.
     A lean, nervous cat appeared in my path almost right away. My heart soared and I darted eagerly toward it, only to have it scuttle away around the corner. I felt more lonely than ever.
     "Just a cat," I told God, puzzled. "I know that's not too much to ask You for."
     I stumbled around more corners and down more lanes, tears falling. And suddenly there it was, leaping from inside someone's garden to the top of the nearest wall. It was not only clean and petite, a pretty calico, my favorite make of cat, but it was already kneading and purring in greeting.
     I reached out and lifted the cat into my arms and held it to me, my tears now tears of gratitude. The Lord knew me and He had heard me. He loved me. This small gift was such personal evidence of that.
     When at last the cat leaped gently down and trotted around the corner, I followed it. And there, right in front of me, was the house I had misplaced.

Today I am thankful for God our Comforter.