An ode to the most dreaded (and beloved) of cottage guests—the granddogs

The empty lakefront nest is the dream of most aging cottagers. Children finally bug off, taking with them the myriad irritations of child rearing. It becomes safe to walk the dock ramp at night without taking a header courtesy of a misplaced toy. Walls no longer warp from the savage sounds of young-adult boom boxes.

But in reality, children always return. Used-to-be teens, once dragged kicking and screaming from city party life and into cottage-country tranquillity, are back. They come in minivans packed with trunks of baby clothes, boxes of baby dishes, easy-to-assemble baby amusement parks, and other must-have items.

First to spill from those bulging minivans are the most dreaded of cottage guests: the granddogs. Huge, shedding granddogs tossing off enough hair to weave scarves for 100 winter carolers. Granddogs that are truly grand in their bowel movements, dumping loads that make the average pooper-scooper as effective as a demitasse spoon.

Cottage granddogs buzz-saw through every activity where dogs are unwelcome, grinning fiend-like and leaving a wake of spilled drinks, overturned tables, and cottagers swinging upside down in their hammocks. At night, brows furrowed and lips pursed for full-tone snoring, the granddogs sprawl expansively across the most comfortable beds and sofa, and mutter dark dog curses when asked to move.

I know this because we have five granddogs. That’s if you count Spud, an Australian shepherd-Rottweiler who developed a bad attitude on the mean city streets. He was packed off to a dog reform farm where he was last seen chasing cows.

There’s also Tasha, a kangaroo- eared, doe-eyed shepherd, and her “brother” Odin, a baby-faced Rottweiler aggressively pursuing his optimum weight of 120 pounds. Odin is such a glutton he would eat the back end out of a black bear. And it is my fondest hope that one day he will try.

Koona (“Little Wolf”), a Siberian husky-malamute cross, is 85 pounds of muscle on an eastern wolf frame. One eye is brown, the other blue, and he likes to emerge silently from the shadows at other cottagers’ campfires, setting off indescribable chaos and desperate screams of “Wolf attack!” Actually, Koona is quite genteel. He has a cool trick of taking a Greek olive in his polar bear- like paws, nibbling the meat with his ferocious wolf teeth, then spitting out the pit—clean as a whistle pea.

Emma, our first granddog, a chocolate brown Labrador retriever, has the largest paws of all the grandhounds. These things are snowshoes, able to flatten a drink-laden patio table before you can reach for the shotgun. By their size, her muddy paw prints are distinguishable from the many others seen on the cottage windows, doors, floors, deck furniture, boat upholstery, and shoulders of my white shirts.

For a brain, God gave Emma a computer chip encoded with the command “FETCH BALL.” Life for Emma is chasing a ball, and for her it is serious and worthy work, pursued from dawn until dark.

Balls are chased into lakes filled with swimmers, waterskiers, canoeists, and other folk who fear being sideswiped and drowned in the wake of a demented dog steaming out in pursuit of her favourite projectile. Balls are to be chased up lofty mountains and down into thickened gullies. They are to be chased through gardens and woodpiles, across laundry baskets, and even into skunk dens.

To be chased, balls must be thrown. Enter the aging grandfather, asleep in his favourite cottage chair. Observe a tennis ball, wet and slimy with foamy dog spittle, being plunked onto his favourite “Over 50 and Enjoying It” T-shirt. Observe also Emma’s look of horror, humiliation, and hurt at any suggestions that this is a gross intrusion into a tired man’s holidays.

I have a terminal case of tennis elbow from pitching balls and sticks for five granddogs. This in a body that has never lifted a tennis racket (except once, to dispatch a crazed bat that stole into our cottage intent on ripping out the throats of sleeping innocents). While I maintain that these unruly hounds are ruining my relaxation (and my white shirts), my wife says that deep down I love the granddogs, and only bark about them to get attention. The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in the middle.

I have accepted that I can’t escape all the granddogs. But I do have a remedy in mind for Emma: I am designing a computerized tennis-ball launcher that will automatically shoot balls out past the little island in the middle of our lake. Its complex software will launch a new ball just as Emma comes back with the last one, and before she can shake 14 gallons of water onto the sunseekers lining the dock. It will be enough to store 10 million balls, and you will be able to hear its rhythmic THUNK… THUNK… THUNK… across Ontario as balls are fired out into the lake for Emma to fetch.

While she is chasing balls, I will become fabulously wealthy, selling plans for my patented ball launcher on the internet. I will make so much money I will build my own cottage on the little island, safe and secure from terrorist granddogs. I pray daily that the swelling in my right elbow subsides long enough to allow me to complete the plans.

This essay originally appeared in the April/May ’96 issue. Jim Poling Sr., now-retired vice-president and managing editor of The Canadian Press, is still tossing balls, but for a new generation of cottage granddogs.

An ode to the most dreaded (and beloved) of cottage guests—the granddogs

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