Blazer: The Other Son

My grandpa, Merrill Hunt Jr, loved pets. He especially loved dogs. He went hunting from the time he was a kid which usually meant he had at least one hunting dog. The proof is in the pictures. But there was one dog in particular that was more than just a dog. 

His name of Blazer. I remember him well. I was...maybe 5 when he died, but I've always formed attachments with animals easily. And since I was over at Nana and Papa's house so often, that wasn't hard to do with Blazer. He was a good dog. Completely spoiled rotten, but I loved him. 

I remember the day he died pretty vividly. Papa was heartbroken. He stood in the bathroom and cried for what seemed like hours. Not even my stuffed dog, Dozo, could cheer him up. That memory of Blazer is actually the strongest for me. But everyone in my family has their own stories of him. My mom's is by far the funniest. 

Blazer wasn't even Papa's dog at first. My Uncle Merrill had bought him for a hunting dog. He was part beagle and part coon hound. He was stubborn and he had crazy eyes. My mom will tell you it wasn't just the eyes. The whole dog was crazy and this is why...

My grandparents had gone on a trip to Hawaii. My mom was working the night shift at the hospital. My uncle was away at college and Blazer (who Papa had adopted as a second son by this time) was home. Everything started out just fine. My mom would go to work at night and come home to sleep during the day. Nothing strange there.

But not too long after Nana and Papa had left, Blazer started to get lonely. Any pet can get lonely without their human, especially dogs. Even my cats get lonely if I'm gone too long. Some dogs howl or bark. Some get into cupboards or find a shoe to destroy. 

Blazer took it to the extreme.

And here's the thing. He wasn't really alone. My mom was there during the day. 

Apparently that didn't matter...at least not to the dog. 

It started when she came home one day. He had started by tearing things up around the house. He had gotten into the cupboards and rolled canned food everywhere. Anything from the lower cupboards had been pulled out and scattered around the kitchen. And he had gotten into a huge bag of onions and chewed them up and spit them all over. 

It wouldn't have been too big of a deal, except that my mom really needed to get some sleep during the day if she was going to be able to function at night as a nurse. Cleaning up was going to be annoying more than anything. 

But it got worse. Walking from the kitchen into the living room, she saw that he had destroyed the drapes too. When she went to pick up the phone, it had no dial tone cause he had chewed up all the chords there too. 

My mom cleaned up and called her brother to come and get the dog. He didn't want to, but knowing she needed sleep, she convinced him to drive down and get him. He brought him back the next day with horror stories of him eating the apartment there.

My Great Aunt Mary agreed to take him. After all, how bad could one lonely dog be? But remember those crazy eyes? Poor Blazer had snapped. He was desperately lonely for Papa. Even Aunt Mary and Uncle Dale couldn't take him more than a day or two. 

The next best thing they could think of was to get him tranquilizers from the vet. They needed something to calm him down until Nana and Papa got back. He would have destroyed the entire place. He very nearly had already. So, my mom gave him the tranquilizers. Wouldn't you know, even that didn't knock him out completely. 

He would nod off for a few minutes, then wake up with a growl and attack the blanket he was lying on, making sure to rip out a good sized chunk. Then he'd fall asleep again for a few moments more before waking up again to attack the blanket again. 

I don't know how my mom managed it, but she made it through. When my grandparents came home, mom told them everything that happened. And Papa, defending the dog said, "How could you medicate him? He was just lonely." 

That was my Papa.