Here somebody is tormenting that damn dog, Micky, known as Micky the Dog. Truthfully though we did not in general believe in tormenting animals.
Micky the Dog appears in the previous photo of the backyard of 10194 Ramona Drive, Spring Valley, California. This picture too shows the backyard of 10194 Ramona Drive, Spring Valley, California, though in the opposite direction from the previous photo. The previous photo was pointed east; this one is more a picture of the west of the yard.
We did not have a lawn in the front yard, but we did have one, as this and the previous photo indicate, in the back yard. I think this was to keep the dust down. In South Carolina weeds would grow up of their own accord to keep the dust down, but in Southern California you couldn’t count on anything to grow due to a lack of naturally occurring water, i.e., rain. So if you wished to keep down the dust in your back yard you either had to cover it with concrete or asphalt or grow a lawn.
This lawn was never in prime condition. In the summer months we watered it only erratically. In the darker months it died out. The dogs would poop on it or pee on it. Female dog’s pee kills a lawn. Sometimes the poop would just lie there in the darker months and white mold would grow all over it. Those piles of moldy dog poop looked like some sort of ulcers growing out of our scab of a lawn.
Sometimes, though, the lawn would grow up enough so that it had to be mowed. This was done with a push mower with very dull blades. The grass cuttings were then raked up and thrown over the back fence into the compost heap with the rest of our decaying organic matter.
Mickey the Dog was already a year or so old when we got it. We did not acquire it as a pup and perhaps for that reason I never fully bonded with it. It was part rat terrier and chihuahua. This was a little dog with a somewhat nervous temperament; it was a fierce yipper and caused no end of swearing on the part of WB telling the m-f…king dog to shut up. Also its penis was too large for its body and stuck out like a sore thumb.
It had large thick fingernails or claws, as I suppose they are called on dogs. Because the house at 10194 Ramona Drive had hard wood floors, where ever you were sitting you could hear that dog, when it moved about, clicking its fingernails on that hard wood. Sometimes, if a person came to the front door or something alarming like that, the dog would rush out from the back of the house, round the corner into the living room, and slide clear across the floor and bang into the wall because it couldn’t get any traction on those hard wood floors.
At first that was funny as hell; later on it was only mildly distracting.
I guess part of the reason I am reluctant to get a dog to this day is the history of crappy dogs in Micky and Teddy. Daves dog Rachel was a nice animal, smart with a fine personality, but she shead and she was Daves so Joan hated her. I still recall Rachel eating the snail poisen in the garden and having convulsions and Joan not being willing to do anything about it as far as the vet was concerned, I had to get ahold of Dave some how and tell him what was going on. I am not sure what ever became of Rachel, if Dave found a home for her or what. I just recall Joan being real shitty with him over what an inconvience it was for her to have Rachel at the house. And I recall the episode with the KFC ballonist nearly crashing into the shop and Rachel jumping up 6 to 8 feet in the air and snapping her teeth at the basket while growing to scare the devil.