Page 6 - Italian American Herald - July 2019

6 ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM | JULY 2019 ITALIAN-AMERICANHERALD IT’S ALL GOOD
All our dogs will be in heaven, waiting for us to come home
The Yorkshire terrier named Inky, named after Phillies baseball player Pete Incaviglia, on his first birthday.
By Charlie Sacchetti
By no means would I call myself a lover of poets or poetry. In my freshman poetry course, at Temple University, I struggled greatly trying to understand guys like James Joyce, e. e. cummings and John Keats. To boot, my professor was one of those “way out” fellows who had a striking resemblance to Maynard G. Krebs along with a very similar demeanor. I could barely understand him! When you take all of this into account, you could see how this course would not
be a favorite of a baseball-playing accounting major.
As years went by, my disinterest in any poem continued until I heard talk show host Bill Bennett give an emotionally charged reading of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Power of the Dog,” on the day that Bennett’s pet died. As I remember it, I believe it was about 2005. It struck me then and it struck me even more when we had to put our pet Yorkie to sleep in
2015, at the age of 16.
In 1999 my wife Luann and I
decided that our daughter, Rosie, deserved arewardforseveralreasons. Shehad
fought tenaciously to emerge victorious in
a multi-year legal battle against our town’s board of education and had been a gigantic help to our family, stepping in to assume some extra duties as her mother embarked on the “student teaching” part of her advanced degree in education. Rosie wanted a Yorkshire terrier. I went to work to find a suitable breeder. A customer of mine told me about a lady in Reading, Pennsylvania, who bred Yorkies in her home. He told me they were bred lovingly, in a family atmosphere. I have always believed that the best way to find a good answer for something you need is to “pick the brains” of people who you respect and hold their answers in high esteem.
So, following his suggestion, in November, we traveled the 75 miles to the home/kennel and met the young mother,
her 2-year-old in arms, and checked out the pups. She had only two Yorkies left from the litter of eight. Rosie picked up the male and he greeted her in a very special way. He licked her on the face and peed on her coat. How can you turn down a pup who is that creative?
Rosie had found her Yorkie. She named him “Inky” after her favorite Phillies player, Pete Incaviglia.
As time went by, we experienced the wonderful blessing of a pet that simply brightened our day and made us happy. Our pup was paper-trained in and raised in a crate. He took to doing his business very easily and whenever he had to go, he would run into his cage and go on the newspa- per. Of course, a loud “good boy” and a treat followed each visit to his Philadelphia Inquirer restroom. I remember the day I was working at my computer, lining up my sales calls for the next day.
I had placed some customer account
papers on the floor next to my chair. The pup ran into my office to say hello and I stopped momentarily to pick him up and pet him.
To show his appreciation for my greeting, he proceeded to pee on the business papers, no doubt noticing that they were indeed made of paper and therefore “fair game.”
What could I do? I said, “good boy” and gave him a treat. After all, I had plenty of blank account papers, and he just did what he was taught. I did, however, from that day forward keep my paperwork on my desk.
Every dog owner has stories of the cute little things that their pet did. We are no different. He used to intentionally push his toys under the couch so that we would have to get them out. This meant that our little guy (41⁄2 pounds fully grown) would now have a playmate holding his toy which just had to be thrown and retrieved. He always cooper- ated when Rosie wanted to dress him up for his birthday, Christmas, Halloween or for
any other occasion. He was a real ham. The