By Cherie L. Dreves
When my daughter was in early elementary school, she was given a puppy at the park and told to “take her home and tell your mommy you found her.” My daughter did as she was instructed by the two girls at the park. She was beautiful, and there was no question we were keeping her.
K.D. Bear, as she came to be known, was an awesome dog. Smart, loyal, and always by my side; we became inseparable. At the time I work in a business associated with retail. After my Black Friday experiences in prior years, and being gone all day, my first choice was to stay home and decorate the tree with my girls.
So that’s what we proceeded to do Black Friday Morning. My daughter rolled out of bed, and we started decorating the tree. The sound of carols, and the smell of coffee, hot chocolate, and cinnamon pine cones wafted through the living room.
A couple of hours into the melee, the tree was looking great but my daughter wanted a few new things. Her reasoning was that “it was Bear’s First Christmas,” which indeed it was. She was weeks away from her first birthday.
First, remember I mentioned staying home with the girls and decorating the tree? She wanted me to take her to Garden Ridge Pottery, which wasn’t far from our home. I stood there slowly nodding my head and figuring trip length, etc. and suddenly out of my mouth came “I agree. Baby, get my keys.”
Off to Garden Ridge Pottery we went. Bear, being 10 months old was not really into messing with things in the house. She liked to tear up frisbee’s, blocks of wood, and her stuffed toys, though my furniture, rugs, and homework were never threatened by Bear.
Maybe we took too long at Garden Ridge? Maybe the smells throughout the house finally got the best of her? Whatever it was that afternoon, it makes for a wonderfully funny memory almost 30 years later. The scene unfolds like this:
Lauren and I pull up to the house. I shut off the car and handed her the keys so we could go in the front door with our purchases. She hopped out, bounded up the walk, unlocked the door, and all I heard was “No way!” The panic moment started when she came running back to the car to exclaim “Bear’s got red all over her muzzle and legs.”
I hurried into the house to find the living room a tip. Our almost completed Christmas tree lying on its side, and my beautiful white shepherd with candy-apple red splotches and more than splotches covering her muzzle and her front legs. There were even a couple of blotches on her back. The same blotches were also present all over my living room carpet. It was as if someone had dipped a Hot Wheels car in red paint and ran it across the floor.
I quickly scanned for the source of the dye. It didn’t take long; it was the candy apple red hearts that we had purchased around Halloween. They would be a great alternative to breakable ornaments for Bear’s first Christmas. Litle did we know they were going to be so attractive to her.
We righted the tree, cleaned Bear and the carpet, finished decorating the house and made plates of leftovers for dinner, all the while laughing about what happened. We called Bear ‘Pinky’ for a while, as the dye finally faded from her coat.
That was 29 years ago, my daughter has grown into a fine young woman. September marked the 17th anniversary of Bear’s passing.
A lot has changed in all that time. One thing however has remained consistent. There is always one candy apple heart, near the top of our tree, in remembrance of that ‘Red’ Black Friday.
