Willie Bowser
There’s an expression in politics — I think it was Marshal Cobleigh who told me about it — where you “walk around the corner and meet yourself.” He and I were working for the president of the New Hampshire Senate at the time, and he was referring to a situation where a senator needs the support of another senator, whom he or she has thwarted or mocked or insulted in some other controversy.
Today I walked around the corner and met myself in quite another sense. I have been poking about in the journals of my friend, the late Bob Hay, with whom I shared a house in Vermont back in the 1980s. I guess I’m kind of a self-appointed literary executor.
I came upon a portrait of my dog Willie Bowser whom I adopted from the New Haven dog pound fifty years ago.
Willie was best known as a phenomenal frisbie catcher. I remember one night in the Boston Public Gardens flinging a frisbie far off into the darkness, waiting, and hearing that distinctive “kotch!” that meant a successful catch, easily distinguished from the “thunk” indicating a miss.
But Willie was an all-around clever dog. Adept at scootching into a restaurant and hiding under the table or roaming the Yale campus with his pal Larry, a distinguished looking white dog with a black patch over his right eye.
My grandmother, Esther Kimball Hartshorne Megargee, was very fond of Willie because of his impeccable manners and because she once saw him tiptoeing up the stairs to keep from waking the household.
Once my mother was explaining to me why I couldn’t bring Willie on our visit to Essie’s house in Edgartown when the phone rang. It was Essie telling us to be sure to bring Willie!
On the following page of Bob’s journal was a portrait of yours truly. Talk about walking around the corner and meeting yourself!
May 5, 2021 @ 5:40 pm
I think Willie may have been the smartest dog I’ve ever met. Although Mark’s pal Louie knew how to open and close Mark’s bedroom door, which I found very impressive, the closest to Willie in terms of intelligence would have to be Martin, a 40 pound, black mutt who was otherwise the same basic shape as my dog Stanley at the time, although Stanley was only 20 lbs. and mostly white with some light brown patches.
Stanley had a chain hanging from a line in the backyard in New Haven, so he could run half the length of that very long yard. Four houses over and across Moreland Road, there was a large Great Dane who ran free in his fenced in yard, and he would run back and forth on his side of the fence while barking at Stanley from across all those yards. One day I was standing on the back porch watching Stanley on his chain run, when all of a sudden, that neighbor dog leaped over his fence and made a beeline straight for Stanley! He ran up to him and just grabbed him in the middle of his back, lifting him up into the air. I jumped down to the ground and actually kicked the Great Dane in his side, but it had no effect on his ongoing aggressive act. I didn’t know what I was going to do, and Stanley was barking helplessly. That’s when out of nowhere, Martin came FLYING into the yard and he jumped on the back of the Great Dane, which caused him to let go of Stanley and run off. Martin had just saved Stanley’s life! I had never seen anything like it before. Before that, Stanley really wasn’t very friendly to Martin, he just tolerated him (Stanley was one of those dogs that looked cute enough that everyone wanted to pet him, but as soon as one would reach out to do so, Stanley would growl as if to say, “Don’t touch me!”)
Another time, when my brother was at Cornell, I went to visit my friend Michael Ross, who was attending Ithaca college at the time. Michael and I were walking down some street in Ithaca, when Michael pointed across the street and said, “Isn’t that Larry’s dog Martin?” I looked and saw a group of about a half dozen dogs walking shoulder to shoulder in a tight pack, on the sidewalk diagonally across from us. I said, “Yes, that’s Martin!” and I called to him, “Hey Martin!”
The pack stopped, and Martin broke from the rest, and happily trotted across the street to greet us, while his walking companions waited. Michael and I said hello and petted him for a few seconds, after which he trotted back across the street to the pack, resumed his place in the tight group, and they all continued down the sidewalk on their way, as if they had a very specific destination in mind.
Just like Louie Bowser, Martin was a prince among canines.