Baby Jack & Guido Maximus, The English Bulldog

Before February 24 of 2003, Jack's date of birth, our baby was Guido. He was my English Bulldog.

By day, Kristin took care of him: letting him out the door when he needed to fertilize the lawn, watering him when his water bowl was empty, feeding him when he coaxed for food.

When I arrived hom from school each day, I would open the door, and in a falsetto voice squeal, "Guido!" The dog would run to me, wagging his stubbed and curley bobbed tail until he actually occasionally fell down the steps as he ran to me.

She always looked at me with disgust. "I feed him. I put up with him all day, and he acts like this the minute you walk in the door."

We loved the dog, and he truly loved us. He was like a member of the family, yet he did make all of us nervous around Jack. In the pictures, below where Kristin lets the dog sniff Jack's toe, he began to jump to try to lick Jack. We ran and pulled him away immediately.

We still are protective of all of our grandchildren like that. Ann's mom would have scalped me for having a housedog, let alone a Bulldog in the house with a baby.



My family thought my name for my AKC dog was strange when I filled out the forms, but I thought it was funny, and I never met anyone who didn't smile at the thought of giving an English Bulldog an Italian name. It was fun. I love English Bulldogs, and I love Italian food. It is not a slam against Italians, because I like them--much better than Englishmen.

If you are talking Welshmen or Irishmen, that is something entirely different. I had a bad experience in London on my way home from my mission in 1974, and as silly and illogical as it seems to me, I still feel that way today. I really feel this tinge of resentment toward Englishmen.

In January of 1974, I was not aware of the terrorist action that occurred the day before we landed. They installed new metal detectors, and I walked through it without their having explained what it was. The biggest problem was that I had a heavy German accent after living in Germany for two years, and my clothing was all German too.

I had metal microphones for my reel to reel German stereo recorder in my pockets, metal pens in my pockets, even several other metal things in my pockets. The detector went off immediately.

"He's got a gun!" The woman screamed at the machine, and two men with guns drawn rushed me. One threw me against the wall, hurting my face and nose. I heard his gun click, and he pressed it hard against my temple.

"You move and I'll blow your brains out!" I hated him.

He asked me what was in my pockets, and I told him. I carefully took everything out, and after they looked it all over carefully, one man pushed me through the entry way hard enough that I almost fell to the ground. There was no, "Gee, I'm sorry sir."

Like I said, I still hate the British, and for the sake of those who find my language occasionally offensive, I will not use an assortment of other expletives I usually place both before and after the word British.

This is the only movie I have of Jack as a baby. The picture below shows Jack in his Chicago Blackhawks stuff. We bought Tommy the same things, and we had pictures of the boys and grandma and grandpa taken, all of us in those wonderful red jerseys.

This picture at the right is one I told Jack about. When I told him that I would blow raspberries on his feet to make him giggle when he was a baby, he would say, "Oh, yuckie!"

Only my own grandchildren would get that kind of entertainment, and that is only before they are able to walk.