Schnapps, the miniature Schnauzer... and Land Lubber

Schnapps was a salt and pepper miniature schnauzer and, quite possibly, could be the star of his own book. I was 3 when my parents took my brother and I out to buy a new coat for my mother.  My father spotted Schnappsy in the pet store window and it wasn't difficult to get two toddlers hyped up on the idea of a puppy.  Not only did my mother not get the coat that she needed, but little puppy Schnapps threw up all over the one she was wearing on the car ride home.

That wasn't his only issue with motion sickness.  Allow me to jump ahead to our Minnesota years.  Everyone in my family is either a water sign or a sun sign and we've never felt more at home than when we are on, near or in, water. Summer weekends in Minnesota were spent on our boat, the Good Time Charlie. We'd head out on the St. Croix River and we'd beach at a lovely little island.  The boat had a nice little cabin, sleeping room for the four of us, and the dog, under my parents' bed, which was also, before a Transformers like switcheroo, the kitchen table. We didn't use the stove very much. We had an old-school little hibachi grill, which my parents would cook all the meals on.  My dad didn't like grilled food. He got much better with it in his later years, but back then, breakfast was scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon, all cooked on the hibachi, in Daddy's frying pan.  To this day, I prefer my grilled food to not look like it's been on the grill.  While people want toasty buns and  hot dogs that look like they could double as charcoal briquettes, I prefer mine just heated through.  I guess it's a family thing.

There was that day we went out, I think it may have been Father's Day. My mother was sort of a perfectionist.  She made an entire day's worth of food.  Well, almost.  Although we had a great day and everyone was happy, my mom was beside herself, somehow she had failed as a wife and a mother.  We had potato salad and watermelon and all the other food and drinks, with the exception of  the ham she'd made.

But, as usual, I digress. Schnapps was not happy on the boat, and generally didn't like water. (My dad tossed him into my Great Uncle Petey's pool when I was little and that didn't go over well, at all. But, that's another story.) Anytime we'd bring him out on the boat with us, he'd claw up the rugs in the cabin like he was trying to tunnel out.  All night, he'd be under that table/bed just scratching nonstop. It might have been easier if we could have put him out of the cabin. We had those plastic covers that you zip and snap to close up the outside parts of the boat, but he didn't like it out there. Actually, he didn't like it on the boat at all, but if he was on board, he was in the cabin, under the table. To get him on land, we'd have to have one person in the cabin with the dog, one positioned over the cabin hatch to lift him up and my dad would stand on the beach so we could hand Schnapps down to him.  You couldn't carry him over the water because he would freak out.   He was a little dog, but he was extremely high maintenance and troublesome. He wanted off of that boat , but not by way of the water, hence the extrication through the little hatchway. But, that was nothing, the real excitement was yet to come.

After all the fun he was all weekend, things didn't really improve for Schnapps wen we got home.  Come Monday morning, we'd notice him standing in the foyer, swaying from side to side.  At this point, I'd wind up calling out, "Mommy, Schnapps isn't getting his land legs back!"  Then he'd lose his Liv-A-Snaps on the foyer floor.