Helga
Circa June 14, 1988 - May 16, 2004
My dog had behavioral problems. This was her story.
One day in the summer of 1988, my
friend Lisa Finley took me shopping for antiques. While we were walking around the
Mississippi-riverside streets of St. Charles, Missouri, we happened upon the St.
Charles Humane Society.
Two hours later in my back yard:
Since puppyhood,
Helga developed quite an attitude about her lot in life.
Helga Links:
Helga Stats / Books Helga
Dug / Manufacturer's Warning /
Quotes Helga Liked to Chew On / Helga Coda
Helga
Stats!
These are things she generally did not like:
People who pet her, People who sneeze, People who try to groom her in any
way, People in general, Other dogs
These are things she generally
liked:
Milk Bones, Turkey, Snausages®, Wrestling, Her Chewman
Helga Facts:
Name: Helga Sophia Ladd
Home: New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Missouri,
California
Birthdate: circa June 1988
Genealogy: Unknown
Favorite sports: Wrestling, Tug of War
Was forced to play with: cousin Charlie,
cousins Astra & Tyco
Nicknames: Pudge, Puppy La Pew, Lady Barkalot, Pupperoni,
Honey Bear, Baby Girl, Stinky Butt
Books
Helga Dug!
Good books about dogs that didn't help me one iota because I
had a psychotic dog:
1. The Hidden Life of Dogs - Elizabeth
Marshall Thomas
2. Understanding Your Dog - Dr. Michael W. Fox
3. The Souls of Animals - Gary Kowalski
4. Animals as Teachers & Healers - Susan Chernak McElroy
5. The Extended Circle - Ed. Jon Wynne-Tyson
6. Animal Liberation - Peter Singer
She was even psychotic on command!
-
Read about Helga's encounter with Richard Simmons on Ape Culture
-
Read about Helga's run for California Governor on Ape Culture
-
Read Helga's review of the Palm Springs Film Festival on Ape Culture
-
See Helga modeling Ape Culture couture on Ape Culture
Warning: Having a dog or any other animal is a heavy responsibility. It is not all catching Frisbees and squirrels. For the first two to three years, dogs will chew anything they can reach...but especially anything you value - your favorite shoes, your expensive coffee-table books, your fake ID.
They must be educated by someone smarter than they are (this is key). They throw up on things. They shed. All over. Fifty years from now, you will be finding their hair on your socks. They are not always happy and friendly. Sometimes they bite. And they depend upon you all the time. ALL THE TIME! It's all so very heavy.
And once you drag a dog into your home and put it through the stress of getting to know and adjust to your very annoying personality, you owe it to them not to abandon them on a self-absorbed and dastardly whim:
Common dastardly & self-absorbed
dog abandonment whims:
1. The apartment won't take dogs
2. They bark too much
3. We don't want to put up a fence
4. They require too much attention
5. They don't match my furniture
6. I want to move to England
The fact is you bark, are a slob, require unearned attention and shouldn't be allowed on your own furniture either. Dogs are not returnable merchandise! If you are a generally selfish person - you should not have a dog. If you are obsessively clean - you should not have a dog. If you've never had a dog - you probably shouldn't have a dog. Better safe than dog be sorry.
You might not be a good dog owner
if:
you're queasy stomached
you hate mud on carpets
you hate dog hair in your food
you hate drool on the floor
you hate behavior that is beyond your control
sudden, loud noises bother you
eternal persistence bothers you
trash all over the floor bothers you
If you live in an apartment, chances are you shouldn't have a dog.
Spare yourself, spare the dog, spare the rest of us dog owners who suffer just watching you and your psycho-cycles of abandonment. Don't give in to your kids if they want a dog. Teach them responsibility and restraint. Teaching them that life is disposable is not a lesson you want to teach your future care-givers.
Abandoning a person or animal you have trained to depend on you will count in your final score!
Dog Quotes Helga Liked to Chew On!
Buy a pup and your money will buy love
unflinching.
-- Rudyard Kipling
The more I see of men, the more I like my dog.
-- Frederick The Great
Dogmatism is the maturity of puppyism.
-- Douglas Jerrold
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only
will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
-- Samuel Butler
No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as a dog does.
-- Christopher Morley
The best thing about a man is his dog
-- French Proverb
Dogs are our link to paradise.
-- Milan Kundera
Never judge a dog's pedigree by the kind of books he does not chew.
-- Anonymous
When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.
-- Henry David Thoreau
A door is what a dog is always on the wrong side of.
-- Ogden Nash
In dog years, I'm dead
-- Unknown
My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That's almost
$7.00 in dog money.
-- Joe Weinstein
Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant.
-- Unknown
Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car in case the need
should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.
-- Dave Barry
The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his
tongue.
-- Anonymous
If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I
want to go where they went.
-- Will Rogers
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy
licking your face.
-- Ben Williams
A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more
than he loves himself.
-- Josh Billings
The average dog is a nicer person than the average
person.
-- Andrew A. Rooney
We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare
and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the
best deal man has ever made.
-- M.Facklam
Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies,
quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix
love and hate.
-- Sigmund Freud
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that
certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
-- James Thurber
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to
turn around three times before lying down.
-- Robert Benchley
Dogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep
abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing
all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially
urgent, are often continued in the next yard.
-- Dave Barry
Anybody who doesn't know what soap tastes like never
washed a dog.
-- Franklin P. Jones
Ever consider what they must think of us? I mean,
here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul --
chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on
earth!
-- Anne Tyler
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and
dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of
dogs.
-- Aldous Huxley
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying
down.
-- Robert Benchley
Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think
that is how dogs spend their lives.
-- Sue Murphy
Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac who stays up all night wondering if
there really is a Dog?
-- Unknown
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong
answers.
-- Unknown
No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless
absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.
-- Fran Lebowitz
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
-- Rita Rudner
You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.
-- Nora Ephron
Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
-- Ann Landers
In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that
will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.
-- Dereke Bruce
My dog is usually pleased with what I do, because
she is not infected with the concept of what I should be doing.
-- Lonzo Idolswine
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog
in the fight, it's the size of the fight n the dog.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dogs domesticate men.
-- Anonymous
Dogs who chase cars evidently see them as large,
unruly ungulates badly in need of discipline and shepherding.
-- Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
The dog is the only living being that has found and
recognizes an indubitable, tangible and definite god. He knows to whom above
him to give himself. He has not to seek for a superior and infinite power.
-- Maurice Maeterlinck
J'embrasse mon chien sur le museau.
-- Anonymous
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all
living things, man will not himself find peace.
-- Dr. Albert Schweitzer
In the world which we know, among the different and
primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species,
there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought
to the presence of man.
-- Maurice Maeterlinck
When a dog barks at the moon, it is religion; but
when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism.
-- David Starr Jordan
Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies,
quite unlike people who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix
love and hate...
-- Freud
Puppies are nature's remedy for feeling
unloved...plus numerous other ailments of life.
-- Richard Allan Palm
I'm a mog: half man, half dog. I'm my own best
friend.
-- Barf
The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up
to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to
his.
-- James Thurber
The old saw about old dogs and new tricks only
applies to certain people.
-- Daniel Pinkwater
Until we stop harming all other living beings, we
are still savages.
-- Thomas A. Edison
The world was conquered through the understanding of
dogs. The world exists through the understanding of dogs.
-- Nietzsche
Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily
decay.
-- Albert Einstein
They are better than human beings because they know
but do not tell.
-- Emily Dickinson
A dog will quickly turn you into a fool but who
cares?
-- Anon.
Women and cats do as they please and men and dogs
should relax and get used to the idea.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
Anybody who doesn't know what soap tastes like never
washed a dog.
-- Franklin P. Jones
As I get older I feel myself becoming more and more
a dog, and my dog becoming more and more an aristocrat.
-- Paul Claudel
'Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings;
they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.
-- Henry Beston
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can
be judged by the way its animals are treated.
-- Gandhi
I like a bit of mongrel myself, whether it's a man
or a dog.
-- George Bernard Shaw
A dog wags its tail with its heart.
-- Martin Buxbaum
A dog is one of the remaining reasons why some
people can still be persuaded to take a walk.
-- O. A. Battista
Living with a dog is easy--like living with an
idealist.
-- H. L. Mencken
Don't ever try to follow a dog act.
-- W. C. Fields
Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he
gets mad at you? But when you take him in the car, he sticks his head out
the window!
-- Steve Bluestone
My neighbor has two dogs. One of them says to the
other, "Woof!" The other replies, "Moo!" The dog is
perplexed. "Moo? Why did you say Moo?" The other dog says,
"I'm trying to learn a foreign language.
-- Morey Amsterdam
Dumb dog. I bought a dog whistle. He won't use it.
-- Unknown
MAJOR: Born a dog, died a gentleman.
--Epitaph on a dog's grave in Maryland
When the aliens come, I hop they bring their dogs.
-- Dan Moore
A house without a dog is a strange to me as a house
without any windows.
-- Anonymous
Dog: A kind of additional or subsidiary deity
designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's affection.
-- Ambrose Bierce
I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the
uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better.
--George Bird Evans
Hath a share of man's intelligence, but no share of
man's falsehood.
-- Sir Walter Scott
In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely
train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the
possiblity of becoming partly dog.
-- Edward Hoagland
I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give
me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.
--Diogenes
You may drive a dog off the King's armchair, and it
will climb into the preacher's pulpit; he view the world unmoved, unembarrassed,
unabashed.
-- Jean De La Bruyere
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who
have not got the guts to bite people themselves.
-- August Strindberg
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go
in.
-- Mark Twain
I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
-- Abraham Lincoln
He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his
leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart.
You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.
-- Unknown
Love me, love my dog.
-- Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
If there is no God for thee, Then there is no God for me.
-- Anna Hempstead Branch
Coda:
Sadly, Helga passed away May 16, 2004. She was
16 and my best friend. Sometimes, just for the dysfunctional fun of it, I
used to insult her, saying:
"You're a pain in the butt and you stink!" It was always hard, however, to strip the
exercise of any affection. In fact, many times I heard my voice take
the note
of Cartman's mom from South Park, sounding more like "Itty bitty puppy wuppy want some cheesy
poofs?"
She was just so damn fluffy.
I miss her something awful but I choose to think she's just run ahead of me, way off down the trail. And that she'll be there waiting for me someday when I round the bend.
