Was gonna rant about the Savoy Tivoley being shut down in North Beach, or a protestor's stupid comment about Bono hanging out with rich people and doing something as opposed to hanging out in the streets waving puppets, but not now.

I just found out my dad's 9 year-old huskie, Shambles, is being put to sleep. Pancreatic Cancer. Poor Shammy. I'm so sad.

Shambles was a big, huge, loveable lug of a husky. Actually, calling him a lug isn't quite doing him justice because he was one of the smartest dogs I've ever seen, maybe too smart for his own good. No matter how much my dad tried to devise a way of keeping him in the yard, Shambles would always figure out a way to escape and run free. Once, when he was young and in that biting everything phase, my dad was told to use a spray bottle to spray him everytime he started biting into something. That worked for only a few days as Shambles figured out the best way of handling that was to bite the water bottle. I often told my dad that that's what they got for naming him Shambles. They should of named him Flowers or Peace or something like that. Something more calm and less mischeivious.

He just loved to run and frolic. He was a husky after all. Pure Jack London Call of the Wild. Unfortunately, he'd hear the Call too often and couldn't be left off leash. Once off, he'd just run and run and run. When my dad was living in a cottage in the Santa Cruz mountains, he'd try and build a fence to keep him from running. Shammy, however, was too smart and too strong to stay in the pen for too long and always escaped. My dad would get calls from people miles and miles away saying that they had found him in their yard. Dad would have to hop in the car and drive all these backwood roads to go get him.

He and Carol, my dad's wife, would take him to the dog beach on Santa Cruz, a beach where on Sunday mornings they'd let all the dogs run off-leash, play with each other, and run in and out of the water as dogs so love to do. It was Shambles' favorite thing in the world to do and he would run onto the beach with the biggest smile you'd ever see on a dog. It was so much fun to see him run around, chasing balls with other dogs, running in and out of the ocean, just being free. You'd imagine that if there is a dog heaven, it would be exactly like how it was on that beach. But once again, he was too smart and to full of wander-lust to stay on the beach. He eventually figured out a way to get off the beach and escape. They stopped bringing him to the beach after he got loose too many times.

But he was so loveable too. He'd often just come to where you where watching tv and stand in front of you, just hoping to be patted and played with. I used to love wrestling with him, but he got too big for me and too furry. I'd come out of a wrestling session with him with hair all over my clothes and fur in my mouth. Soon after getting him, though, my half-sister Hannah was born and like any first-born baby, Shambles found himself no longer the center of attention. Sadly, the house-dog part of Shambles, the part that wanted nothing better to do than be patted and curl up in the middle of the living room whenever we'd watch tv, never quite got the attention he wanted.

Ironically, my dad even got him because huskies are supposed to be really good around kids. And he was too. Hannah would pull his tail, poke at his face, do all sorts of things he'd never let other people do. He'd just sit there and take it, a resigned look on his face- a face that just looked like he didn't appreciate it and didn't like it, but he couldn't do anything about it. It was like it there was some sort of Husky personal code that he had to live up to- don't attack humans smaller than yourself. Hannah, however, was kind of scared of the dog. You don't think about it as an adult, but when you're young and small, a dog is bigger than you are. And this dog was, well, just a huge, giant fur ball that moved, often made noises, and hopped around. As she got older, she got less scared of him, but often came back from dog shows talking about all of the cute, small dogs that she saw. Even now, she was still a little intimidated by him. She loved him, though. Like we all did. Her first word, after all, was "doggie."

And that's how he was. Equal parts Jack London "Call of the Wild" and equal parts loveable house dog. Too full of wanderlust to want to stay in the house, but too full of love not to try and be nothing but a house dog. So he'd often just lie around the house with a sad look on his face, stuck in between his two worlds. Part of him wishing he'd just be patted and played with for hours. Part of him wishing he'd be up in Alaska, leading other huskies through the frozen tundra.

Poor Shambles. I'll miss him. I hope that whereve he is, he's running and running around doggy heaven with that big huge wonderful grin on his face, wrestling other dogs for the ball.