Bad to the Bone:. Bo Hoefinger
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while my father was away on a business trip, my mother and I lay on the floor of the living room watching the latest episode of Seinfeld.
After a good licking of my paws, I rolled over to expose my belly. My mother took the opportunity to give me a full frontal body massage. Her technique differed from my father’s in that she rubbed certain areas more often than others. I thought to myself, C’mon honey, it’s like suntan lotion, spread it evenly.
Oddly, the more I relaxed, the more she tensed up. After she finished, she stood up and paced about the room. So much for basking in the afterglow of a good rubdown, her rambling back and forth on the hardwood floor was making me anxious.
On the comment card, I was forced to give it three paws out of five.
When the telephone rang, she pounced on it. I could tell from her tone that she was speaking to my father, but something about the quiver of her voice made the fur on the back of my neck stand up. “Honey,” she said, “I think there’s something wrong with Bo.”
Uh-oh.
After a brief silence, she continued. “I can’t be sure but I think he has cancer.”
Even I could here my father’s response through the phone: “What?!”
“I gave him a massage tonight and I felt these lumps on his chest.” She was in a near panic now. “And the thing is…the thing is…they didn’t stop there. They were on his stomach, too. I think it’s spread all over him.”
She fell silent, listening to my father’s advice, then said, “I agree. I’ll get him to the vet first thing tomorrow. I love you,” and hung up the phone.
Silence filled the room, giving me a moment to contemplate the severity of the situation. I felt fine, I really did. When I licked myself, like the vet tells you to, I hadn’t noticed any aberrations at all. This thing called cancer is a silent killer, I thought, because there wasn’t any outward evidence of it.
Naively, I believed humans were superior beings and knew better than me. If my mother was this worried, surely something was very wrong.
Clearly, I had a lot to learn.
After a sleepless night, we readied ourselves to go to the veterinarian’s office. I had been up all night thinking about the Big C. My mother looked worried, too, but neither of us made any mention of the reason for the appointment.
We arrived at the clinic moments after 9:00 a.m., and the room was already full of owners and pets. My mother and I signed in, squeezed between two owners sitting on a bench, and waited our turn.
Thoughts of my impending diagnosis filled my head when I heard the young receptionist ask the roomful of folks, “Is Bee-Oh in the room?”
My mother and I looked to the right and then to the left. We looked around the whole room, as did every other living thing, thinking the same thing, “Who would name their pet Bee-Oh?” Maybe it was the Japanese looking owner sitting in the corner of the room?
Once again we heard, “Is Bee-Oh here?”
When no one responded, the teenage helper checked the chart. “Hoefinger. Bee-Oh Hoefinger. Is he or she here?”
My mother’s ears perked up as she realized what the young lady had been trying to say.
“Uhmm, do you mean Bo?”
Trying to hide her embarrassment the girl just said, “Uhh, yes. The vet will see you now.”
Great. As if having a life-threatening illness wasn’t bad enough, I was now an acronym for body odor. I rolled my eyes and told the girl to just talk to the paw.
Admittedly it came out sounding a lot like, “Woof, woof.”
We were directed to the second sitting room where we awaited the arrival of my primary care physician.
Thoughts continued to bounce around in the cavern of my brain. Life couldn’t be so cruel as to give me a home and a doting family, only to snatch it away, could it? I vowed to get a second opinion, especially if the diagnosis on my chart was spelled Kancer.
After quite some time, the vet opened the door and came in. He was tall and skinny, and he wore a white lab coat.
As this was the first time my mother required the services of a pet doctor—I had only been with the family for a month—she had many questions for him. I had some, too.
The first was, “Where are my balls?” and the second was, “Can I have them back?”
Before I could even open my mouth to ask, my mother began firing questions at him. After some time he was able to assure her that he was a licensed practitioner in the state of New York and that he was up to speed on all things dog. This seemed to calm my mother down, although the fresh smell of his diploma on the wall made me uneasy.
Quickly thereafter my mother told him of the lumps all over my chest and stomach. The more she talked the more hysterical she got.
This prompted Dr. Feelgood to grope me all over. After a few strokes here, a pat there, and an inappropriate touch later, the doctor said he couldn’t find a thing. I felt like telling him to leave a twenty-dollar bill on the table for the good time, but before I could he asked my mother to point out what she had felt.
She quickly found the first lump, a second, and then a third. There were more and they were everywhere. I was as good as dead…three weeks, maybe a month to live by my estimation. I’d never have the opportunity to pee on a Frenchman in Paris, to sniff an Italian crotch at the Vatican, or to outwit a Polack in Warsaw.*
I rolled glumly toward the doc so he could verify the prognosis.
He confirmed my mother’s fears, “You’re right. There are growths all over his body.”
I waited for the fateful words to pass his lips, “I’m sorry, but Bo has cancer,” but they never came.
In fact, according to the doc, they weren’t cancerous at all. “What you’re feeling there ma’am, are called nipples. Dogs, both female and male, have them all over their bodies. You did know that male dogs have nipples, didn’t you?”
“It’s not cancer, then?” my mortified mother asked.
“Uhmm, no,” the doctor said. And then with a small laugh he asked, “Did you know men have nipples, too?”
“I’m not an idiot. Of course I knew that!” my mother responded, although in the back of my mind I wondered if she really did.
As he left the room, the doctor gave my mother some final words of wisdom: “Oh, if you’re wondering what that big growth is at the base of his belly, that’s a penis.”
With that and a wink, he was gone, not only out of the room but as my primary care physician as well.
After the door shut, I jumped up and down with relief. I had my life back. I had my life back! My mother, however, stood there like a cigar store Indian, trying to make sense of what just transpired.
I quickly came to realize some humans were superior beings after all. It’s just that my mother wasn’t one of them.
Even though the day started out ominously, it ended with no enduring consequences. Well, none other than the annual mammograms my mother now has me get.
CHAPTER 4
Twisted Sister
They met, quite by chance, at my father’s apartment. Both my parents had just graduated college and were looking to enjoy a final summer of freedom. As luck would have it, my father’s roommate was dating my mother’s friend. And thus it transpired that a casual stop by my father’s apartment turned into a lifelong romance.
As my father tells it, he was immediately impressed with her and, being the go-getter that he is, ignored her. He was of the school, pay no heed to them and they’ll want you more. That’s probably why he spent the majority