Life on Planet Bill: Pebbles - Yabba Dabba Doo!

The Flintstones hit my parents' living room in September 1960, the first animated television show aired during primetime. Inspired by The Honeymooners, the Flintstone family was a step up economically from the Kramdens, owning their own home in the town of Bedrock. During the second season, Fred and Wilma welcomed a little prehistoric girl named Pebbles to their family. (side note: when Wilma became pregnant, Winston cigarettes stopped sponsoring the show...I guess it was okay to smoke, but not okay to have babies)

My parents added a beagle puppy to our family when I was four or five, and I named her Pebbles. Children's worlds are fairly small in scope at the age of five, so I named the pup after one of my favorite TV characters, just as I had named my first cat George after the neighbor who gave me the kitty. Pebbles grew into a stout, friendly dog who loved her Gainsburgers, and only barked when something alarmed her. She did not like to be watched when she ate, and would look at me reproachfully with expressive brown eyes if I hovered around her food bowl at mealtime. A polite, neighborly dog, she never jumped up on people or licked faces.

Pebbles lived outdoors, and my dad made her a doghouse by cutting a half-moon in the lid of a metal barrel which we lined with pine needles. Sometimes I would crawl inside her cozy home with her. Her house was placed near the garage door so Pebbles could monitor our comings and goings.

Pebbles was a wonderful companion, and we enjoyed exploring the neighborhood together and hanging out in my treehouse. When I graduated to riding a bicycle, Pebbles would run alongside me with her ears flapping. Wherever I went, she wanted to follow. On schooldays she would accompany me to the bus stop, and she would be there waiting for me when the bus brought me home. Not that she stayed there all day. She was a busy dog, and she had things to do. Her daily routine started well before mine did. While I was still slumbering, she made sure that our neighbor Mr. Paul made it to his carpool around the corner each morning, and she was there like clockwork at the end of his workday. She greeted my dad when he drove home from work, and the hours in between these arrivals and departures were spent guarding our home and hunting rabbits.

In the 60's the chain-link fence reined supreme and provided many a suburban homeowner a metal moat to protect his castle. The yards in our neighborhood were a minimum of one acre in size, and some folks were persnickety about their lawns. Fences kept dogs and neighborhood children on the outside looking in. Unless you were Pebbles. We could not figure out why Pebbles returned home from time to time with one of her front toenails yanked out. Another neighbor, Mr. Guthrie, solved the mystery for us when he told us about working in his fenced-in yard one day when Pebbles trotted up to say hello. We couldn't believe it at first, but this short, fat dog taught herself to climb fences. Occasionally a toenail would get caught in the fence. Fortunately, Pebbles had established herself as the neighborhood ambassador, so no one really minded her visits.

Although Pebbles rarely barked or made any fuss, there was one notable exception. One winter night, when my grandparents were visiting us from Iowa, my grandpa had a fatal heart attack in our living room. Pebbles was outside, with no apparent way of knowing the distress inside our home, yet she howled and howled. It was an eerie sound on that cold night. This is the only time she seemed perceptive of death; when our neighbor Mr. Paul died, Pebbles was bewildered and still showed up faithfully at his house each morning to walk him to his carpool.

Pebbles never overcame her fear of explosive noises or thunderstorms. Since my dad blew things up for the U.S. Navy, this made life hard for Pebbles. We always had firecrackers and M-80's handy for entertainment. New Year's Eve and the Fourth of July were trying times for my dog. We knew when a storm was brewing, because Pebbles would partially wedge her chubby body behind the washing machine in the garage. She was more accurate than the weatherman or a barometer.

This fear of storms would be her undoing. During the summer before I went away to college, my folks and I went on a three-week vacation. Pebbles had a gray muzzle by this time, and her ability to see and hear were diminished by old age. Our next-door neighbors took care of Pebbles and our house while we were gone, but they were away when an afternoon storm blew in the day before we got back from our trip. Pebbles could not get to her safe place behind the washing machine, and she tried to run to a friend's house in a nearby neighborhood. It was rush hour, and a four-lane highway separated Pebbles from safety. She was struck by a car. The driver did not stop, but a kind stranger did and took her to the vet. She lived long enough for me to say good-bye, and greeted me with a grateful whimper when we got to the vet's clinic. A part of my heart and my childhood tore away that moment.

Funny, I didn't expect my eyes to dampen when I wrote this. I can still picture Pebbles in the yard at my feet, grinning and looking up at me with those brown eyes, ready for our next adventure. She was everything we want in a friend: faithful, accepting, protective, comforting, funny, and - above all - loving.