My first Dogue de Bordeaux Rescue

WHEREIN BOB MEETS CRASH

When Bob, my wife Christa's first Jack Russell Terrier, was still small enough that he would fit into her two hands if they were cupped together, we took him for his first walk in the local dog park. That park was in fact the football field for Central Tech High School in Toronto, but nightly and on weekends it became a dog park. We walked through the gate and Christa put Bob on the ground. It was his first visit.

The mists of time, and perhaps the inefficiencies of memory caused by the liberal application of cannabis to the brain cells, have obscured my recollection of whether we had at this point noticed any other dogs in the park or not. But what remains as clear in memory as the noonday sun is that when Christa let Bob loose, the little bugger took one look at the far end of the field and set off toward it at a hard run. When he was about 10 yards away from us we noticed that there was a huge mastiff about 100 yards off in whose direction Bob was proceeding pell mell. Terrified, Christa and I set off after him yelling and screaming, to absolutely no avail. At around fifty yards out, we saw with mounting alarm that the mastiff was wearing one of the spiked collars thugs like their dogs to sport. Visions of Bob going down the gullet of this monster gave us extra determination, but the little guy was faster than us by a long shot.

As Bob approached the mastiff, the monster looked up rather languidly, found nothing of interest, and lowered his massive head to resume his snuffling inspection of the ground directly beneath his nose. Bob continued at full speed. When he reached the mastiff, the giant head of the beast was once more raised, less languidly this time. Our little lunch-sized puppy leapt at the mastiff, fastened his razor sharp teeth on the big boy's dewlaps and clamped himself firmly to them with a clear determination to vanquish any resistance.

The mastiff looked benignly down upon this wriggling, growling little inconvenience as if to say: "When you're finished little man". Christa and I came puffing and wheezing up to the pair just as Bob let go of the dewlaps and fell to the ground. She swept Bob up in her arms. I fell instantly in love with the mastiff, whose owner then told us the dog was named Crash. Very few things are as enjoyable to me as an indomitably powerful mastiff who chooses to be gentle. I literally begged the owner to let me know if ever he decided to let Crash go. The owner explained that he'd been raising this breed of mastiff - the Dogue de Bordeaux - to sell to drug dealers who wanted an attack dog for protection. But Crash hadn't sold because this particular DDB showed no inclination whatsoever to attack anything that didn't attack him first. Two weeks later, the owner came to the dog park again and asked me if I was serious about wanting Crash. Serious? The very idea left me as happy a lunatic mastiff lover can be. A day later he was mine.

When the owner brought Crash to our home, Bob was utterly delirious with joy. He ran in circles around Crash, jumped over his back repeatedly, squirmed his best ass-first squirm in Crash's face, and attempted to lick every part of my new boy's massive body. From that day until Crash died during our first autumn on Salt Spring, he was Bob's hero, best friend and, when required, protector.