Chui

No matter how much Chui ate he stayed thin like a coyote. His parents were huge champion silver gray German shepherds. Chui was a runt, and we bought him when he was half grown only a few months old. We had a wood fence, and he would stand by the gate and jump straight up six feet high to see over the fence. He would keep barking and jumping above the fence for five minutes at a time. Then he would race around in a circle on our back lawn in Garden Grove, California. He soon wore such a deep dirt path in the back yard, I made a concrete sidewalk out of it. That didn't slow down his running much, but it ruined his dirt track and was great for my four kids' tricycles.

Chui was wonderful with my two boys and two girls and their cousins. They would climb all over him and almost smother him, and he wouldn't bite them. Most all of the kids tried to ride him like a horse at one time or another. Chui just stayed happy and kept smiling. But he was a nervous dog, always trying to steal food. We didn't keep him in the house, but we let him in sometimes to play with the children. Sometimes we lost a chicken or steak off the table when we were not looking. I decided to use my noodle to teach Chui to stop stealing.

I filled a hot dog with hot chili pepper powder and placed the weenie on the table close to the edge to tempt Chui. He didn't waste any time at all. He grabbed it and swallowed it whole without tasting it. I don't think he was even aware of the red hot pepper so I tried again. I took a fresh frankfurter and split it open. I put red hot pepper all over the inside and all over the outside too. As soon as Chui saw it on the table, he took it in his teeth, flipped it into his mouth and slid it down his throat. I was getting angry. Chui wasn't learning to stop stealing. He may have had some discomfort and burning later on when he went number two, but how could he know it was from stealing the weenies? Boy, was I stupid!