Tinker Tales - Sharing Tinker The Chow Chows Life
Chapter 2

Tinker went EVERYWHERE with us. I don’t mean an occasional trip here and there. I mean everywhere and that includes to work with me or Michelle each and every day. Well, besides going nuts when he’d hear my semi truck start (knowing he’s going somewhere fun with papa) and besides somehow magically knowing when we were getting the boat ready for a trip….One of his favorite things to do, was to go camping.

Me and my boy got a special treat together each year. Just the two of us. Our church has an annual Men’s Campout up in the Sierras each summer. It’s about 200 guys out in the woods, burping, scratching and pretending we’re real “outdoor types”. And, right there beside me, is my little buddy, Tinker.

Now, it’s quite a drive up into the middle of nowhere and I frequently stop at Starbucks. Tinker knows when we go there that I always order him his own small cup of whip cream. This particular store was in a strip mall right next to a gym. The gym has huge pane glass windows to allow all the folks on the Stairmasters to have something to look at as they workout. Tinker really liked whip cream but it went right through him. So before I put him back in the truck to complete our journey, I walk him around some and drink my coffee. But today, nothing seemed to be “stirring” in him so we headed back to the truck. Right when we get in front of the dozen or so people looking out the window at the gym…….he begins to circle. If you have a chow, you know what this means. ……and this wasn’t some little “poodle pile” either. How embarrassing! Tinker! Couldn’t you have done this over there? So, I cleaned it up the best I could and made a hasty exit.

Tinker didn’t do tricks. Sit, stay, fetch, roll-over…..only if he saw some personal advantage to it. Otherwise, he’d just look at you like, “oh, please!!...I’m a chow for Christ’s sake.” One thing he would do, was to polish off hotdogs like a pack of hounds on a 3 legged cat! That night, at the campsite dinner, I made the mistake of showing a few guys his “trick”. Over the course of the next hour, that dog was given every bit of left over steak, hamburger and hotdog in camp. Later, we all sat around a huge campfire and I rubbed his tummy because I knew he had eaten too much. Poor, neglected, unfed, creature!

As it got late and I saw him getting tired, I took him into the new tent I had bought and laid him down on my also new $130 sleeping bag. I got him settled and zipped up the tent so he could go to sleep. Us guys were still up talking and were sitting right next to all of our tents. About ten minutes later, I hear noises coming from inside my tent. It was not a good sound. I go to investigate and Tinker had decided that my sleeping bag would be much more comfortable to him if he used his huge paws to dig a 20” hole right in the middle of it! The floor of the tent was now covered with what looked like a terrible duck hunting accident, white feathers and insulation were everywhere. He looked up at me like “WHAT?” My bag was destroyed and what made it worse is, how can I get mad at a face like his?

Now that’s funny but here’s the part I remember most about that night. Up in the Sierra mountains, it can get dangerously cold at night no matter what season it is. At about 3 in the morning I wake up to Tinker hovering over me. His nose just inches from my face. Even with his chow coat and the bed I had provided for him, he had become shivering cold. My little boy knew that he could wake me up, that he could come to me for help, that I would recognize what he needed and provide it for him. I got him into what remained up my sleeping bag, right next to me, threw his 2 blankets over the top of us and we snuggled together the rest of the night. It made me feel trusted, wanted and needed. I’ve never had any human kids, but that night I found out what it is to be a loving father.