Cutting (in)to the Chase by James R. Cooley

I love small women -- tiny women, actually, petite flowers of delicate femininity, the kind in whose mouths butter believes it will not melt. It's a life-long obsession: My high school girlfriend was five foot one; my college girlfriend, an even five foot; and Suzanne, my wife, stands four foot 11 in her stocking feet and weighs 98 pounds soaking wet (fishnet stockings hold very little water). My analyst says that we can learn something from my obsession with small women, but she won't say what. That I have unconscious insecurities? Hardly. Suzanne is a self-actualized woman, a federal prosecuting attorney in fact, and from what I hear a damned good one. Her colleagues have given her a nickname that speaks to her aggressiveness in prosecuting the cases she specializes in: Internet child pornography. A feminist, Suzanne has firm ideas about social responsibility and the direction society should take.

I support all that. Leading civilization into the 21st century is a dirty job. But somebody's got to do it. She might as well be a woman. Occasionally, though, Suzanne's activism cuts too close to the bone -- like what she did to Larry, our Labrador retriever.

About a year ago, Suzanne and I stopped at a welding shop near our cabin in the Ozarks to get our boat trailer repaired. You have to know Ray's place is a welding shop, since the proprietor camouflages it as a junkyard. Pulling into the drive, we were greeted by Ray the welder, two vicious-looking curs of eclectic pedigree, and one gorgeous, purebred chocolate lab. I couldn't help commenting on the lab.

"Fine-looking hound you got, Ray."

"Just a stray," Ray replied. "Showed up a week ago. If I can't find nobody to haul him off by Sunday, I'm shooting him. Already got two mouths to feed. Don't need no more."

For sheer good looks, the lab had it all over the other two mutts. But in the world of the working dog, utility counts, not aesthetics. Those two mongrels were perfect for patrolling a junkyard -- I mean, welding shop.

My wife and I looked at each other. We've been advised not to have children -- something about her pelvis being too small -- and besides; we agree that balancing child-rearing and two careers is out of the question. We decided without a word to adopt the lab.

"You sure you'll turn loose this beautiful dog?" Suzanne asked.

"Haul him off if you want him. Saves me a bullet, and burying him."

We all three breathed easier after we left Ray's premises. The lab, an insufferable ham right from the start, laid his head on my wife's lap and emitted a contented sigh. My wife dubbed our new charge "Laurence O'Lovable" -- Larry the Lovable Lab.

Larry met our expectations in nearly every way. I like a lot of spunk, both in hounds and federal prosecutors, and Larry is full of it. Nearly feral, he has tremendous energy, but unlike a lot of labs, who bulk up badly, Larry is a finicky feeder. He stays lean even when offered all the high-quality dog chow he wants. He does have one liability, though: Man (and Woman) have yet to devise an enclosure that can contain Larry -- which Suzanne and I discovered in a most embarrassing way.

A month after bringing Larry home, I got an outraged call from our next-door neighbor. He had recently become the proud owner of an AKC registered chow, a high-dollar bitch he intended to breed. He gave her the run of his back yard, separated from ours by a four-foot chain-link fence, though she was due for her first heat any day. Larry had cleared the fence without touching it, our neighbor informed me, and from the attention he was paying to Miss Kitty, it wasn't a courtesy call. Our neighbor was livid. If Larry put his bitch in a family way, our neighbor railed, he would sue.

We learned later, from his wife, that our neighbor's vet told him point blank that anyone stupid enough to let a bitch in estrus run free deserves whatever he gets. What neighbor got, nine weeks later, was five of the cutest mixed-breed chow-lab puppies you ever saw. We offered to take one, an act of contrition which didn't mollify him. Fortunately, they went fast, though without producing the profits our neighbor dreamed of. The lawsuit business was dropped.

After this episode, my wife suggested that we get Larry fixed.

"What for?" I asked. "Neighbor's learned his lesson. I don't think --"

"Objection. Irrelevant," she cut me off. "There is a clear and present responsibility incumbent upon us, not fully discharged by the mere expedient of assuming ownership of one-fifth of the consequences of our negligence, irrespective of the compounding of that negligence by negligence on the part of the party of the second part, and the part that party played in failing to keep the offending parties apart to prevent parturition. The possibility still exists for a recurrence of this situation in other venues. " Most women get petulant when crossed. My wife lapses into legalese.

"But isn't birth control the female's responsibility?"

"Chauvinist pig! Listen, buster, you've got a choice here. Either Larry--"

"OK, ok," I said, throwing up my hands. "If you insist, then do ... whatever. "

Perhaps I was naive, but little did I know the full implications of "whatever. " A week later, on a day my wife wasn't scheduled for court, Larry did not come bounding through the house to greet me when I got home from work. I found him lying in his doggie bed in the pantry, a mournful look in his eyes.

"Don't roughhouse with the dog," wife yelled from the den. "Larry and I saw the vet today. "

"Oh, poor boy," I empathized, giving Larry a long scratch behind the ears. "Let's see what that nasty veterinarian did to you, big fella." I gently lifted his leg to examine the wound. "Honey? HONEY! " I screamed.

My wife came running. "What's wrong?" she cried, a horrified look on her face.

"It's Larry! They screwed something up. He ... his ... they're not descended."

My wife burst out laughing. I hate it when women laugh at me. Especially small women. "Oh, they're descended, all right," she chuckled, when she finally regained control of herself. "Real descended."

"What's so funny? No, look, both of them. They must be up inside. I had an undescended testicle when I was a kid. It's not funny, I tell you. It hurts like the dickens, and they're dangerous. Undescended testicles can cause hernia, cancer, you can get gangrene, any number of --"

"Dear," Suzanne said, giving me one of those looks. "Larry's testicles have been removed."

"WHAT?"

"The vet cut them off. "

"That's castration!"

"The technical term is neutering."

"No! "

"Yes. "

"Oh, no. Larry, poor boy..." I said, nearly in tears. Larry exuded a baleful sigh. "Honey, how could you? He ... he'll bark in soprano... "

"He barks just fine, the mailman and I can both attest, although it isn't particularly comfortable for him at the moment. "

My wife is in charge of household affairs, so all of our professionals -- the vet, the dentist, our internist, her gynecologist, the financial planner, everybody but her hairdresser -- all of them are women. Up to this point, I'd never suspected a conspiracy.

"Well, I'm marching down to that vet's office to have a word with her, right now," I declared.

And so I did.


"No, Mr. Cooley," the veterinarian assured me, "that's the standard procedure for neutering. "

"But why? WHY?"

"Calm down, Mr. Cooley. "

"What's wrong with a simple vasectomy?"

"Nothing, really. But this procedure is much superior. For one thing, it stops -- usually -- that annoying mounting and humping so characteristic of unneutered male dogs."

"Hey, boys will be boys. He doesn't mean anything by it."

She gave me one of those looks. Maybe it was a conspiracy. "For another thing, it cuts down on roaming. Did you know that eighty percent of the dogs killed on the highway are unneutered males? I'll bet Larry never jumps the fence again."

"If it's jumping the fence you're so worried about, I'll bring him back and you can cut off his legs."

"Mr. Cooley! That's a horrible thought!"

Exactly what you'd expect someone to say who was born with legs.

Still not sure this wasn't a plot my wife had concocted with her vet to punish Larry, I sought out the veterinarian my family used when I was a child. Dr. Stites is a kindly gentleman, now elderly, white-haired and semi-retired. A real Marcus Welby, he was always as much counselor and confidante as doctor and surgeon.

"No, Jim," he assured me, "that's the procedure. Occasionally, a professional breeding kennel will order a vasectomy, then use that dog to judge when their bitches come in heat. Then they ship the females off to an out-of-town stud."

"Sounds like tough work."

"It is," he replied, "but somebody's got to do it. Otherwise, neutering is always achieved by castration. Besides the benefits you've been told about, it usually keeps the dog from marking his territory. "

"He'll still hike his leg, won't he? I'd hate for the other dogs to call Laurence a sissy. "

"Oh, he'll hike all right, just not all over your house. And he won't get all goofy over 'the scent of a woman,' if you know what I mean. And another thing: Neutering is the treatment of choice for chronic masturbators. "

"Larry was not a chronic masturbator. "

"You can rest easy knowing he never will be."

"Now that you mention it, he was sort of ... fond of his . . . "

"Aren't we all?" the good doctor replied, grinning. "But really, he won't miss them -- or his urges. With dogs, it's all hormonal. They have no psychological sex drive."

"Much more of this, and I won't either. "

"There, there now. Larry will be much happier in the long run, and he won't miss a thing. If you do, though, prosthetic implants are available to replace the missing parts."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. One brand is called 'Nuticles,' I believe. Usually they're used on show dogs. They're not cheap, but if you feel strongly about it, I've got a brochure about them here somewhere. "

When I left the good doctor he was still rummaging through the clutter on his desk.


Instead of prosthetic testicles, I bought Larry a couple of tennis balls. They were cheaper, and Suzanne doesn't mind if Larry gnaws them in public. They're perfect for playing "fetch 'em up," too, which is great exercise for Larry, although the vet said neutering shouldn't cause weight gain in an active dog. Larry's perfectly happy with his new playmate, the chow-mix puppy we adopted, and never gives the dam a second glance -- which serves the bitch right, after the grief she caused us. We finally made peace with my wife, too -Larry right away, and I over time. On the other hand, I no longer find it quite so cute that Suzanne's colleagues refer to her as "the nut-cutter. "