The Great And Mighty Hoover

The Great And Mighty Hoover died Friday afternoon (September 21, 2001).

His tremendous spirit and that wonderful heart of his were just no match for joint problems and cancer.

Hoover and I shared and celebrated the same birthday of December 5th, this December would have been his 9th birthday.

When my wife and I hug, Hoover would stand up on his hind legs and join in, he always wanted to be included.

My wife gets out of bed earlier than I do and as soon as she left the bedroom, Hoover would come in, get on the bed and lay his head next to mine on the pillow. He never woke me up, he just would lay down like he was human with his head on the pillow and sleep next to me.

Hoover was not very tall and so to pet him or rub his head you needed to squat down. If you did this he would lower his head and press the top of his head into your chest and then lean into it. This became known as a Hoover hug. Once while we were at the doctor's for a vaccination shot I was trying to comfort him and get him to calm down so the Doc could give him a shot. I asked Hoover to give me a Hoover hug so that I might have better control of him. The doctor asked what that was and when I explained and Hoover demonstrated, the poor doctor got so tickled at this he was unable to proceed for several minutes.

A few years ago my sister, with her husband and two small children came to visit. This was the first time Hoover had met any of these people but he wasted no time in making friends. He never does. My nephew was just a toddler at the time and he and Hoover stood pretty much eye to eye in height. Justin was standing in front of Hoover munching on some snacks when he held out a snack and gently put it in Hoover's mouth. We all watched in wonder as Justin then just as easily reached in and took it back. Hoover never moved, he just calmly accepted whatever his new friend wanted to do.

Hoover loved everyone he ever met, with the possible exception of a couple of salesmen at work. Everywhere we went he was always on the lookout for someone new to visit with. When he went to work with me he would go around and say hello to everyone he could find before crawling under the desk to sleep on my feet. If we went to the park he would gladly welcome groups of small children rubbing and patting him for as long as they wanted. I never saw a child who was afraid to come right up and start petting. His entire being radiated warmth and love to the point that even small children knew they had nothing to fear and so they would run right over and pet the little puppy. They always called him a puppy, he looked like a puppy his whole life.

Hoover loved to play with anyone that was willing but he did have a favorite playmate. My buddy Marty worked with me in Alabama when we first got Hoover and they hit it off from the first day they met. When it comes to a just plain love of life and hearts the size of their bodies, Marty and Hoover are made from the same mold. Hoover and Marty played hard, so hard you thought they were going to hurt each other but they never did. When we moved to Nebraska, Marty and his wife moved with us. While Marty and I were busy building a TV station, Hoover would go to work with us every day and always had his favorite playmate handy. I know that a couple years later when Marty returned to Alabama, Hoover took it as hard as I did. We both had to make do without our favorite buddy.

He loved to go for a ride and it did not matter where we went, across the country or just to the office, the passenger seat of my truck was Hoover's seat. I could not tell you how many miles that Hoover traveled with me but to say it was thousands. Many more than you would expect of one truck or one dog.

Hoover loved to go for a walk so much that if I simply opened the drawer where his leash was kept it would result it what has come to be known as the "happy dance of joy". Once the "happy dance of joy" has begun there is no other option but to take him for a walk, whether that was your plan or not.

Hoover has his own chair. Some dogs have a doggy bed, Hoover has a recliner. When Hoover came to live with us the furniture from our previous home would not fit in our new house. One of the recliners was put in the second bedroom that I used as an office next to my desk. Hoover would sleep in this chair next to me while I worked and the chair has remained his ever since.

I can not explain the bond that I had with Hoover or how I knew what he needed or how he knew what I needed. We just understood each other.

My heart is broken.

What Kind Of Name Is Hoover?

I had heard the name as given to a dog a some point in my life and thought it sounded like the perfect name for a dog. If you have ever watched a dog in the kitchen or around the dinner table, most dogs are watching the floor with great concentration for anything that falls. Since Hoover is the brand name of a vacuum cleaner, and just mentioned floor cleaning skills of dogs, what better name for a happy dog? So this would be the short version of why I named my dog Hoover, but you know that's not the whole story. Any dog cool enough to get a web site named after him has to have a better "How did he get his name" story than that, right?

Way back in the years before we meet Hoover, I had mentioned to my wife once that when we lived in a place where it was reasonable to have a dog, that I wanted to get a really great dog and that I wanted to call him Hoover, for the above mentioned reasons. She agreed that it would be nice to have a dog when we had a yard and thought the name was cute. A few years later we moved into a nice townhouse in Alabama where I had accepted a job with a local television station. One of the things I did at the station was to set up a program with the local animal shelter to feature a couple of animals each week in commercials to encourage people to adopt pets from the shelter. Every week a nice lady from the shelter would come by with dogs and cats to be used in the commercials. One week as we were watching the production team try to get the puppies to sit still long enough to take a picture, this nice lady told me that they had just received a litter of Lab/Rott mixed pups. That combination struck me as a wonderful mix and that it would make a good looking dog with many nice qualities. So I called the wife and asked her to meet me at the animal shelter to take a look at the puppies. 

When we arrived we were led to a pen that was full with no less than twenty puppies of various breeds. The only way to examine the ones we came to look at was to get in the pen with them. So I knelt on the floor surrounded by puppies all playing and running about while I tried to get a good look at the new batch. From the moment I touched the floor this one little dog was all over me, climbing up on my legs to get at my face, jumping, bouncing, barking and using every cute puppy move in the book to get me to notice him. He was not one of the Lab/Rott mix that I had come to see so I tried to ignore him, but this little guy with the short legs was not giving up. I could not get a good look at any of the other pups with this puppy climbing in my lap and doing everything he could to get as close as possible. He was a Labrador/Basset mix and he had decided he was going home with me. Unable to resist his charms, the wife and I decided he was right. We went back to the front desk to fill out the adoption forms and take home our new friend. While filling out the forms the nice lady from the shelter asked what we were going to name him. Now that long past conversation with the wife on this subject had all but been forgotten by me, but without a second of hesitation, my wife answered "Hoover, we are going to name him Hoover". 

So there you go, now you know about the day Hoover adopted me, how he got his name and you probably have a good idea of why I married my wife.