Uncle Bob and Grandma’s Thanksgiving Turkey

As we’re all preparing to chow down on Thanksgiving Dinner, I’ll just offer another story about our beloved Uncle Bob the Giant Mutant Mountain Poodle that is in keeping with the season.

I have previously posted about Bob’s death, his unfortunate demise of systemic cancer when he was only 8 years old. He had by then become so much a part of our family that we tried everything we could afford to try when the vet said his condition could be treated. That meant chemo-for-dogs, and the results weren’t very pretty.

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Thanksgiving Dinner Fit for a Poodle!

Thanksgiving is a great holiday, always a major Big Deal here on the mountain. That all started decades ago when we lived in Oklahoma, and signed on as the communications directors for a grant-based hunger project called “The Whole World Family Supper” that was scheduled to be a Thanksgiving feast for everybody, everywhere.

All of a sudden our little family gatherings just weren’t enough anymore. By the time we’d moved to Florida and became full time performers - with a friends list that included circus folk, traveling medicine shows and all sorts of other itinerant musicians and crusty jugglers - Thanksgiving became an annual pilgrimage to a St. Augustine boatyard an ex-Air Force friend managed. Price of admission was at least one homeless person or otherwise destitute person, and it got bigger every year. By the time we moved to North Carolina the boatyard Thanksgiving feast (a pot-luck affair) offered 4 turkeys and two hams pit-cooked by our host, at least 60 people, and stretched out with leftovers for the entire 4-day holiday weekend.

Now that we’re here on the mountain it’s still a Big Deal. We average at least 24 people every year, which is a heck of a crowd to host in a 28′ square cabin complete with dogs. And we often have 7 or 8 dog guests too, friends of our poods and strays, part of our many friends and family’s families. They get Thanksgiving Dinner too. It is a family supper, after all, and dogs are family.

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