Columnist Mark Patinkin gets a lesson in manners from his dog JJ. Note the paws are off the table, and the attitude is that of eager acceptance.

Photo courtesy patinkin family

I try hard to celebrate the successes of others, but I’m miffed that a Philadelphia columnist is far richer than I am because he wrote about his dog before I wrote about mine. His name is John Grogan, and not only was his book Marley and Me a mega-best-seller – now there’s a movie based on the book starring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson.

So I’ve decided to write a dog book of my own, which means I have two decisions to make. The first is who should play me in the film. My instinct tells me it should be Sean Connery, but I hear he’s a bit older than when he starred in Goldfinger, so I’ll compromise on George Clooney.

The more taxing decision is which dog I should write about. I’ve had a few.

My first, as a child, was a schnauzer named Cinderella who, when being scolded, stared at the ceiling like it wasn’t happening.

Blackjack would probably be a better candidate.

He was a big lab mix who terrorized our family for several years. He would often go to sleep across the top of my bed, and snarl if I tried to move him, so I’d have to curl up on the bottom of the mattress like I was the dog. He’d do something similar on those long car trips people took in the ’50s and ’60s, sprawling across the third seat of our wood-paneled station wagon, forcing me and two brothers to sit in the footwell. Blackjack’s proudest moment was bounding into the kitchen from the backyard one winter morning with what looked liked a big piece of cardboard in his mouth. It turned out to be a frozen, mummified cat, causing everyone to scream and climb onto the counters while he proudly wagged his tail.

We moved on to Heidi, a dachshund, who weighed eight pounds but thought she was a Doberman. Once, when I started to discipline her, she leapt onto the top of a cushioned chair so she was nose-to-nose with me. Startled, I backed down. She had a daughter we kept named Rosebud, and Rosebud had a daughter we kept named Daisy. I was one of five brothers and my girlfriend at the time couldn’t believe a household of boys had dogs named Heidi, Rosebud and Daisy. She though it called into question our sexual orientation.

The first dog I owned as an adult was Roy. I got him at the Potter Shelter in Middletown. He had been hit by a car in Newport and left on the side of the road with an injured leg. They brought him in on a stretcher assuming he would have to be put down, but he wagged his tail on arrival, so they gave him a reprieve long enough for me to find him. He was a black, white-chested collie-Lab mix with a bad leg, a big heart, and an alpha-dog instinct.

I lived in Providence and had a neighbor from Egypt who also had a dog. I was walking Roy once and tossed the neighbor’s dog a biscuit. Roy lunged at the dog in such a frenzy it looked like a little tornado with tails and paws whipping around. The neighbor stared at me and kept saying, “Over a cookie?”

Roy loved me, but had a thing about protecting women. I would test this out by playfully grabbing girls in front of him. Every time, Roy would rear up and clomp his jaws on my arm. He wasn’t kidding.

At that age, I was leaving “cute” recordings on my message machine, and settled on one that began with Roy barking for five seconds. Once, I went away overnight and left Roy in the backyard. Upon returning I learned that he began to bark at midnight, driving a neighbor lady so crazy she called my home at 2 a.m., only to get a recording that continued his barking. She wasn’t pleased.

When Roy went to heaven, I was so devastated that I found a pound mutt named Jasper who looked exactly like Roy. For six months, Jasper used a collar and dog bowl that both said “Roy.” The poor thing probably developed a complex. Jasper would sometimes run away for a few hours, almost always on Sunday mornings. I finally found him sitting outside a nearby bagel shop, and learned he was a regular there.

He actually had a police record, having once wandered away and been “found” by two teen boys who walked him to Ann & Hope in Seekonk, tied him in back, and began to shoplift, stashing the goods with Jasper. They were busted, and the Seekonk police released Jasper to me on recognizance.

My daughter lobbied for a cat for years, and I kept saying no, believing as I do that cats are the devil. To get her over it, I took her to a pound. We met Molly there, a beagle mix who put on a convincingly sweet “perfect pet” act. We adopted her and brought her home, where she immediately attacked Jasper for being in “her” space. Thereafter, she never let Jasper eat when she was in the room. I never figured out whether Jasper was a gentleman or a wimp.

Molly was a burier, pushing dirt back over the holes with her nose. She mostly buried biscuits and lacrosse balls, which cost about $1 each. She never found anything.

Our current pound dog is JJ, who is part boarder collie, part God-Knows-What. JJ is also a burier, though oddly, he will bury rawhide bones behind couch cushions, covering them with imaginary dirt pushed with his nose. JJ is also a huge fraud. We live near some woods, and just before reentering the house after a walk, he will act like he “hears” something in the trees and runs back in. His hearing will then go dead as he ignores us calling him in. Curiously, his hearing resumes when I shake a box of dog biscuits, bringing him bounding back.

Like Blackjack, before I go to bed, he often lies on my pillow next to my wife, whom he idolizes. He growls when I try to move him, because he now thinks he’s the man of the house.

On reflection, this raises rich prospects for literary drama.

So maybe, considering all the candidates, I’ll call the book JJ and Me.

I’ll have my people call Clooney’s people in the morning.

mpatinkin@projo.com