Bobbie Calhoun

One would think it was every little girl’s dream. It was pink. It was cute. It even had a ring of satiny ribbon around the top. But I was terrorized by the little blond “puppy in a basket” when I received it as a holiday gift one year, early in my childhood.

Indeed, this innocent mechanical toy was responsible for more than fifty years of dog fear on my part. All because the little guy bit me the first time I wound it up. He barked three times, which was just long enough for five-year-old me to stick my finger in his spring-loaded jaws, seconds before he returned to the inner sanctum of his deceptively soft cave. Pinky Dog bit my pinky, hard, with his sharp metallic teeth.

These were the days before toys could predict a child’s behavior, before artificial intelligence and algorithmic programming became part of nearly every toy. It wasn’t until a dog or two befriended me in late adulthood that I realized how amazing dogs can be to love. Unfortunately for me, those years can’t be given back. I’ll forever have to live with the fact that this little puppy, who never ventured out of his satin-lined home, made an impression on me. Of the dented, painful kind.

The toy cannot be faulted, of course. He only did what his master taught him. There is a lesson to be learned here, though: if you want to give a puppy to a child as a gift, nothing beats the real thing.