Teddy and Me: Confessions of a Service Human Read online

  Tippy was quite a wild animal throughout the rest of his life, especially when someone came to visit my parents—and they had loads of friends who would stop in at all times unannounced. That’s how it was in those days. It was a very close-knit community. There was no standing on ceremony with my mother. People would just show up. Well, she had to lock Tippy in the basement. He’d go crazy barking and banging the front door. He was just a ferocious little lion. So she’d yell at him and chase him into the little doorway that led down to our basement and lock him in there. And he’d stay down there and bang on that door until they left.

  One day my dad’s friends and her friends were sitting around having coffee and cake, talking as they did, and my father said, “Okay, let him out. He won’t hurt anybody.” Well, he came out and the first thing he did was run up to the fattest guy in the crowd. His name was George and he was a bookie of some kind. George the bookie weighed three hundred pounds and had a twenty-five-inch neck, and was always jolly, always laughing, at least on the outside. He had had a lot of tragedy in his life. Tippy ran right up to George, jumped on his leg, and fell in love with his lower calf, if you know what I mean. Well, my mother went crazy with the broom. She started to beat him and scream, “You dirty dog! Get off George’s foot!”

  As you can imagine the entire crowd broke up in laughter until she finally beat Tippy off George’s leg and chased him back into the dungeon.

  The last Tippy story is of his death—and, as you might expect, it’s kind of sad. Years later, the dog was around nine and he had a horrible diet. There was no kibble. He was fed Ken-L Ration, which was probably bad horsemeat and table scraps. Well, one day we came downstairs and there he was, lying as stiff as a board at the bottom of the steps. My mother started to cry and we didn’t know what to do. My father wasn’t home. So she called the New York City Department of Sanitation. Well, they came over with a garbage truck and two somber-faced, brown-suited garbagemen came into our little attached house in Queens, looked at us—somberly—and carted Tippy out. One of the garbagemen was holding his front paws, the other his back feet. And as God is my witness, when they got to the garbage truck, they started the machine going—the conveyor that takes in the trash—and with a one-two-three they heaved Tippy into the back. So long, Tippy.

  WOODY/WILLY

  The next two dogs I owned, way before Teddy, were the cutest little things in the world. One was a Yorkie named Woody, I believe. I mix up Woody and Willy. The other, Willy, was a silky terrier. They were the spunkiest, eternally moving little fur machines I’ve ever seen. I don’t remember much about them except how they both left this earth. I don’t know whether you want to hear this story or not, but here we go.

  I was walking with little Woody in Forest Hills, Queens, and from across the street there came a spotted Dalmatian that ran at him like a wolf. Before I could even lift a finger or raise my voice the Dalmatian snapped his jaws shut around Woody’s little back, punctured his lungs, and killed him in front of my eyes. Well, I didn’t know if he was dead or not, but I grabbed Woody, jumped in my little old Volkswagen, a little green Beetle, and raced over the Queensboro Bridge to an animal hospital, where the vet announced that Woody was dead.

  Well, okay. Things happen. Terrible things. To this day I’m afraid to walk a small dog in the streets anywhere in America for fear that a big dog will kill him. Maybe it’s a good thing to be this protective.

  The other dog, Willy, was just the most charming little guy, and I had him when I lived in Hawaii. That dog also came to a weird and sad end. We had been away on a short trip and we were supposed to come back on a certain day. We left him in the good care of a wonderful, kindly friend, who was a botanist. Well, we came back a day later than we’d planned, and on the day we were supposed to come back but didn’t, little Willy had eaten a teeny poisonous frog and died. We buried him there in Hawaii. I still know where, in the back of Manoa Valley near a waterfall. It’s the way of all flesh. And that’s the story of Woody and Willy.

  BANDIT

  The next dog story is about a wild border collie named Bandit. This is a beautiful story. Bandit was the dog that we owned when we were living in Fairfax, California, while the children were quite young. In those days I used to go into San Francisco quite a lot, either by car or by ferry. One day I took the ferry from a suburban town called Larkspur, which happens to be adjacent to San Quentin Prison. When inmates are released from San Quentin, they’re given bus fare, and some of them take the ferry into San Francisco and go home. Well, on that particular day—it was a rainy day, if I remember it, in November—I was almost alone on this huge ferry, and there was a long-haired guy who had just been released from prison. I could tell by his look that he was a hardened criminal. But since I’m attracted to antisocial types, he and I struck up a conversation, liked each other, and he invited me to his house. I said, “Oh boy, this is great.”

  He told me he had indeed just gotten out of San Quentin, though I didn’t ask him what he’d been in for. We got off the ferry and took some buses for an hour to South San Francisco, near Candlestick Park, and walked across boards on a mud flat way out to some houseboat. His “old lady” was there and she was the nicest person in the world. They had a houseful of dogs. We drank all afternoon, and he offered me one of the dogs. How could I say no to an ex–Hell’s Angel from San Quentin? Get the picture? So I took the little dog in my arm, put him in my coat, walked back on the planks, took the bus back to the ferry, and took the dog home.

  The children fell in love with him. Oh, he was a border collie all right, and a wild one, one of the wildest dogs we ever owned. As the years when on, Bandit would constantly try to escape from the house. He’d run out of our house, run down the hill, run across the valley, and up the other side to a house where there was a female dog he took a liking to. He was so smart that he knew how to open the gate with his teeth and let her out. Then they would run together all afternoon. True story.

  They liked the state park area way up on Mount Tamalpais. One day a park ranger came to our house with Bandit in tow and said to us, “Your dog is chasing down deer up in the mountain with this other dog and he does it all the time. And if he does it one more time, I’m gonna shoot him.” How’s that for a nice, sensitive animal control agent? Well, we kept Bandit under control, because we didn’t want a mean park ranger to shoot him.

  Years later I was teaching at an East Coast college. We had crossed the country like in The Grapes of Wrath with all of our possessions, rented a house, and I taught for a while. Well, we used to chain Bandit to a large tree in front of the house because we didn’t want to chain him up inside. Well, sad to say, one day the kids came home from middle school and the chain was there, but Bandit was gone. We had all sorts of stories as to what happened. He escaped the chain, ran off, and found another female dog, and he’s running happily ever after, or a group of evil people cut the chain and stole him and he came to God knows what end. Either way, that was the end of Bandit.

  SNOWY

  Snowy was a sheltie and she was the kindest, most beautiful dog I ever owned. She preceded Teddy. Snowy was our little Lassie. She was with us all through our kids’ childhood years. And I always remember Snowy jumping over little fences. You know, sort of the Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm type of thing. She had that kind of disposition. She was obviously a female and I think she was the only female dog I ever owned. I can’t remember another female dog. I always liked little boy dogs. But Snowy was just the sweetest little Lassie you could ever know and all the memories are fantastic. Even to the end she was a wonderful dog and a great inspiration.

  She was in great health until the age of eleven or twelve. Unfortunately her downfall was due to my overfeeding her. I can’t help it. If I eat, she sits there, looks at me, and I feed her. And I let her gain too much weight. She got fat and she got sick. She got arthritis, and I couldn’t care for her anymore. Well, luckily for me, my personal assistant at that time had a girlfriend whose parents were dog lov
ers who lived on a farm up in Sonoma County, California, north of San Francisco. They agreed to take Snowy in for her last years. She wasn’t supposed to last too long. In fact, the vet had told us that we were supposed to put her to sleep, and I said, “My friend, no one’s putting Snowy to sleep.”

  But the story ends beautifully because these nice people up in Sonoma put Snowy on a special diet, limited her food intake, and she lived another two years. And then they called two years later and said, “She’s near the end.”

  I remember going up there and getting down on the grass with her. I looked in her eyes though she could hardly see. She was lying there and I whistled to her as I did to my brother. We talked. I told her who I was and I told her I loved her, and I left.

  She passed away the next day. Now, the beautiful part of this story is that she actually predeceased my mother, who was very sick in a nursing home in Florida at the time. And I think that God, you know, kind of got me ready for what was coming through the passage of this beautiful friend of mine.

  7.

  SINCE so much of talk radio is based upon anger and rage and even hatred sometimes, and indignation, I often turn to my best friend Teddy to feel kindness, warmth, and love. He inspires me to feel these things. And that’s why it’s important to have my dog at my side during almost every show. My voice and my ability to move crowds are my gift, but also my burden. This power of the magical voice, which I first discovered in the first grade in a slum school in the Bronx, can change people’s fates. How would you use this power as a broadcaster and bestselling author if you were me? I intend to make this day the first day of the rest of my life, as people used to say in the hippie sixties and seventies. We can change our lives. You say, “What’s wrong with your life, Michael?” Well, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with my life, but it’s not what I want it to be. I don’t feel that I’m inspiring people in the way I want to inspire them. You see, you can inspire through hate, as ISIS does, as the ACLU does, even as Hillary and Obama do in their own quasi-moderate ways. They inspire through hate. You can inspire through anger. You can inspire through rage. You can inspire through false righteous indignation. We know that’s all out there. We get it every day of the week, mainly on talk radio. In varieties, that’s what you get. Anger, rage, false righteous indignation. And it riles you up and you listen. That’s an inspiration.

  But then there’s the bigger inspirations. You can inspire through love, hope, humor. The positives. I know it sounds hippie-dippy sixties, but I look at the history of the world and I look at the world today and I realize that if we don’t inspire each other through positive attributes we’re going to descend into the barbarism of the left and the barbarism of ISIS.

  Now, maybe this is a different turn for Michael Savage. I get it. You like me to be hard. You like me to be tough. You like me to be cynical. You like me to be analytical. I get that. But there’s a limit to that. Believe it or not, that’s all limited. There’s a lot of area beyond all that. It’s called space, time, and the universe, and I want to go there. I want to go there in this life with you and I want to inspire you in the most positive manner.

  I think about the Christmas season, the season of peace and the season of love. Christianity is the religion of peace. Christianity is the true religion of peace. Islam is not a religion of peace. Christianity is. Turn the other cheek. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. These are messages that come from Christianity. What can you do in an age of deceit and lies and terror? What you can do is reaffirm your own religion. Instead of letting your church become a mosque or a Unitarian meeting place or a drunk tank on Tuesday nights, you can go to church again. However hokey that sounds, however cynical you are, however hard you are, however unneeding you think you really are, you know in your heart that there’s something missing in you. You know that you crave something greater. Because the human being is not a dog. The human being is not a bear. The human being is not a snake. The human being is not an eagle. We are unique creatures and we need something different than the bear, the dog, the snake, and the eagle. What is it? It’s the thing called God. These creatures, they don’t know God. They are of God. They were created by God. But they don’t really need God. That’s why they’re lower animals. We as higher animals need higher things than just food and fornication. Unfortunately, our society—primarily because of the degenerates in the media—has fallen lower than the snake. The media has promulgated the idea that we only need food and fornication. And so when people are empty, that’s what they seek: food and fornication. And when they’re really empty, what happens? They become drug addicts. They start with marijuana. They end up with heroin, crack, you name it. What is it about drugs? What is it that human beings are seeking in drugs? Why do they go for drugs? As God has been driven out of America, drugs have entered.

  I know this has been said before. I get it. But what does an empty soul look to do? An empty soul looks to fill itself, just as an empty vessel needs to be filled with a liquid to be complete. An empty human being needs to fill himself to be complete. And how does it fill itself? I know again many of you will laugh because you’re cynical. It’s through those things I’m talking about. Inspiration. The musician finds the inspiration God knows where and then has the inspiration to pick up the instrument. Do you think a musician can play one day without inspiration from somewhere? Unfortunately, so many musicians don’t have that human inspiration that they seek, and they get it through drugs. I get that. I understand. It’s true for many artists who don’t understand that the greatest artists were not drug addicts. The greatest artists in the history of the world were not drug addicts. They were usually God addicts. Did you know that? Look at the greatest art in history. You’ll find it was created by super-religious people who literally saw God in their living rooms. The power of God was transmitted through the paintbrush or through that piece of marble. How could a man like Rodin take a piece of inert stone and see the essence of a human form and sculpt—from inside that stone, that block of marble—the portrait of a human being that looks so real that a hundred years later I can go to the museum and look at it and inside that carved eye I can literally see the person? How is that possible? How?

  So I say it again. My voice and my ability to move crowds are my gifts. But they are also my burden. This is a power, the magical voice. It’s a power I first discovered when I found out I could speak to the assembly in the first grade at PS 48 in a slum school in the Bronx. I found out that I enjoyed speaking to that crowd of kids. I wasn’t afraid of them. I loved seeing them smile when I told a joke or made a fool of myself. It didn’t matter. I was a little clown and they laughed. I liked that. When I spoke with such a clear voice and wasn’t afraid, the little pipsqueak that I was, and the crowd listened to me, I enjoyed that power, and I discovered something. I discovered I can move audiences and that means I can change people’s fates, as I learned later in life.

  It’s not about just being a clown. It’s not about entertaining people and making them laugh. It’s about changing people’s fates. It’s a great gift and a great burden. Yeah, I said it again and I’ll repeat it again. Some inspire through hate. Do I have to say who? Do I have to mention who inspires through hate and division? Do I have to say the names or the organizations that use hate and division—not to mention anger, rage, false righteous indignation—as their stock-in-trade? I’ve used all of them. In my twenty-one years on the radio, I’ve used every one of those emotions to move my audiences. Because every one of those emotions raged through me or played through me, or danced through me.

  You can inspire in other ways. You can inspire through love, hope, and humor. But how do you do that? All right, so I talk about the dog, and many of you love Teddy. Today I’m very angry at him because he peed on the floor again when I turned my back. I got very mad at him. It was two minutes before the show. Two minutes. He snuck in the room that he goes in and he did it. I got so angry. I had to be on my hands and knees with a spray bottle and a
piece of paper two minutes before a national show. As I was cleaning up this dog’s mess I got so mad at him for sneaking around and doing that that I actually started to laugh. And I said, “You know, I remember way back in the seventies some friends of mine who were Buddhists used to go to some of these Buddhists meetings where there were some very, very wise teachers. And there was one of the teachers in particular that all of the white guys would go and sit before with their legs crossed in the lotus position, looking for some great inspiration. And sometimes they’d get these really wacky statements, such as “Take the garbage out if you wanna know what it is to be a Buddhist. Because if you don’t take your own garbage out, you can’t be an ascended master.” They didn’t even understand what he was saying to them. What he was saying to them is don’t get so disconnected from reality that you don’t even know what you are. In other words, don’t leave your body. And if that means taking your own garbage out, then do it.