Francis Albert Friday!

Now that I think about it, it seems that there are a lot of things that Frank had issue with. Fed Ex, UPS, cats, squirrels, the blimp, the fish.......Well.....all I can say is that he just knew what he liked and what he didn't like. While we are on the subject of what he didn't like, let's talk about another one that makes the top ten list.

The motorcycle.

We don't know why or how it started but we noticed early on in his puppyhood that anytime a motorcycle would pass us as we were walking Frank would go crazy. Barking......circles.....silent barking. Joe would be walking and talking on the phone and a motorcycle would race by without him noticing and Frank would practically pull him into the street as he lunged to try to chase it.

Later we developed a system, especially on the busy streets, where I would keep watch and warn of oncoming assaults. It almost became like a sixth sense. The hairs on the back of my neck would go up if I heard anything that remotely sounded like a motorcycle. If I saw Frank flip his head around I was on guard. Sometimes a pack of them would race by and Joe would stop and sit on Frank to hold him down. The worst was if we had him in the car and one would pull up next to us at a light. Talk about deafening. It was like we had the tazmanian devil in our car.

Somewhere in there he also developed a thing for certain bicycles. That was very unpredictable because it wasn't all of them but every now and again if someone on a bicycle passed us on the walk he would lunge. A few times we didn't see it coming and he actually knocked a couple people off their bikes. Don't know if it was the bike, the person or a combination of the two. Later we learned to always hold him tight if a bike was approaching cause we just never knew.

There were certainly plenty of embarrassing moments on street corners with this out of control Doberman lunging at motorcycles and his owner trying to hold him back. People would point, some would laugh, some would just stare not knowing what to think.

We never got the chance to understand why he had such a reaction to motorcyles but to this day we all still cringe when we hear or see one go by. The other day Joe, Darren and I took our Sunday morning stroll and a whole pack of motorcyles whizzed by us. We all just looked at each other and laughed and decided that it was a fitting tribute to Frank.