Bert the Living Bratwurst, 2000s, by Callie

From MemoryArchive

Who:  Callie Mills
What: Burt the Living Bratwurst
When: A few years ago
Where: Wisconsin

I'll never forget the days when Bert was alive. He died when I was quite young, but I'll never forget him. Bert was a dog; a dachshund/shitzew mix. His fur was brindle colored, which means that it was light brown with dark brown and black flecks. His legs were short and fat, and his nose was gray. Sometimes we called him "Bert the Living Bratwurst" because of his funny shape.

I always felt sorry for Bert during the winter. My mom and I would take him and the other dogs for their daily walk near our house at a county park. The snow was deep, but the other dogs didn't care, they bounded through it in great strides, chasing after each other. Bert lagged behind, jumping from footprint to footprint, since the snow was almost over his head.

In the fall, however, Bert was the top dog. Being closest to the ground, running through the leaves, he was the first one to get a whiff of an animal's trail. When he did, he would start yipping and making all of these little sounds, and the other dogs would come running through the woods to find him.

Bert's favorite thing was his tennis ball, and he was rarely without it. He was most known for was this: he would go up to the top of the stairs and sit down. There, he would procede to chew on the tennis ball, and finally, he would set it down, right between him and the edge of the stairs. When the time was right, which was up to him and noone else, he would ever so gently nudge the ball with his nose. Plunk, plunk, plunk, down each stair it would drop, and when it was about half of the way down, Bert would RUN after it, chasing it all the way down, usually catching it in his mouth just before the bottom. He was really a funny sight; a fat little dachshund chasing a tennis ball down the stairs.

He would do this over and over, and once in a while the ball would get stuck underneath the stairs, somewhere he couldn't reach it, like behind the cats' litter box. So Bert would run down the stairs and just stand there, staring behind where he thought the ball was and whining until someone got it out for him. When someone did get it out, the dangerous part was returning it to him. He was so eager to get the ball back that he would come close to biting your figers off while you were handing it to him. And then he would just go back up the stairs and chew on the ball, and the cycle would continue.

I'll never forget Bert, with his gray nose and short stalky legs. His tail was always wagging and his eyes were always bright. He's a very happy memory of mine.