Thumper 1, 2 & 3

My grandparents had a lot of dachshunds. They were good deals too. They had black ones, brown ones, long haired and short. They loved dachshunds so much that they got one hand painted on the back end of their red VW super beetle in the 70’s. When my grandparents got older they got tired of naming their dogs so they just kept calling the males Thumper. It was easy to remember. They also did this to the humans. Marty was my grandfather, Marty is my dad, and Marty is my brother. If you needed something you just yelled Marty. Someone was bound to answer. If you yelled for the dog, it never showed up.

Thumper 1, 2, and 3 loved to run around the pool and bark. I mean, they all did this. They just barked constantly at whomever was in the water. It was cute, and sad, and annoying. But the best part was when they got so excited they would jump into the water to get closer to whomever they were barking at. They could always get in, but never could get out. Every once and a while #2 could figure out how to get out of the pool. He would use his tiny paws and climb up to the edge and muscle all of his strength out of his little arms and to get up on the concrete. The other ones would just flail around swimming in circles until one of us rescued them by pulling them out by the scruff of the neck. They might not have been good listeners but they too could swim like champs.