Dogging the Nazis

My wife was at the computer when I started 'Inglourious Basterds.' When the movie had run about 20 minutes, she came into the living room and sat on a couch.

“I don’t know who was talking at the beginning, but he was really loud,” she said. “Charley (red, and our smaller standard poodle) was on the couch (in the office). He looked up and then he got off the couch and he stepped toward the door, and the look on his face was ‘Bad man. I need to bite him.’”

“It was Hitler,” I said.

“I had never seen him that way before,” she said. “He looked like he really intended to bite whoever was talking.”

Another incident of Charley and Germans happened several weeks later, when I watched part of 'Anzio' at lunch. In the scene, Robert Mitchum ran past a bombed-out farm house and into the grass on a hillside. A white dog appeared and followed Mitchum. When the dog “Woof”ed, Mitchum threw a rook in the direction of away. The dog went after the rock. A German soldier appeared and began talking to the dog.

Charley was asleep in the hall. He got up and walked to the TV and stood there the entire time the German soldier was talking. Then an American soldier shot the German. The German fell down. He stopped talking. Charley returned to the hallway and went back to sleep.

A thing to remember: Don’t talk loud German when Charley is around.