Did Somebody Say Nitty-Gritty?

Growing up, my brother and I were very attached to our various pets, particularly our dogs. I can't remember exactly how old we were when we invented the "dog voice" or how it even came about, though I vaguely remember a Texas Instrument tape recorder being involved as my brother and I liked to record our own voices and then listen to the tapes over and over again. A slightly odd form of entertainment, I'll grant you, but my parents didn't get us cable until we were much much older. Needless to say the "dog voice" has been around since we were very wee. Anyone who has known me a while has probably heard me use it when addressing a dog I meet on the street or more likely when speaking to my brother on the phone. There's no real way to describe the dog voice, though it has been known to degenerate into high pitched shrieking much to mother's non-delight. Along with the "dog voice" we invented various words as well, the most notable one being "nitty gritty", which for some reason or another was what we called the very small lower teeth in each of our dog's mouths. The only problem being, somewhere along the line I forgot that the only other person who knew what I was referring to when I said "nitty gritty" was my brother, not say a fellow dog owner or more importantly Buster's vet. So you can imagine who the first person was that I called when I first realized that the little one was in fact MISSING one of his nitty grittys. And, yes, the two of us have been discussing it's notable absence in the dog voice ever since.