I once had a blind dog named Apache. Loved that dog. Here we are goofing at our old house on MacKenzie in 1986. She was a bit of a ham. But, then, so am I.
The bull horns are a nice touch. Love the look on Apache's face. In reality I lifted her up on my grandfather's saddle and she really didn't like it up there and wanted to jump down, thus the over-the- top of the glasses look, not unlike the big bad wolf talking to Little Red Riding Hood.
Apache was a talented dog. She loved to chase a tennis ball and would drop one at my feet for hours on end. I didn't teach her to do this little game, my brother-in-law did, before he gifted me the dog and left for Kansas.
Sometimes I would fake like I was going to throw the ball and she would jerk her head in the direction of the throw, then quickly realize I was faking and come back and if I held on to it, she would get a real wolf look and lower her head as she advanced on me. Somewhere, I've got pictures of this. Why?
Well, I was contacted by Billy Gibbons of ZZ-Top to come up with script ideas for an MTV video (they were just then taking off) and the boys had the mega-hit Eliminator album out and the record company was ready to pay big bucks to put all the hits on video. My concept was to put Apache on a dark, two-lane highway out on a lonely stretch of desert (Carefree Highway west of I-17 towards Lake Pleasant) and have her come towards the camera real slow, right on the center-line stripe, and then I would move the ball to the right and left, and she would follow the ball, but it would look like she was scoping out the desert highway, looking for prey. Then I would throw the tennis ball high and long (out of sight of the camera) and Apache would spin and run off into the darkness after the ball. Cut to the intro to "Sharp Dressed Man, " or, "She's Got Me Under Pressure." On each verse and chorus, the wolf would reappear and do variations on the head fake.
Man, I was stoked and Apache was ready for her closeup.
Alas, Billy and the boys hooked up with an award winning director who steered them towards Penthouse Pets at a gas station and, if memory serves me correctly, they did all right with that premise.
Still, I think Apache as a wolf in a ZZ Top video would have been damn cool. Anyway, it sure looked cool in the storyboards in my mind.
"Once in a while even a blind dog finds an acorn."
—Old Vaquero Saying
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