Genuinely Southern, Ep.#3: Dogs in the South

Mark Ballard shares stories about his dogs and the deep bond they share, illustrating how pets are cherished family members in the South. This episode explores the joys, challenges, and unforgettable moments of pet ownership.

Key Topics
Pets are considered family members in the South, often with deep emotional bonds.
Memorable stories highlight the importance of rescue and caring for animals.
The emotional impact of losing a pet is profound and often commemorated in unique ways.
Pets provide comfort and companionship, especially during times of grief or recovery.
Community and family play a vital role in pet care and remembrance.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Southern pet culture and Mark's stories
01:55 The story of Babette and her special bond with Mark's family
03:51 Babette's death and the humorous yet heartfelt trip to the mountains
06:09 The arrival of Jean Pierre and the importance of grooming routines
07:58 Rescue dog Georgie and the decision to adopt a rescue pet
09:47 Georgie's adventures, training, and eventual passing
14:00 The return of Bandit and the special place he holds in the family
18:04 Bandit's personality, adventures, and the bond with Libby
20:10 Reflections on pets as family and closing thoughts

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Carlyle Place at Home - Inclusive, Interactive Retirement Living Without Moving

Creators and Guests

Host

Mark Ballard

Host & Executive Producer of Genuinely Southern

What is Genuinely Southern?

Whether through writing, broadcasting, or word-of-mouth, stories have always forged a connection between people and places. Nowhere else is this truer than in The South. Southern artist, influencer, speaker, and author Mark Ballard will weave stories of life in Macon, Georgia, and stories of the South. Tales told as only Mark can, will be interwoven with guest interviews and listener questions, and requests.

Mark Ballard (00:00.078)
Hi, I'm Mark Ballard. This is my Genuinely Southern podcast where I will share Southern stories and perspectives that show just how unique our South is. Growing up in the South gives people a little different perspective to life. I've always used the South to inspire me and my artwork, my writings, and even my food. I've been telling stories about the South for years.

In my newspaper articles, my magazines, I even had a television show. The South is more than a region to me, it's genuinely a way of life. That's why I'm excited to share these Southern stories with you and introduce you to interesting people. I'm proud to be genuinely Southern and I can't wait to tell you why. In the South, dogs are our furry parts of the family. They're practically just toddlers.

Growing up my mother loved animals so they were always around us. Every stray showed another stray to go to Ballardville and mother would take in. Two of my childhood dogs were Rusty and Chico. They didn't have a pedigree other than a fur from this one and eyes from that one. My grandmother always called that a duke's mixture because we never met the mother or the father. They were outside dogs because Daddy wouldn't allow us to have a dog inside, heaven forbid.

But all that was about to change. I'll tell you more about that in a bit. I suppose there is a big difference between having an inside dog and actually setting a place at the table for them. That's exactly what my grandmother said about one of her neighbors. I never saw it with my own eyes, but I knew granny would never tell a lie. Keep in mind that granny would never allow us to wear a baseball hat at the table or sing. Not sure why we couldn't burst into song but we couldn't.

When Daddy finally gave in and we were actually able to get an inside dog, mother named her Babette. Babette Ballard. It just had a ring to it. Babette was a little black poodle that was always kind of sickly. Mother had had a car accident and she felt like she needed a friend. And there's nothing like a dog to fill a void when you were in a time of need. She and Babette were inseparable all day long. She napped with mother in her recliner and slept with mother in the bed.

Mark Ballard (02:25.004)
Daddy didn't ever like it, but he kept it to himself since Mother had been in the accident. While in her recliner, mother spent a lot of time watching TV, QVC in particular. She was one of those QVC watchers that actually called in to have a relationship with the host of the show. One day she called me and said she ordered Babette a diamond collar. And I said, Mother, where did you order it from? She said, QVC, I should have known.

There was rarely a day that a QVC box had not found its way to my mother's house. It was the highlight of her day. So she couldn't wait to show me the diamond necklace. As time went on, Babette's health continued to decline. Mother felt bad about even leaving her for a few minutes. Every fall, our family took a trip to the mountains to see the leaves as they were changing. But as that time approached, mother was a little scared of leaving Babette.

Daddy said, why don't you just take Babette with us, bring her on a trip? So we did. Deborah and I lived in Atlanta at the time, and my sister and her family lived in Athens. Daddy and mother decided to bring Babette and they drove to our house. We greeted them outside, and frail little Babette had to use the restroom. So mother put her down on our front lawn and she took three steps and just flat out died right in front of all of us.

Horror came across Mother's face, as did it ours. She was mortified, crying. We couldn't console her. She said she wasn't going on the trip. It was going to be canceled. I thought, what are we going to do? So I tried to say, well, Mother, we could just bury her here. And she said she's never been to y'all's house in Atlanta. Why would I bury her here? And so Daddy, Deborah, and I had a little conference away from her while she was squalling.

And decided that we could put Babette, wrap her up really good, put her in a cooler. I laugh at this even saying it, but it's the truth. Put her in a cooler and take her with us to the mountain trip. Now keep in mind, we always took a good old Fincher's pork shoulder with us. We grew up eating the barbecue, so it was always a perfect place to get something to take for a picnic or a trip. We always relied on Finchers.

Mark Ballard (04:45.698)
So we now we have two coolers, one with the pork shoulder and one with Babette. We finally got Mother calmed down, loaded up the car, and off to Athens. We went to pick up my sister and her family. We get up there, and you know, everybody's so excited to see everybody. We're looking forward to the trip. And I undo the trunk, and my sister's right there, and she goes, Ooh, what's in that? And I said, a pork shoulder. And she said, Well, what's in that one? And I said, Babette. Shh.

Don't mention it, mother is going to lose it again. She said, Babette is in the cooler? And I said, She died right when they got to our house and we couldn't do anything about it but take her with us. After everybody was in on the fact that we had a dead dog in a cooler in our trunk, we continued our trip to the mountains. It was fun, but though there was a little cloud that hung over the whole thing because we knew that Babette was not at rest.

A week or two later, after we returned from the trip, mother called and said, I got Babette buried in the backyard. And I thought, well, that's great. You seem to be doing better. And she said, Yes. She said, I had to have a little chuckle about it because I thought to myself, one day somebody's gonna be digging in the backyard and come across what they think is a diamond necklace. I never had the nerve to tell Babette it wasn't real. Not long after that, mother felt like she needed another.

animal companion. So she got another poodle named Jean Pierre. That's just John, spelled like Jean, mother's nod to the French. John was totally opposite from Babette. He was pristine white and he hated going to the groomers. Those little tiny bows that they put in, he spent the rest of the afternoon doing his best, pulling out hunks of hair to get them out of his ears. His grooming days were so set in stone.

that their day was planned around it, you know. In fact, the day mother died was one of John Pierre's scheduled grooming appointments. I said, Daddy, I needed to cancel it. I you know he was adamant that we keep the appointment. That's how rigid they were about that appointment. I said, Daddy, mother just died. I feel badly about going over there. Take Babette to the groomers. So off I went, hours after my mom had died.

Mark Ballard (07:05.922)
To the groomers. And of course the first question was, how's your mom? I thought for a second I wasn't going to answer the question, but then I thought she would read about it the next day in the obituaries. So I said, Unfortunately, mother passed away last night. And she said, and you're bringing John to have me groomed? And I said, yes, that's exactly what I told my daddy. John Pierre was a lot of company to my daddy after my mother passed.

They became pals. He came a long way from not wanting a dog in the house to having one by his side at all times. It was a sad day when John passed away and Daddy felt very lonely. Our son Blake had expressed interest in getting a dog an inside dog, and we were like, What? Because my sister says that I forced my kids to live in a museum. Because I'm an artist, I'm a collector of art, I have I like beautiful things.

And she said, I can't even imagine a dog in your house. But I thought, no, I had loosened up and I thought, let's just get a dog. So I definitely wanted to be a rescue dog because we had done so much humane work. In fact, I even designed a car tag featuring a dog and cat and a peach for the state of Georgia to raise funds for the spay neuter program in our state.

So I could not have a dog from a breeder because that's just not what I was about. I was about, you know, dealing with the spay noodle program and trying to work that way from the overpopulation problem we have with animals. I certainly wanted to practice what I preached, so I wanted to do a rescue. I put the word out to some of my friends in the humane organizations I worked with and said, I would like a little small dog we can have for inside. A couple of weeks went by and then

This lady called me with a real kind, meek voice, and she said, Is this Mark Bellor? And I was Yes. And she said, I have a little dog that I think you'll like. His name is Georgie. It's a deer, deer as an animal, shawa. And I thought, a deer chihuahua. And what that means is he had longer legs and looked more like a deer than the like apple head shawawas. And she said, I have two children. They were like toddlers. And she said, I they wanted him for Christmas. So she bought him, I think, at like Petland or something.

Mark Ballard (09:21.59)
And she said he had all his papers. His mother's name was Vanilla Buttercup and his daddy was Tan Man Chucky. So there I am doing all this work for Spay Nooder, and you know, the dog that they have found me is fully pedigreed with papers. So Deborah and I rode out to the co it was out in the country. Rode out there, I knocked on the door and I could see the children.

With a thing of Parmesan cheese, like you would shake on pizza or something, chasing Georgie with horror on his face all throughout the house. And she said, It breaks my heart, but I just think they're too rough on him and he needs a new home. So we we liked him immediately. He was white and had caramel-colored spots here and there. And we brought him back to make it. So I decided to stop by my dad's house, because I had asked my daddy if he wanted

another dog since he had you know since John Pierry died and he said, No, I'm not gonna take care of anything else. I don't want any more animals in this house. I'm not gonna do it. So I wanted to show him before we showed Blake. So we pulled up to Daddy's house and I walked in and for a split second y he thought we had bought him the dog. Then he caught himself and said no and I said, Well this is for Blake, you know, and he

So no, that's right. But in hindsight, I wish sometimes that I had let him have the dog because he said he didn't want it, but I didn't know until I saw his face that he probably would have welcomed him with open arms. But anyhow, it became Blake's dog and he trained it to jump it could jump. It had g had those legs that were l very long, and we had an island in the center of our kitchen, and b Blake put on shows for the neighborhood kids where he would use put a hold of a treat on the other side of the island. They would all stand over there and you literally would just see this.

white dog with caramel colored spots jumping up, grabbing the tree and going down, kinda like a dolphin does in the water. But it was like, you know, three or four feet he would leap. We we live in a area in an old home in an area where there's a lot of traffic, so I knew I wanted to have some invisible fencing to go in the backyard in case he you know, he went out to do his business and whatnot. So we did the invisible fence and I really think you should just be able to rent invisible fence because the one time the dog gets zapped the

Mark Ballard (11:36.812)
They're never going to that area again. I think I got zapp more than he did. A couple of times I was holding Georgie, would walk out of the backyard to talk to one my neighbors and just both of us just went, you know, with the electricity. It was just a mild little touch, so don't get nervous. But Georgie didn't you know, he would never leave the surroundings. He just had a little mean touch to him though. He would turn on you like a python. We still have mail that comes through our front door and they hand deliver it.

He could be anywhere in this house and when he heard that mail slide open, that little squeak, and then the mail dropped, he thought it was an intruder and shredded our mail. All the magazines, you would come up there to a ferocious little paper was flying and everything else. And I sat him down one day and I said, Georgie, and yes, we do talk to our dogs in the South. I sat him down and I said, Georgie, if you do have to shred something, shred the bills. Don't shred the magazines. He never got that concept.

We decided we would take him to training so he could be more where he wouldn't bite everybody that came to the house. And so we went to Petsmart and they said, Bring your dog's favorite treats. Well we what he loved was peanut butter. So we brought a box of those little tiny nut or butter peanut butter cookies. And everybody looked around everybody else in the class looked around at us like, What are you doing? They had like, you know, treats that were made especially for dogs and, you know, didn't have any byproducts and blah blah blah. And we're sitting there giving them a cookie, you know.

Hey and he failed the class and somebody came up to me, that's been years ago. Somebody came up to me and said, We were training with you and your dog. And I was like, Well, she said, We never got over that nut or butter thing. I'm like, Okay. Well, Blake moved away to college and Georgie stayed with us. And he even had a Facebook page. And for those of you that don't know me, I was on television, so I had a big following. So everybody was interested in Georgie. So

He had his own little page. We kept up with everything about his adventures and all that. All that stuff, just like humans, all that stuff that we do to our bodies when we're younger comes back to haunt us. And all that jumping that Blake had showed him how to do that was so interesting and so fun when he was young had taken a toll on his knees. And one day he jumped off the bed and I heard something pop and he completely could not walk. And he was getting down and we knew the time was near.

Mark Ballard (14:00.044)
So Deborah was out of town on work and I was in the middle of a Christmas show in making at our Centriplex. And I took him to the veterinarians because I wanted them to keep I didn't want anybody else to keep him 'cause I knew he was bad off and I knew they could handle it. So they called me early one morning before I was went down to town and said, He's not doing good at all and to be honest with you, I think this would be a good time to, you know, put him down.

So I called Deborah and she just went ballistic upset and said, I'm not even there. And I was like, Deborah, I've got to go. I've got a show. And so we made the decision, which I think was a good one to having put down. And then they handled all that. And I decided I was not going to mention him at the show for three days because everybody would know wanna know how Georgie was doing. And blah, blah, blah. All day Friday I did not mention him. Deborah had returned home. All day Saturday we did not mention him. Sunday was actually Georgie's birthday.

And so as I was looking at his Facebook page Sunday morning before going downtown, I said, Deborah, people are wishing Georgia a happy birthday on Facebook. And I said, we can't have them wishing happy birthday to a doll, a dead dog, you know. I said, we're gonna have to say something. You know, so we decided on Sunday that we would tell people, I think I did a little post, you know, that he had passed away and how sorry we were. I mean, he was a celebrity, there's no doubt about it.

And we cried all day Sunday, but at least it wasn't Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. After Georgie died, we felt like, or I should say I felt like, we needed a little some space. We had had animals, they, you know, we needed to just have me and Deborah, both kids were gone. We just wanted some time with no responsibility of a pet.

And that went on for about two years until Deborah had her knee replaced and had several complications from it, so she was having lots of surgeries. And she looked at me one night, just kind of depressed and said almost through tears in her eyes and said, I want a dog. You know, because you know, when you were having convalescing from surgery or sick or something, those dogs can our southern dogs especially can be a comfort to us. You know, I've part of the family. And so she loves snuggling up with him and

Mark Ballard (16:12.514)
Kinda like having a little teddy bear doll. He he was comfort to her. And I said, Well, Deborah, I just don't know if I'm up to it, but she kind of broke me a little bit with almost tears, which I'm sure were planned. So she put the word out behind my back to our friends and said, If y'all hear of a dog that's available and we wanted now that we'd had the chihuahua, we definitely wanted another chihuahua. We love chihuahuas. They are so fun. One day I was in the back of the house and shaving, getting ready to go somewhere. Deborah was on, you still

convalescing, she was in her bedroom and I hear the back doorbell ringing. I'm thinking, my gosh, what who could that be? So I go to the door, you know, half my face has got shaving cream on it, the other doesn't. And it's one of our good friends standing there with a black shawa. And I was like, I just didn't know what to say because and I could hear Deborah was coming. So I should have known something was up since she was actually getting out of bed. And I just slammed the door right in her face. And I said, no, no, no. And so she Deborah said, Open that door and

She opened the door, and when we saw Bandit, he never left. Deborah knew it would work, and that's exactly what she did. Bandit Ballard not only lives in our house, we live in his. I mean, he rules this entire house. He even has a double bed that he sets up throne on because he feels he's tiny, he's on like six pounds. He feels taller and more like at our level if he's on the bed. So he's his little tiny legs are not able to jump like his predecessor Georgie.

So you have to actually pick him up and put him on the bed and then he gets mad if one of us wants to get in the bed or whatever, like we're impeding on his space or something. For those of you that have chihuahuas, you know that they think anytime we eat, they're supposed to be eating. So anytime that Deborah and I we get ready to eat, we have to fix him something at the same time, otherwise we'll get those big brown eyes looking at us like, have you forgotten me?

Deborah and I travel a lot with our work. So there's times we're gone, sometimes two weeks at a time, sometimes a week, sometimes a few days, and we knew we had to find someone to keep bandit while we were gone. Now, if we can take him with us, you know, and the hotel allows animals, he sits right in the middle of us and his little carrier driving down the road. But when that is not possible, we had to reach out and see who we could find. So one of our good friends, Libby,

Mark Ballard (18:29.694)
is an animal activist herself and does all kind of humane work. She lives kind of out in the country, so Bandit thinks that's his country home. She said, I'll be glad to keep it in mind thinking, you don't know what you're getting into. But they've met, loved each other. In fact I think he loves her even more, and he calls her Aunt Libby.

I do want to say that he has never been a dog to walk on a leash. He has never been a dog to do any exercise. He goes out, does his business. I you know I had to pick him up, go take him out. He goes, does his business, pick him up, bring him in, put him on the bed, and that's the that's the extent of his exercise. So now that he has that second home out in the country, he's you know feels like a real dog, I think. He comes home thinking he's a real dog because she lets sent Rome a little in the front yard and everything. She sent

A picture of him, she was, of him like rolling, a little video rolling around in the grass. And I was like, Deborah, is that bandit? So the first time we picked him up, he was on the front porch with Libby. They were watching hummingbirds. She has a lot of hummingbird feeders, and we pull in the driveway, the long driveway, and he cocks that head because he hears a car coming, starts barking, defending him and his Aunt Libby and his house, his country house, and those hummingbirds. Deborah rolls down the window and says, Bandit! And he hears her voice. He left.

Off of the front porch onto the sidewalk, as fast as his four little legs would go, he ran, ran, ran to Deborah and just jumped in her lap. It made her feel so good. And I was like, Look, Deborah, he can run. We literally had never seen him run. We had never seen him even bust into a jog. He went to a straight run, so that proved to me he could do it. Sometimes when we are in town,

Libby will text and go, I need some bandit time. Can he come over for a sleepover? And we're like, okay. So we take him up there and he has a few days with her. And he is something else. And yes, I mentioned this earlier. In the South, our pets are part of our family. If I'm here by myself and ever's doing something else or in another part of the house, I talk to him just like he's a person. And he will look at you with those brown eyes, caught that head, and you almost are just waiting. I just expect one day he's gonna

Mark Ballard (20:39.468)
Talk back. I do get blamed for the fact that he likes to cuss because Deborah says that he got all that cussing from me because I, you know, I never did it on TV and I don't do a lot in public, but when I'm in my house, I cuss and bandit has picked it up, you know, a little habit, a little bad habit. In fact, Deborah says the next thing I need to do is cooking and cussing, crafting and cussing, writing and cussing. So I might have a whole new career coming up.

But I know this has resonated with some of you dog lovers out there and even cat lovers and animal lovers, period, to know how special they are to us. But in the South, they are definitely a member of our family.

Thanks for joining our conversation. One of my favorite things to do is share tales of our unique south. I hope you're going to come back because there's always more. Thank you to our sponsors at Carlisle Place at Home. Check out at Mark Creates on Instagram and shop my artwork on Etsy. Hosted by Mark Ballard, Genuinely Southern is a podcast by Creek Media.

The show is produced by Mark and Deborah Ballard and produced and edited by Stephanie Shadden. Follow us on social media at JenSouthPod and message us with questions you'd like to hear discussed on future episodes. Engage with us, like us, subscribe, share with a friend. Be sure to stream this and more podcasts you may love at streamthecreek.com.