Fair warning: This is no feel-good story. I decided to put all my sad endings in one post, so I would remember to never read it again. You might want to do the same.
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Contact with dogs came early in my memory.
Spot was an aging, cancer-eaten long haired dog, nearing the end, faintly
recalled in my early recollections. Not so faintly recalled is the rifle shot
that ended his suffering existence.
Snippy was a short haired, black, chunky
feist. He was a dandy squirrel dog without a hunter. Harold, my older brother,
his hunting partner, had gone off to college. Snippy spent his days, lying in
the warm sun, dreaming of days gone by. On cold winter nights, he would jump up
through the open crib door into the barn, work his way into the hayloft, and
burrow in for the night. One very cold winter morning, with the temperature hovering
near the single digits, I approached the barn. Then I saw him. Snippy lay,
curled up in the snow, frozen solid. Above him was a closed, and latched, crib
door.
My very first dog of my own was Champ. I
built Champ a house, painted his name over the door. We wrestled and played,
getting closer daily. As Barbara and I rode to the cucumber patch one morning,
Champ followed. When we arrived, I said, “Let me out so I can watch after champ
while you make the turn.” I was too late. Bumped and knocked off balance by a
front wheel, the rear wheel ran over his snout. Champ got up, walked a few
steps, looked at me, and I saw the light fade from his eyes. Slowly he fell. I
raced to kneel beside Champ, my shaking hand feeling a faint heartbeat fading away.
It was a long time before the memory of Champ began to fade.
When I got Tooter, he was an eight week
old, part German Shepherd pup. He had a black and white cross on his chest. I
carried him, resting on my forearm, the two miles back to our farm. As Tooter
grew, he learned quickly. He became my constant companion as we hunted, fished,
and trapped – or just roamed the bottoms and mountains for the fun of it. He
quickly learned to “stand,” “heel,” and “back
up.” Tooter was my best friend as I grew up. Early one summer morning,
after my freshman year of college, a loud disruption awoke me one morning at
daylight. I ran to the yard wiping the sleep from my eyes. Two large coyotes
held Tooter, strung out between them. When I hollered, they dropped him and
ran. Tooter chased one of them down, and grabbing him by the throat, began to
choke the life from him. I pulled Tooter back, and the coyote melted into the
woods.
Over a period of
days, Tooter seemed to be getting better. One morning, Tooter leaped from a
load of cattle feed in our truck, yelping loudly with pain. He limped to the
porch, and lay down. Soon, he was unable to get up. I carried Tooter to the
cool cellar. He got worse. As I checked on ;him during the night, he became
weaker. At daylight, he was gone. That day, I buried tooter under the large
tree overlooking the valley and the bottoms we had roamed so many times. Tooter
had seen me through my growing up years. His job was done. Now I was a man. I
must go on from here alone.
After Barbara and
I married and built a home out in the country so that our children could grow
up as country kids, we decided to get a big dog. Buster was half husky – half
collie. He was a good dog. The kid's loved him. One day he showed up limping
real bad, and we could tell he had a broken leg. We figured a car must have hit
him. Well, the kids were crazy about Buster, so we took him to the vet. He put
a pin in his leg, and he told us we had to keep him confined tightly for
several weeks. We had a pen, but Buster had other ideas. He would just chew his
way right through the gate. Time after time. Well, finally, we figured the bone
should be healed, so we let him out. A day or two later, Corey started backing
up his car, (before reverse went out) and Buster was underneath. When he heard
Buster scream, he stopped the car, but Buster was under a wheel. I was not
there, and it took all three of them to push the car off him. We took him back
to the vet, and he put a pin back in his leg. A couple of weeks later, we let him
out of the pen. A couple of days after that, he was not feeling good. Wouldn't
eat. He walked up the sidewalk toward Barbara and Kinley. He looked up at
Barbara and Kinley, the light left his eyes, and he fell over dead. We figured
he had just had more trauma than he could stand.
Our other dog,
Midnight, was building a bad reputation. He was a high powered lover. Some of
the neighbors had purebred females, and they didn't want a mongrel like
Midnight around when the females were in heat. They penned them up. But that
didn't stop Midnight. The next morning, he would sometimes be in the pen with
the female. Another neighbor had a female in heat, and I tied midnight up. He
chewed the rope in two and still got to the female. After that happened a few times,
Midnight just disappeared one day. We never knew who. But we had a pretty good
idea who. Actually, I now know for sure. And just let me take this opportunity
to call you a sorry, egg-sucking, #!**@&^ch!
Another small
dog just showed up one day, half starved. We took him in. Since he was brand
new, Barbara named him Booker Brand New. We got that from a classmate of
Corey's, Booker. Booker showed up at school one day with brand new tennis
shoes, and all his friends teased him about being "Booker Brand New."
That phrase just stuck in our family. Anyway, Booker Brand New had obviously
been living on his own in the woods for a long time, and he had a ton of
strange hang ups. Booker Brand New stuck with us, though. Must have had to do
with being able to eat regular for a change. We soon learned he could not be
fastened up in the house. One very cold night, we “did him a favor” by letting
him hang out in the laundry room. The entire vinyl floor was torn up the next
morning. His hangups just caused him to go crazy, We never again intentionally
allowed him in the house. "Having more hangups than Booker Brand New”
became another catch phrase.
Barbara wanted city water and cable TV, so I spent ten
months at hard labor building her a house in town. We sold our house in the
country.
We were in the process of moving out. While loading up our
stuff on our pickup, Booker Brand New must have sneaked in, unseen, and hid in
the house. We locked up and hauled that load. When we got back, Booker Brand
New had torn the vinyl floor up down to the concrete around to the front door.
We found one small piece of left-over matching vinyl, just large enough. Our
friend who had put the floor down in the first place matched it up and did a
great job of repairing it.
Corey and Christi had now married, and they needed a house,
and the people who bought ours sold their house to Corey and Christi, and one
day we all just counted "One – two – three – GO!!" and we all moved.
The people who bought our house agreed to keep Booker Brand New, as he was in
no way, shape, or fashion a dog that could be penned up. Or live in town. That
was good. We didn't have a fenced yard, anyway. After we all got moved and
settled a little, our buyers called us one day. Booker Brand New was just not
compatible with their dog, with all his hangups. We had to find a new home for
him. Well, Kinley's friend agreed to take him. He lived in the country, and it
seemed everyone was going to live happily ever after. Kinley and I took Booker
Brand New out to his new home, introduced him to his new owner, and said
goodbye. I told the new owner, "Might be a good idea to hold onto him
until we get gone. He may try to follow us." After we had gotten a long
way down the road, we could see a dot in the distance, chasing after us. I told
Kinley, "Well, lets just outrun him, and he'll go back to his new
home." When we got back to town, we called the new owner. "He never
came back," he said. So we went out and looked. And we looked. Around the
new home, around his old home. But he was never to be found. Booker Brand New
was never to be seen, or heard of, again. I still have nightmares about that
little tiny dot, in the distance, chasing after us as hard as he could. We did
Booker Brand New bad. Really bad.
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