Dog Days

  I have loved many dogs. The earliest dog I can remember is Seymore, a border collie that was my constant companion. I fashioned a leash out of some old hay string and taught him to chase the cows out of the garden. He would heel and sit and stay when I yelled for him to do so. I was 4. We gave him to Granny to keep when we moved to Oklahoma. The last time I saw him, I was 10 and he was at Granny’s house. He was wobbly and acted dizzy and Granny told me he was sick and probably had an ear infection. I patted his graying head and ran off to play with my cousins, not realizing it would be my last chance to do so. I don’t know exactly when he died, he was just gone the next time we came to Arkansas. The guilt of this haunts me, of him trying to follow me to Granny’s lake, wobbly and sick and me just running ahead uncaring. Dear heavens, tears fall to my lap as I’m typing this. Who else loves you like a dog?

  Smokey was a huge, beautiful German Shepherd that showed up in Coalgate, Oklahoma.  He was obsessed with Bobbie’s Raggedy Ann doll. He was afraid of storms and would hide in the closet. I wrote Granny a letter, telling her that “Smokey goes THUMP THUMP when he is in the house” and asked about Seymore. Bobbie and Ray wrote similar letters, their childish scrawl proclaiming love for this black and white dog.  

  Sassy showed up about a month after Smokey, a German Shepherd mix puppy. Smokey bit her in the side of the head when she chewed on his injured ear, a remnant of a fight with 2 Pit Bulls. Mom was hugely pregnant with Boo at the time and couldn’t get them apart. Finally, the Pit Bulls gave up and mom drug the injured Smokey home. When Smokey bit Sassy, she seizured and fell unconscious. Mom being so pregnant and Daddy gone working on the oil rigs left me to place Sassy in my bed with me, where she alternated between seizures and sleep. She would cry and whine at times in pain. By morning she seemed ok and kept some food down. I was exhausted and worried about her at school all day.

  We brought Smokey and Sassy home with us to Arkansas. Smokey lasted a few weeks, then tried to bite a neighbor boy that chased Bobbie and I and made us scream. Sassy survived eating fly poison and seizures…getting hit by a truck…we gave her away and I don’t know what happened to her. Another tear just hit my lap.

  Daddy brought Bear home from the humane society when he started working nights. Bear was….huge. Ridiculously huge. He was some sort of Great Dane/Pit Bull/Lab mix. He was solid black until we bathed him, where we found he was actually black with white brindle stripes..probably a nod to the Pit Bull in his lineage. He was sweet and gentle but his mere presence send people fleeing back to their cars. He also hated men with hats for some reason and once when Boo was crying and my cowboy hat wearing Papaw tried to reach for her, Bear lunged at him and snapped at his face, sending Papaw backward. I started to get on to Bear, but Papaw said for me not to, as he felt certain that dog was just doing his job. Bear loved to ride in trucks and often if someone left their door open, he would hop in. That’s what we think happened, the day we came home and he was gone. That’s what we hope, anyway.

   A few years ago, I looked in the front yard and thought OH CRUD!! the kids miniature horse is out!! But upon closer inspection saw a bony, thin, HUGE female replica of Bear. I called her to me and it was obvious she had just had pups. I fed her Granny’s mixture of eggs, bread, and milk and petted her. She stayed for years. We named her Ladybug, a ridiculous name for such a huge dog.  She was sweet and kind and gentle…but her mere presence put people back in their trucks and once I caught her with her nose close to a crack at the chicken house door. We had gotten baby chicks that day and she was waiting for the baby chick to poke it’s head out of the crack, whereupon Ladybug was vacuuming chicks into her mouth and swallowing them whole. She was still young enough to want to play and one evening in the cool of the fall, she and I were running and dodging each other around in the front yard. I had on elastic waisted lounge pants with pockets. She ran up to me and raised up on her hind legs. She stood eye level with six foot tall men when she did that. I dodged to keep her from hitting me in the face with her giant paw…that’s when she, on the way down, caught the pocket of my lounge pants, pulling them and me to the ground. We lay there struggling in the evening sun, her paw still caught in my pocket. Cars were whizzing by, people heading home from their jobs. We got untangled and I got my pants back up while laying on the ground. Ladybug was still trying to play and stomped me a few times and then lay down on top of me. I giggled and petted her, thinking that since I was 38 at the time, I probably should stop with running around with the dogs.

   The list goes on, the strays and the rescued, some given to Clint and I and the kids… Champ. Jake. Rocky. Brownie. Doofus. Dancy. Stinkpot.   Some had to be put down, some disappeared as quietly as they had shown up, here one day, gone the next. We named them after they had been with us a while, showing their personality. Hence “Doofus”, the dumbest, sweetest dog ever. Worst guard dog on record. Wouldn’t bite a biscuit, we like to say.

  We seem to have an affinity for sickly, lame, abused dogs. They find their way here and I can’t stand to see them hungry. I fix them my Granny’s recipe for sick dogs: tear up several pieces of white bread. Break 3-4 eggs over this. Sodden it with milk to the edge of the bowl. Set this down in front of the sick dog. If he won’t eat this, he’s as good as dead. If he eats it, he has a good chance of survival. You offer this to the dog until he’s eating dog food and tolerating it. I have proven this over and over. Dogs that have been fed this and fattened back up will LOVE you forever. They also send psychic rays to OTHER stray sick dogs and this is why we have so many names on my list. And often, it gives them the strength to head on down the road to the next sucker to con into taking them in.   

   I thought about Seymore yesterday while walking chickens. Maggie goes down there with me, she’s 10 years old now. Half Pit Bull, half…something else. Tara picked her out at the Humane Society when she was a puppy. It was love at first sight. She is smart and energetic and a good guard dog, to boot. She’s put many a man back in their truck as they yell at me “does that dog bite?” Depending on whether I like the man or not, I answer “yes” or “no”. She is small and quick and a lethal fighter. She is also the sweetest, most loving dog I know. I’ve watched her recently, this Maggie of ours…she doesn’t just jump over the gate like she used to, she waits for me to open it. She judges the best way to jump up onto the flat bed of the ton truck, preparing and checking to see which way is the lowest for her to jump. She wants to sleep inside now when it’s cold, and gets up more slowly. Her muzzle is graying. Clint says she acts more elderly and decrepit for me and he’s right. She will limp and act like she can’t stand the cold. I will let her in and cover her with a blanket. Then, Clint comes home and starts up the Kubota and she’s up like a SHOT and JUMPS over the gate and happily flies around with him checking cows in the snow.

  Maggie came inside the chicken houses with me and slowly walked the length of them. Back and forth. Right behind me. I stopped occasionally and petted her. She doesn’t bother the chickens, they scatter as she trots thru them. She usually doesn’t come inside the houses, she mostly waits outside and barks when people pull up. So I pondered Maggie following me and thought about Seymore and my missed opportunity to love on him.

     So I sat, right on the ground in the chicken houses and called Maggie to me. She climbed up in my lap, all fat 40 pounds of her, fat with dog food and chickens… and tried to kiss my face. I’m sure my tears were salty to her and we leaned to each other, touching foreheads.  I whispered endearing things to her and petted her down her back.  Tears fell on her and she sighed like she was sad, too. I thought about my grown kids and how Maggie had loved them. How Tara picked her out and Trevor would let her lay on his bed. How they would play with her, down at the creek and sic her on possums and squirrels.  Does she miss them, too?  Does she notice I think twice before I jump up on the back of the flat bed? That I don’t step up onto the deck like I used to, that now I brace myself carefully? Does she see my measured steps off the tractor, careful in my steps?  Does she see I am slower now, sometimes in pain from cold weather? Does she see me light up and feel younger when I see the man I love and hop on the Kubota with him and check the cows?

    I think about this and I think about Seymore…and me, in the summer sun,  four years old, a hay rope in my hand, running along barefoot to the creek, chasing cows.

                                                                Stay, Seymore. Stay.