by Colleen Sell
The wet earth steamed like a teakettle in the sun's glare, and the loft grew stuffy and humid. The air in the barn was full of dust mites and the sweet tickle of hay. We were sneezing, sticky with sweat, itchy from rolling in the hay, and yearning for a splash in that cool water. It was time to get down to the creek and jump in. The closest way to the creek was straight through the forbidden south pasture, of course. We stood in the shaded doorway of the barn, considering our options.
“Well, I guess we could take the trail around the fence line and through the woods,” Sally offered unenthusiastically.
“Y-e-a-h,” I replied reluctantly. “We don't want to run into that bull. It sure is the long way around, though.” I lifted my hair off the back of my sweaty neck, hoping for a breeze.
“Sure is,” sighed Sally. “And it's so hot! I don't even see that bull, do you?”
We clambered up on the wooden fence and peered up and down the pasture. As far as we could see, there was no sign of a grumpy bull. Most of the field was open and grassy, except for some short, flimsy mesquite trees at the far end. We perched on the top rail, the summer sun beating down on our backs and shoulders.
“I don't see anything,” I declared. “He's too big to hide behind those skimpy little trees, don't you think?”
Sally squinted down the pasture. “Maybe Dad decided to put him somewhere else, in case we forgot.” She chewed on the end of one long auburn pigtail, trying that thought on for size.
“Maybe so,” I agreed, gazing judiciously across the field. “There are some muddy spots, but the pasture's not nearly as bad as the trail will be. Our shoes will be covered in mud by the time we get to the creek, if we take the long way.”
“That's right,” said Sally, nodding her head decisively. “Mom will kill me if I get mud all over these new tennis shoes. We could cut across the corner of the field, so we won't hardly be in the pasture at all … just a few minutes at the most. I'm sure Dad must have moved him, 'cause I don't see that bull anywhere.”
Her eyes met mine, and we both grinned.
“Let's go!” she said, grabbing my hand.
We jumped from the top rail, our feet squishing in the saturated earth as we landed. We headed for the fence on the opposite side, trying to step on the patches of grass and stay out of the mud, all the while glancing toward the far end of the pasture and keeping an eye out for the bull that probably wasn't even there, anyway.
He was. We were halfway across the field when Bill began to bark wildly and push against our legs, as if urging us on.
“Stop it, Bill,” snapped Sally, swatting at him. “You're going to push us into the mud! … Uh-oh.”
Hearing the tone in her voice, I turned to see the bull breaking out of the mesquite cover and thundering toward us at an alarming speed, his one very sharp horn pointed in our direction. We both screamed and ran for the fence, but we hit a large patch of mud that stuck to our shoes and began to build up on them, slowing us down. I quite literally ran out of my loafers, leaving them buried in the gummy black clay of the south pasture. Even so, I could tell I wasn't going to make it, and Sally's flying pigtails were only a step ahead of me.
I shut my eyes and flung myself toward the fence, rolling on the ground in hopes the bull would turn aside or jump over me. I heard a low growl and an earsplitting, furious bellow and opened my eyes to see Bill leap through the air and sink his teeth deep into the bull's nose, his weight swinging the bull's head right around in the opposite direction. Sally scrambled over the fence, and I rolled under. We crouched, breathless, peeking between the boards as the bull roared and bucked and shook his head, doing his best to dislodge that demon hanging onto his nose! He was no longer interested in us at all.
“Run, Bill, run!” we shrieked in unison, jumping up and down like mud-covered cheerleaders.
Bill let go, dropped to the ground, and led the bull on a merry chase across the pasture away from us, weaving back and forth, easily dodging that angry horn. At the far end of the pasture, he scooted under the fence and trotted back toward us, mission accomplished. The bull bellowed and snorted, tossing his head and pawing the ground where Bill had escaped.
Here came our hero, tail wagging, panting happily, a big grin on his proud, intelligent face. We hugged him and praised him and promised him every doggie treat imaginable, while he licked our faces affectionately as if to say, “No big deal. I was just doing my job.”
If only he could have saved us from Sally's dad when we had to explain our muddy clothes to him. Bill got a whole bowl of Milk-Bones, and we got no sleepovers, no swimming in the creek, and no visits for a whole week. I got my muddy loafers back, and the bull got the south pasture all to himself for the rest of the summer.
˜Carolyn Blankenship
For the Love of a Dog
The first time I had to prove my love, it was a painful, but very rewarding, experience. On that mild autumn afternoon in my Midwestern hometown, I experienced one of those coming-of-age transformations you might read about in a book.
Although I rarely found myself home alone, my parents, two brothers, and sister had gone shopping, and I was left behind to study for a test. As I sat alone at the dining room table, I debated between going to ride my bike and studying the next three chapters in my seventh grade English book. A loud yelp pierced the silence.
My golden retriever let out a mournful howl, which I could hear as if he were beside me. Jumping up, I walked quickly to the back window. Champ's barking was much louder as I entered the kitchen. I realized his bark sounded strange. Leaning over the sink, I peered into the backyard. A bizarre scene stunned me. Champ hung upside down with his right hind leg caught in one of the top rungs of our wire-mesh fence. Panicked, I pushed away from the countertop, blasted through the backdoor, and raced across the yard. Champ yelped wildly.
Struggling to grasp how a harmless, waist-high fence between our yard and our neighbor's had become a steel trap, I wondered whether I could help or whether I would make things worse. My heart raced as I fought panic. Could his leg be broken? Would it break if I tried to move it? Champ's painful predicament overwhelmed me, but I could not stand idle and watch as my friend suffered.
“What happened, boy?” I reached out to touch him and let him know help had arrived. I quickly drew back when he growled.
Ignoring the warning, I tried again, holding out my right hand to show I was not a threat. Champ whimpered. I moved my hand closer, inching toward his shoulder.
“It's okay, boy. We'll fix this.” Confidently, I reached closer. In an instant, Champ's sharp teeth lashed out and chomped down on my fingers. Yelling a whole string of curse words, I yanked my hand away from the jaws.
“Damn! That hurt! Why did you do that, you dumb dog? Stupid dog! I'm tryin' to help ya', boy,” I choked out as anger spilled from my mouth like the blood streaming from my hand.
Pain shot up my arm and tears welled up in my eyes, but I refused to wimp out. Although I was angry at Champ for getting into such a mess and for biting me so viciously, I could not leave him alone. Looking away from my injury and into Champ's glazed eyes, I realized he had to be in tremendous pain to bite me. The pressure of the moment almost paralyzed me, but I knew I had to act. I could not wait for hours until Dad came home to fix things. I decided I could put my pain on hold, hoping my buddy knew I was there to rescue him.
“I'm gonna' get ya' outta' there, boy, but it may hurt a bit.”
I looked down at my wound and squeezed my hand so the trickling blood would stop. Then I sucked on the wound and spit out the blood.
Before I moved toward Champ again, I studied how his leg was caught in the fence. He was always jumping over the fence into the neighbor's yard. This time, though, he'd slipped and not cleared the top. The rectangular openings, about three inches wide, were enough to allow his leg to pass through. As Champ's weight carried him down, his hind leg twisted and wedged into the fence in a freakish accident, and the blood-stained steel ripped into his leg.
/> Though I knew I needed to act, I still hesitated. It ran against the grain of good sense to deliberately allow a dog to bite me. But this was my dog. This was my best friend.
Getting an idea, I ripped off my flannel shirt and wrapped it around my injured hand.
“Okay, big guy, we'll see if you can bite through this,” I said as I stepped forward and reached for Champ. He snarled and bit me again, sinking his teeth into the flannel. Pain shot through my tender hand. Determined, I moved in closer, causing Champ's jaws to open. He barked and snapped wildly.
“It's okay, boy. I'm gonna help you.” I was shaking, but I spoke in a soothing voice, sensing he was terrified. But it just made him start to writhe around, which I knew would only aggravate the pain.
Moving as quickly as I could, I reached my arms under Champ and felt his teeth chomping into the soft fleshy part of my exposed arm. I turned my head away from his snout to protect my face. Getting a secure hold of his body, I pressed him against my chest to bear his weight. I first lifted him a bit to lessen the pressure on his leg and then rotated him around and up to maneuver his bleeding leg through the steel trap. Champ immediately broke free from my arms and landed upright, on all fours, on the ground. I was amazed that his leg seemed all right. He limped a little, but was wagging his tail and jumping up on me.
I knelt down and put my arms around Champ, who busily licked my face. As we rolled around in the grass, the tension and the pain vanished. I knew my best friend would be okay.
As he slobbered all over my face, I remembered the first time I'd picked up the little butterscotch-colored fur ball amidst the other pups at the kennel. My heart had gone out to him. Dad had cautioned me then that being responsible for a living creature would require personal sacrifices. I'd never imagined it would require shedding blood.
I don't remember the grade on my English test the next day, but I must have passed. The bigger test had come the day before — when my heart and my friendship were on the line. My love for my dog gave me the strength to willingly sacrifice my well-being for his. Though the pain had been intense, I would do it all over again. I would follow my heart and be true to my friend, no matter what. That experience still stands as one of my life's greatest lessons.
˜ Dennis Jamison
Ditto, Darling
Gretchen circled twice and then flopped on the floor at my side of the bed. A sigh three times bigger than her boxer body vented all her stored-up tension. Sometime in early puppyhood, our family pet had made it her life's purpose to see her people settled into bed at the end of the day.
Not that she didn't have many other things to do. A credit to her ancestors, which had been selectively bred from early eighteenth-century Germany, Gretchen was built like a coiled spring. Pushed to describe her in one word, I would have to say “effervescent.” Brave and loyal, she was made for fun and play. An ambitious daily schedule kept her on the run all day long. Before the final farewell of the setting sun, she would dash across fields, visit with neighbors, bully birds at the stream, chase cows, and dodge squealing granddaughters whirling on the tire swing.
After sundown, the urgings of her own dreamland were barred by the fact that all her humans were still awake. Gretchen nudged us off to bed, one at a time. We were slow to realize the concentrated effort she put into herding us to the Land of Nod each and every evening. That loud sigh voiced her thoughts: Phew! Finally! What a day! Then she was off to chase wild rabbits and to howl with phantom wolves in her dreams.
Near the end of Gretchen's puppyhood, we relocated. She helped, bounding from van to house and room to room, her face alive with discovery and infectious joy. The house, set in Washington state's gorgeous orchard country, had a pull-down ladder stairway to the bedroom upstairs. Karen, our youngest, claimed dibs on the roomy attic. A string of helpers carried her belongings up the vertical staircase, organizing a choreographed group effort to get her bed and furnishings up there. Truth be told, it took a group effort to get me up there, vertigo intact. While we off-loaded furniture and boxes and bedsprings, Gretchen's fun ended at the bottom of the stairs each time we ascended into that great gaping maw.
Hubby thought it would be neat if Gretchen would climb the ladder, so he coaxed her with a bite of his banana, unsure whether the fruit would entice her. He actually thought it might take days and days and expensive steak bits to train her, but she whimpered twice and was up the stairs to nab the prize. It surprised her as much as us, especially when she turned around and looked back down. (But that's another banana.)
We taught our pet to speak too. All it took was praise and treats for every accidental noise that resembled dog talk. She spoke on request, as long as she sniffed a dog biscuit tucked in our hand. Pretty soon she assembled sounds in a string of dog language. It seemed natural for us to respond. It led to pleasant conversations, full of lively dialogue.
Oh, how I wish it were as easy training kids. Our daughter Karen, who was approaching the fringes of adulthood, stretched the boundary of our house rules to elastic fatigue on a daily basis. She worked in town, and we lived up a twisty mountain road, and it was winter. Fretting traced lines across my brow every evening from quitting time until she walked in our door. If she went out with friends afterward and didn't call me, and she often didn't, my fears spiraled up the worry scale. Driving on packed snow in subzero temperatures rated a certain level of worry, but worse was the thought of her behind the wheel during a “heat wave” thaw at thirty-two degrees, which created the slipperiest ice of all.
I always knew when Karen got home by our puppy's standard-issue spirited “Welcome home!” Late or not, Gretchen was always just glad to see her favorite human come through the door.
Then came the night when my daughter was later than ever before. Worry escalated to near anguish. I sat up waiting, a knot in my stomach, and read (sort of) and then watched television (not really). One of my envisioned worst-case scenarios saw Karen stuck in the snow; another saw her dangling over the edge somewhere along the twenty-minute drive up our mountain road. Logic insisted that since I hadn't heard from any downhill neighbors, she probably wasn't stuck. The fire in the heater stove died to coals; the chill finally sent me to bed. Gretchen stationed herself in the doorway, her sigh still pent up inside.
It was way past two o'clock in the morning when I heard the front door close ever so gently. Gretchen came uncoiled. She unleashed her wrath in a tirade of doggy whimpers, wa-yaws, and woo-hoos. She scolded Karen for worrying us, for endangering herself, for being out far too late. And furthermore, Karen should not have been out so late on a week night, no matter how grown-up she was getting!
My errant daughter tried to shush Gretchen, but the scolding didn't stop. Gretchen's doggy harangue sounded eerily English: “Where have you been? I've been worried sick!”
I listened from the bedroom, snuggled deep in blankets. Hubby tapped my arm, and we grinned at each other like conspirators.
Gretchen dogged Karen's every step across the dark room. The verbal lashing included every word we'd taught her and a few more besides! Karen had never quite seen her unacceptable behavior in such a light. There was no doubt she'd exceeded the limits, not only in my eyes, but also in Gretchen's.
Karen headed for her stairs. By then, she was past the embarrassment of getting caught and was laughing with disbelief at the comic aspect of the scene. It got worse.
She stepped up the first two stairs. Gretchen leaped around her and beat her to the top. From the landing, the dog loomed over her like an angry mom with arms akimbo and an accusing glare. Gretchen was “in her face” all the way up the stairs.
“Okay! Okay!” Karen begged, finally contrite.
Gretchen's discipline was so effective, I didn't even need to get out of bed. From deep in my warm winter blankets, I lifted my head an inch off the pillow and hollered through the cold night air, “Ditto, darling!”
˜ Ginny Greene
The Anti-Alpha Male
Hey, Rhett,” I rattled the l
eash, calling my ten-year-old golden retriever. My daughter was out on the sidewalk with the latest four-legged addition to our family. “Come see what we just got.”
Although Rhett was always ready for a new adventure, the years had taken a toll on him. He'd lost his spunky physicality, so it took a moment for his pudgy body to stretch and roll. I had no idea how he would react to the feisty, energetic bundle of black Lab/spaniel puppy we'd just rescued from the local animal shelter. Originally, we'd chosen her more lethargic brother, but the humane society officer insisted that since we already had a “big, dominant male,” another boy dog would never work out.
I had laughed at the officer's vision of Rhett. Never in the history of dog-dom had there been a less dominate animal. Rhett was an easygoing, roll-with-the-punches gentleman. After all, he'd grown up with two small children and a canine-controlling cat. Nonetheless, the animal officer overruled my argument, and so girlie little Taylor was ours.
Right off the bat, we figured we'd made a huge mistake. While outside on neutral ground, Taylor and Rhett had sniffed in interested camaraderie, but the instant she entered the house, fluffy, playful Taylor turned into a toothy, bouncy dominatrix. As Rhett headed for his favorite napping spot, Taylor made a flying leap onto his arthritic shoulders. She fastened her stubby paws around his neck and growled hungrily as she began to chew on his floppy ears. Poor Rhett scarcely knew what had hit him. He fell to the floor, desperately trying to see what was going on. Her razor-sharp puppy teeth must have hurt him, although he made no attempt to stop her.
“Shake her off, Rhett,” I instructed. “Bite her back. Show her who's boss.”