I said, “Tad, leave the answering machine alone.” He looked at me and then turned back to the answering machine, digging at it furiously. When it repeated the same message, he ran to me and then ran back to the answering machine, waiting for me to do something. I realized he wanted to hear Kayla talking, but I had erased themessage.
I called Kayla that night and asked her to call Tad and leave him a message. I explained that Tad had listened to her message, but I had erased it. When he tried to listen to it again and didn’t hear hermessage, he had been unhappy.
Kayla called Tad and left a specialmessage for himthat he can play and listen to whenever he wants to hear Kayla’s voice. We call it puppy love, twenty-first-century style!
Zardrelle Arnott
Bubba’s Last Stand
A dog is a dog except when he is facing you. Then he is Mr. Dog.
Haitian saying
During the four years I spent as an animal control officer, I learned that dogs are the first to know when spring has arrived. Dogs who never venture farther than their own backyards will somehow find themselves across town following the scent of spring. Bubba was no exception.
Each year, animal control received several phone calls complaining about Bubba—always in the spring. Bubba, an ancient, overweight and most often cranky bulldog with a profound underbite, snored in the shade of his yard all summer, and seemed content to stay behind his fence during the winter. But as soon as it began to thaw, Bubba began to terrorize the city.
Actually, Bubba was too old to terrorize anyone. His once tan and brindle coat was mixed with so much gray that he appeared at least twenty years old, and I noticed the beginning of a limp that had the definite look of arthritic hips. He never chased anyone; I don’t think he could have if he tried. Still, his appearance and his perpetual nasal congestion, combined with his bad attitude, made people uncomfortable when he got loose.
Sometimes he would get it in his head to sit outside the local deli and glare. The deli owners tried throwing roast beef at him but he just sniffed at it, gobbled it up, growled and stayed right where he was. Most people just got out of his way when they saw him coming; then they called animal control.
His owner, Tim—a thin, silent man who appeared ageless in that way men do after working outdoors most of their lives—usually showed up at the pound, apologized, asked someone to tell me to drop off his ticket and took Bubba home. He wrapped his thin arms around Bubba’s very large middle and heaved him into the back of his pickup truck. He never complained, never asked for a court date. He just apologized and paid his fines.
Tim didn’t seem the kind of person who would be interested in having a pet, especially one as difficult as Bubba. Tim lived alone in a large dilapidated Victorian house that was in a perpetual state of renovation. He had never married, and no one really remembered if he had any family. He didn’t seem comfortable showing affection to anyone, least of all a fat, grumpy bulldog. And Bubba never let anyone touch him, except for Tim, and even then he didn’t look too happy about it. Yet year after year Tim spent a lot of time leaving work to come and drag his grouchy, old dog home.
One spring, it seemed as though Bubba had finally gone into retirement, only growling at passersby from the comfort of his yard. That was why I was a bit surprised when I got a call on an unusually warm June day that a very ugly, old, fat and wheezing bulldog was causing a problem up at the high school. How did he get all the way up there? I thought to myself as I drove to the school. The route from Bubba’s home to the high school was all uphill. I had seen Bubba recently, and he surely didn’t look as if he could make a trip like that.
I pulled into the high school parking lot and saw the gymnasiumdoors open, probably for a cross-breeze. Bubba must have entered the school through the gym. This should be fun. I grabbed a box of dog biscuits and the snare pole and threw a leash around my neck. No animal control officer had ever actually touched Bubba. The equipment was going to be of no real use—he would likely never let me near him. I had to figure out a way to get him to want to leave. I hoped the biscuits would do the job. Entering the hallway, I saw lines of teenagers standing in suspended animation along the walls. One called out to me, “Every time we even go to open our lockers, that dog growls at us. He’s going to eat us!”
Sure enough, there was Bubba—holding the entire hallway hostage. I could see himstanding, bowlegged, wheezing like I had never heard him before, and growling at any sudden movement. Uh-oh, I thought to myself. Frightening the occasional neighbor was one thing, but growling at kids on school property—Bubba was looking at some serious penalties, possibly even a dangerous-dog action complaint, which was a rare occurrence, but one with dire consequences if he was found guilty.
“Bubba,” I called to him, and he managed to twist his pudgy body around to see who knew his name. He looked at me, wheezed some more and growled loudly. I reached into the box of biscuits and threw one over to him. He limped over to it slowly, sniffed it, sneezed and sat down glaring at me. So much for Plan A. I was going to have to use the snare pole on him and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
Suddenly from behind me, I heard, “Hey, ugly dog. Try this.” A tall teenage boy put his hand into a Baggie and threw a Froot Loop at Bubba. Bubba stared at the cereal, then up at the boy. He snuffled around it, picked it up and swallowed it. I turned to the tall boy leaning against the wall. “Can I borrow those?”
“Sure.” He handed me the Baggie, and I threw a Froot Loop toward Bubba. He waddled over to suck it up off the floor. I kept dropping them as I backed toward the open doors of the gym. Bubba was in bad shape; his bowed legs seemed to have a hard time holding up his rotund body. Every step seemed to cause him pain, and the wheezing was getting worse. I wanted to pick him up, but as I started to approach, he growled and backed up. So I continued to drop one Froot Loop at a time, inching my way toward the patrol car. Finally, Bubba was at the car. He was wheezing so much I worried he would have a heart attack. I decided to just get him home and worry about the report later: Bubba was fading fast.
I threw what was left of the Froot Loops into the backseat of the car. Bubba waddled over and stuck his two front paws on the floor to finish them up. I swallowed hard and quickly pushed Bubba’s rear end into the backseat. He grumbled and growled, but was mostly concerned with chewing the last bit of cereal. I couldn’t believe it—I had touched Bubba and survived!
By the time I pulled up in front of Bubba’s house, Tim’s truck was parked haphazardly in front. Tim ran out of the house, letting the door slam behind him. “Is Bubba okay? I called the school, but you had already left. I’ll pay the fine, whatever it is. Give me a couple of ’em. How did he get out of the house? I can’t believe he made it all the way to the high school. He’s so sick. How’d you get him in the car anyway?” Tim spoke more in that minute than I had ever heard him speak in the several years I had known him.
Before I could answer, Tim walked over to the patrol car and opened the door. Bubba was snoring loudly, sound asleep on his back covered in Froot Loop crumbs and looking very un-Bubba-like. Tim put his arms around the old dog and with a lot of effort pulled him out of the car, holding him as you would an infant. Bubba never even woke up, just grumbled a bit in his sleep.
“I, um, used Froot Loops. He followed a trail of them into the car,” I said.
Tim lifted his eyes from the sleeping dog to look at me. “Froot Loops? I didn’t know he liked Froot Loops.”
The lines in Tim’s pale face seemed deeper in the harsh sunlight. He looked tired; more than that, he looked worried. “I can’t believe he got out. I had him locked in the house with the air conditioner on.” Tim’s voice dropped, “The vet says he has cancer. They told me to take him home from the animal hospital for the weekend, you know, to say good-bye.”
I looked at Tim holding his old, fat, gray bulldog. Suddenly, I understood what I hadn’t before. All those years that had etched the premature lines on Tim’s sad face—Bubba had been there to share
them. They had each other, and for them, that had been enough.
“I’m so sorry, Tim,” I said and turned to get back into the car. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“What about my tickets? I know I’m getting a few this time, right?”
I turned around to look at Tim. “Let me see what the sergeant says first, Tim. You just worry about Bubba right now, okay?”
I started to leave again, but then remembered there was something else I wanted to ask. “Tim?” I called over to him as he was carrying his dog into the house. “Why do you think he went to the high school? I don’t remember him going all the way up there before.”
Tim smiled at me, another thing I had never seen him do. “Bubba really loves kids. I used to bring him to the playground when he was a pup. Maybe he remembered that.”
I nodded and waved to them: the thin, tired man with the gray flannel shirt, carrying his twenty-year-old puppy into the house . . . perhaps for the last time.
Bubba died soon after that day. I never even wrote up a ticket for his caper at the high school. I figured Bubba had just been revisiting his youth, saying good-bye in his own Bubba way.
You think you know people and then you find out there is more to them than you ever could have imagined. It took Bubba’s last stand to show me that loving families take many forms, all of them beautiful.
Lisa Duffy-Korpics
2
CELEBRATING
THE BOND
The bond with a dog is as lasting as the ties of this Earth can ever be.
Konrad Lorenz
“He followed me home.”
©2002 Don Orehek. Reprinted with permission of Don Orehek.
Some Snowballs Don’t Melt
Snowball came into our lives during the winter of 1974. I was four years old. From the moment my daddy brought the plump puppy home, he and the dog formed a close bond. Though snow is scarce in Central Texas, Daddy looked at the bumbling white German shepherd puppy and dubbed him Snowball. Picking him up, my father gazed into his soulful brown eyes. “This dog is going to make something of himself,” Daddy said as he stroked the pup’s soft, fluffy head. Soon the two were inseparable.
While Snowball was still very young, my father began training him to prove that the dog could earn his keep. A good herding dog is essential for a working cattle ranch, so Daddy began preparing him for his role as a cow dog. Snowball’s determination to please my father was amazing. To watch Daddy and Snowball herd cattle together was to watch poetry in motion. Daddy would point at a cow and Snowball would become a white blur as he zigzagged through the herd and chased the selected cow into the corral.
During the day, Daddy worked for the highway department. Every morning Snowball would mournfully watch as my father left for work in the truck. Even though it was apparent that the dog wished to go, he made no move toward the truck. Snowball knew that a pat on the head and a raised tailgate meant that he was not to go; however, a smile, a lowered tailgate and the command to “get in” were an invitation to go with my father. In that case, Snowball bounded toward the truck as if there were no limits to his joy.
At the same time every weekday afternoon, Snowball would casually stroll to the end of the driveway, lie down under a redbud tree and patiently gaze down the long gravel road, looking for my daddy’s truck. Mama and I did not have to look at the clock to know that it was time for Daddy to come home: Snowball’s body language clearly announced my father’s imminent arrival. First, the dog would raise his head, his ears erect, and every muscle in his body would become tense. Then, slowly, Snowball would stand, his gaze never wavering from the direction of the gravel road. At that point, we could see a cloud of dust in the distance and hear the familiar whine of my daddy’s diesel truck coming down the road. As my father got out of the truck, Snowball would run to him, voicing his joyful delight. Despite the dog’s great bulk, he danced around my father with the grace of a ballerina.
One Saturday morning when Snowball was six, Daddy took him and Tiger—our other cow dog, an Australian shepherd—to work cattle atmy granddaddy’s house, while my mother and I went to visit my mother’s mother, Nana, who also lived nearby. While we were there, the phone rang. From my perch on a stool near the phone, I could hear the panic-stricken voice of my father’s mother on the other end of the line. The blood drained from Nana’s face as she motioned to Mama to take the phone receiver. Granny told Mama that, while Daddy was working Granddaddy’s cattle, a Hereford bull had trampled him. Although the extent of his injuries was unknown, it was obvious that Daddy needed medical attention. It was decided that I was to remain at Nana’s house while Mama took Daddy to the emergency room. Tearfully, I sat huddled in a corner of an ancient sofa while Nana tried, unsuccessfully, to console me.
A short time later Granddaddy called Nana’s house and asked her to bring me over to see if I could do something with that “darn dog.” As Nana and I drove to Granddaddy’s, I sat on the edge of the seat and pushed against the dashboard, willing the car to go faster. As Nana drove her wheezing Nova up the sand driveway, I could see my daddy’s battered blue truck parked underneath a lone pine tree close to my grandparents’ house. When I got out of the car, I heard a mournful wail. It pierced the stillness of the afternoon, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. In the back of the truck stood Snowball, howling his heartbreak and misery to the world. Granddaddy had hoped that the sight of me would calm Snowball, but Snowball and I had never been that close. I did everything I could to comfort him, but nothingworked.
As I tried in vain to soothe the dog, Granddaddy pointed a gnarled finger at Snowball and said, “That dog is a wonder. He probably saved your daddy’s life.”
Granddaddy told us that all the cattle, except a Hereford bull, were herded into the corral. The stubborn beast refused to go in, despite Snowball and the rest of the dogs doing their best to herd him. Granddaddy guessed that the extreme heat of the day had enraged the bull. His patience tested to the limit, the bull turned and charged at my father, who was standing nearby. Catching Daddy off guard, the bull knocked him to the ground and ran over him. As the bull pawed the ground in preparation to charge again, a blur of white streaked between the bull and my father. Snarling at the enraged bull, Snowball stood firmly planted in front of my father. Then, with a heart-stopping growl, Snowball hurled himself at the bull, and began to drive the Hereford away. According to Granddaddy, Snowball’s action gave my father enough time to crawl under a nearby truck. Trotting to the truck that my daddy lay underneath, Snowball took a wolflike stance and bravely turned away each one of the determined bull’s attacks. Working as a team, Snowball, Tiger and my uncle’s dog Bear, kept the bull away from the truck until my granddaddy and uncle could reach Daddy.
Later that afternoon Mama returned home with my father, and everyone in the family was greatly relieved to learn that Daddy had no life-threatening injuries. Snowball, on the other hand, remained inconsolable until Mama let him into the house to see my father. On silent feet, Snowball padded into the bedroom and quietly placed his head on my parents’ bed. Daddy petted him and thanked Snowball for saving his life. Satisfied, the shepherd padded outside, a “doggy grin” on his face.
Unfortunately, Snowballwasn’t able to savemy father six years later when Daddy was killed on the job. On that terrible day, the faithful dog went to his place at the end of the driveway to wait for hismaster. There was confusion on his old face as he watched car after car turn into our driveway. I could read his thoughts: So many cars, so many people, but where is my master? Undeterred, Snowball kept his vigil far into the night, his gaze never leaving the road. Something happened to Snowball after Daddy died—he grew old. It appeared that it was his love and devotion for my father that had kept himyoung and had given himthe will to live. Day after day, for two years followingmy father’s death, the dog staggered to his spot at the end of the driveway to wait for a master who would never return. No amount of coaxing or pleading could convince Snowball to qui
t his vigil, even when the weather turned rough.
It soon became very obvious to Mama and me that it was getting harder for Snowball to get around. The weight that he gained over the years was hard on his hip joints. Just the effort of lying down or getting up was a chore, and his once-powerful strides were now limited to a halting limp. Still, every day he returned to his spot at the end of the driveway. The day finally came when Snowball was unable to stand by himself. He whined his frustration and pain as Mama and I helped him to stand. After getting his balance, the old dog, his gaze never wavering from his destination, made his way out to his daily lookout post.
After two months of helping Snowball to stand, my mother and I tearfully agreed that it was time to do the humane thing for the fourteen-year-old cow dog. Our neighbor’s son was a vet, and we arranged for him to come to the house and give Snowball the injection. Snowball lay down on the ground and placed his head in my mother’s lap, his eyes filled with love and understanding. We all felt he knew what was about to happen.
After the vet gave him the injection, Snowball smiled his “doggy grin” for the first time since my father died, then slipped away quietly in my mother’s arms.
Our throats choked with tears, we wrapped the body of the gallant dog in an old blanket and buried him beneath the spot at the end of the drive that he had occupied for so many years. The group huddled around the dog’s grave all agreed that Snowball had “smiled” because he knew that, once again, he would be with the person he loved the most. If there is a heaven for animals, which I hope and believe there is, I can picture Daddy and his beloved dog together there, once again sharing the joy of each other’s company—this time for eternity.