Dog Tales

We like dogs out here on the Branch. They're buried all over the place. Most of them by me, but not all of them. The last two were buried by friends, right out there in back with all the others. I showed them where to dig so as not to dig into one of the others. There's that many.

Jeeminy Christmas, it'd be hard for me to count them all up. I'm not going to try. I can tell you the different breeds easier. Poodles, Schnauzers, Beagles, Chessies, Labs (God's gift to dogdom), German Shepherds, two or three mutts, Airedales (great dogs), but, surprisingly, no bird dogs. Not out here; in town, yes.

I owned a beautiful white and orange ticked English Setter for two days somebody abandoned out here at the end of our dead end street. Rather than have it impounded, I called my plumber, the quail hunter, told him what I had, and years later he told me it was one of the best dogs he ever owned. No discount on the plumbing. I changed plumbers. It's a dog eat dog world, right?

All of my dogs have been working dogs of one type or another (yes, the shepherds, too), even the Poodles and Schnauzers, excellent squirrel dogs which were easy to train for same, and all of them lived in our house where Pam could get her hands on them and even-out the blood thirstiness I encouraged in them. She does it every time. I'm OK with it.

You should've seen me before we met she tells people. I'm a simple man. Blood in the bag is good. One time I took her to Sardi's in NYC, for no apparent reason.

The first dog we ever owned together was a Toy Fox Terrier, black and white, that might've weighed two pounds, but was just the right size for the little house we lived in on 9th Street, the house with the L-shaped room. I named him Falstaff after a Shakespearean character, a dirty deed if there ever was one as all dogs deserve a good one syllable name they can quickly learn.

Pam's grandmother, Granny Rhoades, good Baptist that she was, picked up on the name immediately, and called the dog "Beery" after a popular brand of beer in that day, Falstaff. Had I known she was going to take that tact, I would've named the dog "Coors" after a popular brand of beer in my life. It didn't matter.

Pam let Falstaff out the front door of the house on 9th Street one day after school and he ran out into the street and died in the most usual ways dogs die, in front of a house that already had one ghost in it.

We gave the little warrior a Viking's funeral. He was small enough his body fit neatly into a shoe box. We stopped in the middle of the Highway 48 bridge crossing The Deep Fork River ten miles south of Bristow, and I dropped him over the side. Sure, it was fitting. Tons of squirrels all over The Deep Fork, and Falstaff was going to be trained-up as a squirrel dog. The best laid plans of dogs and men, often go agley, Mr. Burns said. Every dog owner knows it's true.

I love The Deep Fork River. I've canoed and hunted almost its entire length from just east of OKC all the way to the Hoffman Bottoms where it empties into lake Eufaula. Wild, wild, country. A good place for a would-be hunting dog to disappear, or anything else for that matter.

I bought another dog the other day, a seven-week-old, tan and white, bob-tailed rat terrier. He was not the biggest dog in the litter, nor the smallest. Sizewise he was right there in the middle, a dog easily overlooked because of his commonality, and so he reminded me of someone I knew and we bonded right there in an old shed next to a tomato patch gone blowsy.

I picked him up and started picking ticks off his belly, the litter's owner, an old guy gone blowsy like the tomatoes, standing right next to me.

"Got papers?" I said.

"Well, naw, I don't much believe in papers. His daddy's a good squirrel dog, now, no papers to it. He'll hunt."

"How much ya' take fer 'im?"

"Well, now, I gotta' have a hunert 'n fifty, the litter's sellin' pretty good."

"He's covered in ticks and he looks wormy."

"Oh, he's been wormed."

"I'll give 'ya a hunnert dollars cash, ticks 'n all."

"Cain't do it mister. Hunnert 'n fifty's my price. "

I handed the pup to Pam as I reached for my wallet and, I swear, immediately saw a transformation come into the dog's face. The old man saw it, too.

"Here, little lady, let me give you some 'maters to go along with the dog," and he started gathering up maybe a dozen beautiful Big Boys and dropping them into a Walmart bag. The girl is amazing. Men and dogs, easy. "Pretty girls just seem to find out early," the Eagles said, "how to open doors with just a smile."

In the car, the dog in her lap and looking up into her face, she asked, "What are you going to name him?"

"Well, it's gonna' have to be a good one syllable name. Not "Falstaff" for sure. Maybe, maybe ...... how 'bout "Bud". We never had a dog named 'Bud' before."

"You mean 'Bud ... Lite'?"

Wow. Well, hello, Granny Rhodes. "Beery" rides again.

We heard ghosts laughing all the way home.