Best Buds: Kevin's dog is not for sale. Is yours?

 

It’s not often I go fishing and come home with a dog story, but it happens. It happened a few days back when Leon Mears of Mannford called and asked if I’d like to go crappie fishing up on Skiatook Lake.

Well, sure. There are people around here (not many) as good a crappie fisherman as Leon, but none better.

The plan was to meet up with a friend of Leon’s, Kevin DeLong of Hominy, and fish an area of the lake where the two of them had located swarms of cold weather, open water crappie feasting on shad in the mid-reaches of the lake. The fish, for no apparent reason, were schooled up great distances from the shoreline, and not near any known brush piles.

It was a weird set-up for any crappie fisherman familiar with the mid-winter habits of what people in our country see as the best eating fish there is, walleye and the various catfish species not excluded. Years ago, Dave Hladik and I had stumbled upon an exact duplicate pattern down on Lake Tenkiller when, fishing for “whatever”, trolled into a swarm of pound to pound-and-a- half crappie suspended at fifteen feet over sixty feet of water off the ends of rocky points at the mouth of Sisemore Creek.

In that day, digitalized fish locators nowhere on the horizon, Dave and I had located on one of Carl Lowrance’s green box, flasher units, schools of crappie as referenced. They were fairly centrally located out there in the middle of “nowhere”, but not near any brush we could see. Every time we trolled a Rebel model purple and silver Little Scooper, we’d catch one. Or two.

It was money, and neither of us ever came up with a suitable explanation for the crappie being where they were. It’s hard to think around a mouthful of fried crappie, and we weren’t smart enough to figure it out anyway.

The other day up on Skiatook with Kevin and Leon, we found the fish just the same and in just the same open water locations that Dave and I had. The difference was we dropped Gene Larew Itty-Bitty model jigs in a variety of shad-colored patterns right on top their open-watered heads; fish after fish after fish; the majority of them ten inches long or better.

It was phenomenally good fishing. We kept a total of 42 fat ones, all stuffed with deep water shad. And then there was Kevin’s dog.

If I was a pirate, I’d keep a parrot aboard ship. If I was a fisherman, it’d be a dog, and as much like Kevin’s as I could duplicate.

Our plan that day was to meet Kevin at the boat ramp and fish the day out of his boat. We were greeted at the ramp by a trim little black and white dog without a grin on its face. From where we parked, we could not see Kevin’s boat already in the water, waiting. I looked all around. Here was this mystery dog, a pretty neat looking little dog, all trim and muscular, and nothing else.

“That’s Kevin’s dog,” Leon said, noticing my perplexed look. “Wherever Kevin goes, he goes. Everywhere. His name’s Buddy.”

And so, we were introduced. Not me ‘n Kevin, but me ‘n Buddy. I’ve known Kevin for well over thirty years, introduced by Jerry Ballard of Hominy at a Hominy Bucks football game. 

Kevin grew up in Sapulpa, graduated high school there, and matriculated into the Osage County oil fields where he still works that trade today; all the time hunting and fishing every spare moment. People of like mind bump into one another in like places.

On the water, fish coming over the side like California tuna, I began to pay attention to Buddy’s “boating skills”. If you caught a fish at the opposite end of Buddy’s position in the boat, he would leap tackle box to tackle box, boat cushion to boat cushion, right to the side of the successful angler. He wanted a look, and maybe a sniff. Minus the rod and reel, he was still a fisherman and obviously delighted in the game.

He never smiled. It was all serious business, which made his leaping to and fro (the crappie were coming into the boat fast) all the more funny. He made you laugh just watching him. I began asking Kevin all kinds of questions about his neat little dog.

“Conrad,” Kevin began, “you don’t ever remember me without a dog. Lab, bird dog, coon dog, I’ve had ‘em all. Good dogs. Bad dogs. All kinds of dogs since I was boy.

“‘Bout three years ago the last one died. My wife said she didn’t want another. Couldn’t take another one die’n. I saw the logic in that. Losin’ best friends that way isn’t fun.

“Anyway, we rocked along like that for a while and I began readin’ in the paper about all these home invasions and such, and I decided we needed some type of yard dog. It made sense in these times, and I set out to find one, but not too hard.

“A guy I work with said he had a litter, mutts; I could have one if I wanted. He brought me a male, tiny little thing; half heeler ‘n half rat terrier. He’s with me every minute of every day. He goes to work with me in the truck every day; he guards the yard; he sleeps on our bed every night; he goes to town with me shopping; he’s learned how to find wounded deer for me. Learned it on his own. Here he is fishin’ with us.”

“I want that dog,” I said. Who wouldn’t want a good deer trackin,’ rat killin’ dog? “I’ll give you a hundred dollars for ‘im,” I said, and I meant it.

“He’s not for sale,” Kevin said, a funny look on his face.

I could tell he thought I was maybe serious. In this country, you do not start talking money in front of a dog and its owner unless you really mean it. It can be embarrassing. Afterall, every dog has a price, and quite a few men. Do you really want to know that price?

It’s a cultural thing I grew up understanding as true, spending a lot of time around men and their dogs down yonder in the bojacks. And so here I was doing it.

“Give you two hundred,” I said.

“Won’t touch ‘im.”

I kept bumping it up; Kevin kept knocking me down. There finally came a “finally” moment.

“O.k., Kevin, I’ll give you a thousand dollars for that dog,” and almost immediately Kevin began to laugh, and almost immediately I began to laugh with him. We both understood what had happened.

Had he taken me up, I would have to hand over the money. It was a game, alright, but one with a funny edge. I knew he wouldn’t, and yet....

“You know what just happened, Kevin.”

“What.”

“You hesitated, just a second, at a thousand dollars. That tells me, you, too, that dog, a mutt by definition, is worth a thousand dollars. Who woulda’ thunk it?”

Kevin started laughing again, harder.

“Conrad, my life won’t be worth a thousand dollars in my wife’s house if she finds out I sold this dog. At any price.”

So, there you have it. The fishing was good, and life, too. Kevin’s dog is not for sale. Is yours?

Copyright © 2017 Conrad M. Vollertsen