A Boy’s Best Friend

An autobiographical story of dogs in my life

A BOY’S BEST FRIEND

I was a fortunate child, accompanied through life by a most devoted female friend.  Our family moved around a little, but we always lived in very rural areas; neighbors were distant.  Some of those young years I had no playmates other than Lucy, my constant companion on almost all of life’s adventures. We met when I was four years old and she left my life when I was sixteen.  We shared a fierce love for one another, a love that transcended the racial differences between us. For you see Lucy’s genetic heritage was a mix of the canine races, predominantly border collie.  Her long fur ranged in color from cream, to tan, to black. Her eyes, those deep pools of devotion, were a shining dark brown.  Her tail was capable of the most frantic activity.

I was in third grade the year Father moved us to the tiny town of Granite Falls where he had been promised a job managing a small dairy and beef farm.

The morning I was to begin school in this little alien town, my mother drove me down our quarter-mile driveway and we waited together in the car for the arrival of a school bus. My stomach did flip flops.

  Apparently our moving to the district had forced a change to the bus route, for a bus did arrive, arrived completely empty.  We had been made the first stop of the morning. I nervously climbed the steps and took a seat near the driver.  The route was long.  Out my window farms and forest passed by, landscape all new to me.  My anxiety lessened somewhat.

At day’s end, my bus route was reversed. Everything looked different going the other way, especially when darkness fell. As the bus emptied mile by mile, I grew more anxious, frantic when I found myself the only remaining child.  Finally the driver stopped on a woodsy, lonely stretch of road and said “Here you go kid.” I had no idea where I was. Riding with my mother on shopping trips to town, we had never returned home from this direction and I just did not recognize our driveway nor these woods. I refused to get off the bus.  The driver assured me it was the same place he had picked me up that morning, but I thought he must be lying and I grew paralyzed with fear while he grew louder and angrier.

Finally headlights appeared. It wasn’t until Mom and Lucy stood directly before the bus, allowing me to clearly see them illuminated by the bus’s powerful high beams, that I left that vehicle just as fast as I could.  In the car I hugged my dog while Mom apologized for being late.

It did not take Lucy long to learn my school schedule, and most evenings she would be waiting for the bus and we would walk the long driveway home together.

I had Lucy; my younger brother Steve had to invent an imaginary friend.  His name was Dink. I don’t remember much about Dink, just that he was fond of hiding in the laundry basket so as to jump out and scare me when I passed by on my way to the back door. Yes, I know, it doesn’t make much sense, but come dinner time Steve never failed to ask if Dink had frightened me that day.  I almost always said yes, and if my mood was right I would invent a story to really please him. I typically dropped an armload of something or other, lost my balance, crashed into the washer or drier, hit my head, suffered amnesia, even developed delusions as to my identity.  I happened to be the youngest, smallest African Masai lion killing warrior that ever lived in Granite Falls.  My character after a scare from Dink depended heavily on classroom studies, library books, and tv.

At my young age the hundred acre farm was a magical kingdom all summer.  I would roam with my bb gun, Lucy typically taking the lead, sweeping side to side in wide swaths, her nose to the ground.  I was quite the hunter until the day I actually did hit a songbird and it fell to the ground dead.  Lucy snatched up the bird and when I got her to drop it, I was devastated by the lifeless look of the little creature’s eyes. I never hunted again, although I always carried my bb gun.  After all, coyotes and cougars roamed the woods around our farm.

Late on sunny summer afternoons Lucy and I would head out to search each of the shady hideouts favored by our small herd of milk cows.  If I found them lazing on the ground I would rub their long soft ears and smack dust from their backs and Lucy would woof them to their feet.  Their udders full, they knew it was time for milking (and dinner!) We would all walk together back to the barn.

We had our own creek which Dad dammed to make a trout pond/swimming hole.  Lucy and I would leap from the dock; she would snap her canines at the fish while I would try to catch them between my palms.

Not allowed on the bed at night, Lucy slept on the throw rug by my slippers.

While Lucy brought me great joy, a great many of my dog memories are painful, sorrowful.

My father was a third generation farmer.  My great, great grandparents were the original homesteaders of the land my grandparents farmed. They were a hard lot, and my father had no qualms when it came to killing animals. He was also frugal, even stingy.  As children we lost a pet puppy because he would not pay to have it vaccinated.

Mom and I were unaware that Dad had set coyote traps all along the borders of our Granite Falls farm.  Until Lucy went missing that is.  She had been gone a day and a night and most of another day and I was frantic with worry when Dad announced he might know where to find Lucy.  He bounced into the twilight in his old pickup truck.

When he returned he lifted Lucy from the cargo area of the truck and laid her on the ground.  Her right front paw appeared half-severed.  I was not allowed near her.  She was enclosed in a small calf pen where my mother nursed her.  There were no visits from a vet. It is possible she received antibiotics; I think my father may have had a supply for treating cattle.

The next few weeks were for me a dreadful eternity.  Eventually Lucy emerged limping; after a time she even walked normally though she never ran much after that. 

My uncle Mutt was a real character, originally a rough and tough logger who in later years took a special interest in my cousin Mel and I.  He seemed to express love by giving pain.  One of his favorite greetings was the Indian burn, where one grasps with both hands another’s arm just above the wrist, then with each hand grips and twists the skin in opposite directions.  Mutt felt a duty to introduce us boys to the necessities of life. He  gave us our first coffees, our first beers, and our first cigarettes, and I have no doubt he would have bought us our first w****s if we had had whorehouses in our little town.  He always had a demeaning nickname at hand; a favorite was to call us his little cowgirls.  I always thought of Mutt as half French Canadian, half indigenous,  though I have no real knowledge of his genetic or cultural heritage.  His face in profile had a classic native look, his hair was jet black and cut in a perpetual flattop over the dark skin of his sharp cheekbones . He was a large man; later in life a substantial beer belly gut protruded between his suspenders.  Too busted up for logging, he did county road work for a while; eventually that became too demanding, or perhaps he was fired for his drinking.  In his later years he loaded the seatless back of their Volkswagen beetle with copies of the Seattle Times, and he and wife Myra drove a nightly delivery route deep into the Cascade foothills.  When they had a night off, they would often spend the day making the rounds of friends and relatives, during which time Mutt would single-handedly transform a full case of beer into a case of empties in the back of his Beetle.  I remember him seated at our dining room table, a beer in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other, telling story after story punctuated by his trademark phlegm-filled laugh.  Mutt wanted me to become a professional baseball player. I did pitch in Little League. Sometimes during summer visits, he would demand we go outside and I would have to pitch to him.  He would crouch down with his catcher’s mitt, his big beer belly hanging between his knees, request I throw this or that pitch, then would critique each attempt.

Mutt and Myra lived in a broken down trailer on a half-acre of rural scrubland.  Chained outside the only entrance to this aluminum shack was a huge, vicious acting German shepherd.   As one neared the door, the dog would begin running and would hurl himself at the visitor.  Mutt had carefully measured the chain so that the great dog would be jerked up just short of sinking his teeth into human flesh.  I was quite young the first time I encountered this poor animal.  I peed my pants.  I had to sit on a towel the whole visit while Mutt called me Sissy Boy and Cow Girl.  Back in the car my father exclaimed “For Christ’s sake, how old are you?  Too damn old to piss your own pants!”  While my mother added her usual “Do you always have to embarrass us?”

The next time we visited I threw up in the driveway before even heading down the walk.

By the fifth grade we had moved back to Snohomish, living next door to my grandparent’s dairy farm.  It was around this time that my father decided we needed a second dog.  He brought home a puppy that was probably part of somebody’s barnyard litter.  As my father was unwilling to pay for vaccinations and other veterinary care, it is not surprising that the new puppy became quite ill.  It stopped eating, a foul substance oozed from its eyes.  When it tried to walk it staggered.  Ultimately it began experiencing convulsions. 

We were soon to leave on vacation, and while a neighbor was to feed Lucy, I worried about the puppy.  “Don’t you worry about that dog,” my dad told me.  The next morning he handed me his 22 rifle and said, “Come with me.”  We went out to the garage where he picked up the sick dog and then he led me the few hundred yards down to the back end of our property.  He laid out the puppy and took a shell from his coat pocket; loaded it into the gun.  The dog began convulsing, its legs jerking, its body arcing.  “Hold it still” he shouted.  I got down on my knees and pressed on the little dog’s body.  He put the muzzle to the dog’s head and pulled the trigger.  Blood mixed with my tears.

As I started walking back toward the house, I heard the rattle of cans and bottles.  I looked back; he had thrown the little body down into the gully where he had been dumping all our garbage the entire time we lived there.

Living in cow country, it was inevitable that we would occasionally have escaped cows in our yard.  One night our tv watching was interrupted by fierce barking and we rushed out to find the neighbor’s bovines standing upon our front lawn depositing large, loose cowpies.  Dad turned Lucy loose and barking wildly, she ran up to one heifer only to receive a sharp kick that sent her flying end over end.  

I thought she was dead but she began to whimper even though she couldn’t rise.  Mom made her a bed in the garage and nursed her for a few days.  She recovered but every couple of years her back would go out on her.

We lived in a very rural area, half-way up a huge hill that back east would be called a mountain. The lower half was almost all farmland and the occasional old farmhouse, while the rest was hundreds of acres of forest.  It was a great place for both young boys and dogs.

Kids in that area in that era were allowed to spend their free days inventing their own adventures free of adult supervision or interference.  We would ride our bikes down to the Pilchuck to the swimming hole under the bridge where older boys would challenge one another to climb high onto the bridge structure and jump into the river.  We rode into town to watch the Saturday matinees where older boys seated in the balcony would drop burning matches on us. We would spend whole days roaming the game trails through the forest, visit the creeks and beaver ponds, watch for deer and coyotes. While she couldn’t follow us into town, Lucy was always our companion in the woods.

Only one time did I regret her company.

I spent much of my grade school years on crutches.  I was born with a knee condition that made me prone to kneecap dislocations, which results in massive swelling, pain, and weeks of healing.  At the age of 15 I endured a surgical procedure recommended by an orthopedist,  then spent about two months in a full length cast from crotch to ankle. I spent the summer becoming quite acrobatic on my crutches. 

At that age I was allowed to hike into the woods with one or two friends and spend the night.  We would take a hatchet, a tarp, sleeping bags and food packed in my dad’s ancient wood-framed canvas backpack. When we found a friendly looking spot we would clear the ground as best we could, chop off a few cedar boughs to weave a little shelter, lay down the tarp and unroll the bags. We usually stayed one night and went home again. I had never taken Lucy on these campouts.

That summer Steven, my 11 year old brother, and two or three friends asked me to take them camping in the woods. I thought what an absurd idea, but my pride got the better of me.  I told them each what to bring, and in late afternoon we set off.  On crutches, I led them almost a mile down county roads, then several hundred yards into the woods, and directed them in my traditional camp site techniques. And I brought Lucy for the first time.

Everything was fine and fun as we set up our little woodsy sleeping nest, ate our snacks, and crawled into our sleeping bags as night fell.  We talked a while then as the boys grew quiet, I tried to go to sleep.  I wondered about the boys; did they rapidly fall asleep, worn out from these brand new activities, or were they lying awake, each silently a little anxious about sleeping in the dark, in the woods, in their own minds really far from home.  I fell asleep only to be awakened at what I guessed was 11 or 12pm by Lucy growling.  I tried to calm her. I myself could hear the light sound of twigs cracking, tree limbs brushed, which told me a creature was investigating us, these strange smelling beings who had invaded its habitat. It was pitch black and impossible to see our visitor.  It did not frighten me in the least. It was probably a deer, maybe a coyote, but I knew there was nothing here that would harm us.  

Unfortunately Lucy did not have my confidence. Repeatedly she would grow anxious and growl and sometime in the very early hours of what was technically the next day, all the boys were awake, all frightened, and all wanted to go home. They REALLY wanted to go home.  I think Lucy did too.

There was no way that I, one leg in a full length cast, forced to walk on crutches, exhausted from the trip here, was going to attempt leading a flock of young boys hundreds of yards through the pitch black woods just to reach a road, then hike another mile to the nearest boys house.

I told them they were fine, there was nothing in the woods that would hurt them, that I needed to sleep, and they needed to shut up and go to sleep or at least be quiet. And no one had better wake me up or else. They did quiet down although I doubt anyone, including Lucy and I, got much sleep.  We left at sunrise.

The next summer the surgeon did the other knee and everything was very different.  In the middle of the surgery I awoke, groggily asked what that sound was.  It sounded like someone chiseling some hard substance, maybe stone.  I tried to look down the length of my body but   a barrier had been hung before my face.  I could not see my body.  Almost immediately I was again unconscious. 

The sound actually had been produced by a chisel. The surgeon was carving out a piece of bone with a tendon attached to enable him to graft it to another spot. I don’t know if the anesthesiologist had been careless in letting me wake up, but when he saw my open eyes he quickly put me back under.

That evening produced a shift change of nurses and hours passed with no one checking on me.  No one took my vitals, no one asked about my  pain which had by then become severe.  I repeatedly pushed the button to summon a nurse.  Late into the night a nurse finally came.  When I told her I was in a lot of pain and could not sleep she said “Well I just checked on you a few minutes ago and you were sound asleep. As you were sleeping just fine, I am not allowed to give you more pain medication.”  I knew I hadn’t been asleep and spent the remainder of her shift awake, confused, and tortured by pain.

I was a naïve, inexperienced youth; what did I know about hospitals and medicine?  I complained to no one about my horrible night. Looking back from a lifetime’s perspective, I am certain that nurse was stealing my morphine for her own use.

In a few days I was allowed to go home (after enduring the indignity of a mandatory enema).  As mom drove us home, my spirits rose as we began to pass the fields and farmhouses of neighbors.  It wasn’t until we reached our own driveway that she stopped the car, turned to face me with my full-cast leg stretched out on the back seat, and said “I’m sorry but Lucy died.  She stopped eating and drinking and wouldn’t get up.  We took her to the vet who said she had very advanced cancer and he put her to sleep.”

My best friend was gone.

While I could see no good in it, my father decided to get another dog; a dog which would grant companionship to both Father and Steven.

 Father returned from work late in the day, always tired and filthy from his job at a sand and gravel company, almost always mad at somebody, a person to avoid.

Steven on the other hand, had let his curly golden locks grow to his shoulders, sold weed and such highly stepped-on cocaine you couldn’t even get a buzz off it, and worked on his car. His only other interest was girls. He was most assuredly not interested in dogs.

Nipper was his name, a small black mixed-breed with a gentle disposition and ears like a hound.

I soon went off to college for 5 years and only saw him on trips home.  He was always tied to a Weeping Willow (a very suited symbol), had a tiny little house made from old, delaminating scraps of wood, and was fed twice a day on scraps of farm food dumped in his always dirty bowl.  Feedings were almost entirely the only attention he got.

Steven ignored him. When home I would take him for walks. Very rarely father would come home feeling a little frisky and not badmouthing some coworker with whom he was angry.  He would ceremoniously untie Nipper from the tree and then use the rope to fashion a halter around his neck. The badly aging man with both his coveralls and even his face smeared with thick black grease, considered himself a gentleman aristocratic farmer out to review his extensive land holdings (one acre actually), his faithful dog at his side. Out in mid-field, he would release Nipper. Father seemed to feel obedience was hard wired in the DNA of every dog and formal training was completely unnecessary as a smart dog would quickly learn to intuit his beloved master’s wishes.

These little walks were rare; happening just a few times a year.  Every time, without fail, Nippper would run like the wind, his tail and ears swept back, mouth wide open to get more air. He would run and run and run some more in pure joy. He never ran near Father and completely ignored all his shouted demands laden with swear words.  Eventually, perhaps in half an hour, Nipper would run out of energy and Father would catch him.

He would quickly get the rope around his neck, then remove his own leather belt and beat the little dog.

Back to the tree he went where he lived always on a rope tether, with perhaps an 8 foot circular range of motion, in all weather, living on scraps, for 14 years. He received almost no companionship, no kindness nor love.

He haunts me. Almost 50 years have passed and he still haunts me. I think of him at least once a month, sometimes once a week. I feel deeply guilty and heart-broken that I did not find some kind, truly dog-loving people to adopt him, and steal him away in the middle of the night, give him a better life.

Reviews

[Red Brick Keshner]

Oh man! That was an astounding read… and the prose flows and lilts, with its highs and lows, its twists and turns. I feel bad for Nipper as well. How are you knees these days?

[Michael Sun Bear]

Thanks for the kind words. I developed rheumatoid arthritis later in life, the knees became totally trashed. Had one replaced a few days ago.

[Red Brick Keshner]

Hope you’re recovering quickly from that. I presume you are being made to do some physio to get started on using the replacement. 🙏🏻🕊

[Michael Sun Bear]

Thank you Starr. Some of the events have haunted me for a long time and I finally got the whole thing written. Maybe I can let it go now.

[Starr]

Lots of imagery in this write, very descriptive as well, nicely written

[Michael Sun Bear]

Thank you Starr. Some of the events have haunted me for a very long time. Now that I finally got this written, maybe I can let go of it.