Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul (12 page)

Tippi now turned the question-and-answer segment over to a young assistant. Then she motioned to me for us to leave. Walking away, we turned back to observe the group and now saw the belligerent young man with the smart mouth from a new vantage point. The boy, with his muscular torso and tight T-shirt, sat tensely in a wheelchair. One empty pant leg, folded under, hung next to his remaining leg and tennis shoe.

Seventeen-year-old Cory had dreamed of playing major league baseball someday. That was his one and only goal. He lived and breathed baseball and dreamed of the day when he would have a following, fans who knew he was “the man.” No one doubted Cory’s ability, certainly not the lead university scout for baseball talent in the state. The scout had recruited Cory, confirming a promising future. That was before the car accident. Now, it seemed nothing could replace the joy that was dashed when the boy lost his leg.

Cory lost more than a leg in the tragic accident; he also lost his hope. And his spirit. It left him not only physically disabled but emotionally crippled. Unable to dream of a goal other than being a major league baseball player, he was bitter and jaded, and felt just plain useless. Hopeless. Now he sat in a wheelchair, a chip on his shoulder, angry at the world. He was here today on yet another “boring field trip” from the rehab program.

Cory was one of the rehabilitation center’s most difficult patients: Unable to summon the courage to dream new plans for the future, he gave up on not only himself but others. “Get off my back,” he had told the rehab director. “You can’t help me. No one can.”

Tippi and I continued to stand close by as the group’s guide continued, “Cheetahs never feed on carrion; they eat fresh meat—though in captivity, they do like people food!”

Carrion? The word somehow interested the boy—or perhaps it just sounded perverse. The unpleasant young man called out, “What’s that mean?”

“Cadaver, corpse, remains,” the young assistant responded.

“The cheetah doesn’t eat road kill,” the boy smirked loudly. The boy’s harsh sound seemed to please the cheetah and she began purring loudly. The audience, enchanted by Subira’s happy noise, oohed and aahed.

Enjoying the positive response—and always willing to flaunt—Subira decided to give the audience a show of her skills. As if to say, “Just see how fast these spots can fly,” Subira instantly began blazing a trail of speed around the enclosure. “Oh,” sighed the crowd, “she’s so beautiful.”

“She only has three legs!” someone gasped.

“No!” the girl in the front row exclaimed, while the other astonished young people looked on in silence, aghast at what they saw.

No one was more stunned than Cory. Looking bewildered at the sight of this incredible animal running at full speed, he asked the question that was in everyone’s mind. “How can she run that fast with three legs?” Amazed at the cheetah’s effortless, seemingly natural movements, the boy whispered, “Incredible. Just incredible.” He stared at the beautiful animal with the missing leg and he smiled, a spark of hope evident in his eyes.

Tippi answered from our spot behind the group. “As you have now all noticed, Subira is very special. Since no one told her she shouldn’t—or couldn’t—run as fast as a cheetah with four legs, she doesn’t know otherwise. And so, she can.” Tippi paused for a moment, and turning to Subira, continued, “We just love her. Subira is a living example, a symbol, of what Shambala is all about: recognizing the value of all living things, even if, for any reason, they are different.”

The boy was silent and listened with interest as Tippi continued. “We got Subira from a zoo in Oregon. Her umbilical cord was wrapped around her leg in the womb, so it atrophied, causing her to lose the leg soon after she was born. With only three legs, her fate seemed hopeless. They were considering putting her to sleep at that point.”

Surprised, Cory asked, “Why?”

Tippi looked directly into Cory’s face, “Because they thought, ‘What good is a three-legged cheetah?’ They didn’t think the public would want to see a deformed cheetah. And since it was felt that she wouldn’t be able to run and act like a normal cheetah, she served no purpose.”

She went on, “That’s when we heard about Subira and offered our sanctuary, where she could live as normal a life as possible.

“It was soon after she came to us that she demonstrated her own worth—a unique gift of love and spirit. Really, we don’t know what we’d do without her. In the past few years, the gift of Subira has touched people around the world, and without words she has become our most persuasive spokesman. Though discarded because she was an imperfect animal, she created her own worth. She truly is a most cherished and priceless gift.”

Abandoning all wisecracks, Cory asked softly, “Can I touch her?”

Seeing Subira run had switched on the light in Cory’s heart and mind. It completely changed his demeanor. And his willingness to participate. At the end of the tour, the leader of the visiting group asked for a volunteer to push and hold the large rolling gate open so the van could exit the ranch. To everyone’s surprise, Cory raised his hand.

As the rest of the group looked on in amazement, the boy wheeled himself over to the large gate and, struggling to maneuver it open, pulled himself up from his chair. Gripping the high wire fence for support, he pushed it open. The expression on his face as he continued to hold the gate until the van passed through was one of great satisfaction. And determination. It was clear that Cory had received the gift of Subira.

Bettie B. Youngs, Ph.D., Ed.D.

The Dog Next Door

When I was about thirteen years old, back home in Indiana, Pennsylvania, I had a dog named Bounce. He was just a street dog of indeterminate parentage who had followed me home from school one day. Kind of Airedaleish but of an orange color, Bounce became my close companion. He’d frolic alongside me when I’d go into the woods to hunt arrowheads and snore at my feet when I’d build a model airplane. I loved that dog.

Late one summer I had been away to a Boy Scout camp at Two Lick Creek, and when I got home Bounce wasn’t there to greet me. When I asked Mother about him, she gently took me inside. “I’m so sorry, Jim, but Bounce is gone.”

“Did he run away?”

“No, son, he’s dead.”

I couldn’t believe it. “What happened?” I choked.

“He was killed.”

“How?”

Mom looked over to my father. He cleared his throat. “Well, Jim,” he said, “Bogy broke his chain, came over and killed Bounce.”

I was aghast. Bogy was the next-door neighbors’ English bulldog. Normally he was linked by a chain to a wire that stretched about 100 feet across their backyard.

I was grief-stricken and angry. That night I tossed and turned. The next morning I stepped out to look at the bulldog, hoping to see at least a gash in its speckled hide. But no, there on a heavier chain stood the barrel-chested villain. Every time I saw poor Bounce’s empty house, his forlorn blanket, his food dish, I seethed with hatred for the animal that had taken my best friend.

Finally one morning I reached into my closet and pulled out the Remington .22 rifle Dad had given me the past Christmas. I stepped out into our backyard and climbed up into the apple tree. Perched in its upper limbs, I could see the bulldog as he traipsed up and down the length of his wire. With the rifle I followed him in the sights. But every time I got a bead on him, tree foliage got in the way.

Suddenly a gasp sounded from below. “Jim, what are you doing up there?”

Mom didn’t wait for an answer. Our screen door slammed and I could tell she was on the phone with my father at his hardware store. In a few minutes our Ford chattered into the driveway. Dad climbed out and came over to the apple tree.

“C’mon down, Jim,” he said gently. Reluctantly, I put the safety on and let myself down onto the summerseared grass.

The next morning, Dad, who knew me better than I knew myself, said, “Jim, after you finish school today, I want you to come to the store.”

That afternoon I trudged downtown to Dad’s hardware store, figuring he wanted the windows washed or something. He stepped out from behind the counter and led me back to the stockroom. We edged past kegs of nails, coils of garden hose and rolls of screen wire over to a corner. There squatted my hated nemesis, Bogy, tied to a post.

“Now here’s the bulldog,” Dad said. “This is the easy way to kill him if you still feel that way.” He handed me a short-barreled .22-caliber rifle. I glanced at him questioningly. He nodded.

I took the gun, lifted it to my shoulder and sighted down the black barrel. Bogy, brown eyes regarding me, panted happily, pink tongue peeking from tusked jaws. As I began to squeeze the trigger, a thousand thoughts flashed through my mind while Dad stood silently by. But my mind wasn’t silent; all of Dad’s teaching about our responsibility to defenseless creatures, fair play, right and wrong, welled within me. I thought of Mom loving me after I broke her favorite china serving bowl. There were other voices—our preacher leading us in prayer, asking God to forgive us as we forgave others.

Suddenly the rifle weighed a ton and the sight wavered in my vision. I lowered it and looked up at Dad helplessly. A quiet smile crossed his face and he clasped my shoulder. “I know, son,” he said gently. I realized then: He had never expected me to pull that trigger. In his wise, deep way he let me face my decision on my own. I never did learn how Dad managed to arrange Bogy’s presence that afternoon, but I know he had trusted me to make the right choice.

A tremendous relief overwhelmed me as I put down the gun. I knelt down with Dad and helped untie Bogy, who wriggled against us happily, his stub tail wiggling furiously.

That night I slept well for the first time in days. The next morning as I leaped down the back steps, I saw Bogy next door and stopped. Dad ruffled my hair. “Seems you’ve forgiven him, son.”

I raced off to school. Forgiveness, I found, could be exhilarating.

Jimmy Stewart
As told to Dick Schneider

©
Lynn Johnston Productions Inc./Dist. by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

The Joy of the Run

All the men in my family for three generations have been doctors. That was what we did. I got my first stethoscope when I was six. I heard stories of the lives my grandfather and my father had saved, the babies they’d delivered, the nights they’d sat up with sick children. I was shown where my name would go on the brass plaque on the office door. And so the vision of what I would become was engraved in my imagination.

But as college neared, I began to feel that becoming a doctor was not engraved upon my heart. For one thing, I reacted to situations very differently from my dad. I’d seen him hauled out at three in the morning to attend a child who’d developed pneumonia because his parents hadn’t brought him to the office earlier. I would have given them a hard time, but he never would. “Parents want their kids to be all right so bad, they sometimes can’t admit the child’s really sick,” he said forgivingly. And then there were the terrible things like the death of a ten-year-old from lockjaw—that I knew I couldn’t handle. What troubled me most was my fear that I wasn’t the son my father imagined. I didn’t dare tell him about my uncertainty and hoped I could work it out on my own.

With this dilemma heavy on my mind the summer before college, I was given a challenge that I hoped would be a distraction. A patient had given my father an English setter pup as payment for his help. Dad kept a kennel of bird dogs on our farm, which I trained. As usual, Dad turned the dog over to me.

Jerry was a willing pup of about ten months. Like many setters, he was mostly white, with a smattering of red spots. His solid-red ears stood out too far from his head, though, giving him a clown-like look. Just the sight of him gave me a much-needed chuckle. He mastered the basics: sit, stay, down, walk. His only problem was “come.” Once out in the tall grass, he liked to roam. I’d call and give a pip on the training whistle. He would turn and look at me, then go on about his business.

When we finished his lessons, I would sit with him under an old pin oak and talk. I’d go over what he was supposed to know, and sometimes I’d talk about me. “Jerry,” I’d say, “I just don’t like being around sick people. What would you do if you were me?” Jerry would sit on his haunches and look directly at my eyes, turning his head from side to side, trying to read the significance in my voice. He was so serious that I’d laugh out loud and forget how worried I was.