Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul (26 page)

For the first few days after the stray pup entered Dad’s life, there was slim hope for her survival. Disease and starvation had taken the little dog down a cruel path. It seemed only a miracle could help.

For seemingly endless days, Mom watched through the kitchen window as Dad continued to cart the little dog in the box out under the maple trees, where he doctored the wounds of neglect.

No one remembers exactly how long it took to see a glint of hope in my dad’s countenance—and in the marble eyes of that pup. But slowly, with timidity and reserve, the pup began to trust my dad, and the first waggle of her skinny tail brought intense joy to my father.

Mom never wanted any part of that rescue effort, for she was not interested in bringing a dog into the house and their lives. But when she saw her husband’s face the first time that pup showed an ounce of playfulness, she knew that Dad was struck with more than compassion.

Dad came from a rugged hill family who farmed the rocky ridges of the Ozark Mountains. He knew little joy as a child and worked hard at manual jobs as an adult. Reaching down to rescue that weak, mangy pup seemed to mend his wounded spirit, especially when he succeeded at beating the odds by nursing Tippy back to health.

“Just look at her!” Mom smiled. “You’ve really done it! She’s growing her hair back and she’s starting to play a little bit. No one thought she’d even live another day, but you stood by her and believed that she could make it.”

As the pup continued healing, she began showing her true colors—except they weren’t the prettiest of colors in the prettiest of patterns. A white patch here and there, a crowd of hazy black spots around the snout and chest, mottled white blotches against a black torso. And because of the white tip on her tail, she was given a common name for a common dog: Tippy.

“Now, honey, I’ve tried to find her a good home but nobody needs a little dog right now,” Dad lamented. “I’ve asked around everywhere. I promise, I’ve tried real hard.” Mom knew he was trying about as hard as a man choosing between a lawn mower and a good hammock on a hot summer afternoon.

“Well, I don’t know who would want her,” Mom said. “Even with her hair grown in and all those sores gone, she’s still kind of ugly and gangly.”

A few weeks later, after unsuccessfully trying to trade her off on someone, Dad said, “Now, I know she’s not a cute little dog, but I guess she’ll have to do. Nobody else wants her.”

There. He’d said it. And Mom knew the little lost dog that nobody wanted had curled up to stay.

She would have to sleep out in the laundry room, not in the house, Mom scolded. Dad and Tippy complied with the rules, and their singular friendship sprouted and blossomed in comforting ways—for they came to need each other during Dad’s worst of times.

“That pup saw your dad through all his pain and cancer for the next three years,” Mom recalled. “Sometimes I think God sent that little dog to be with your dad in the end.”

After Dad died, Mom went out to the laundry room one day and gazed down at the quiet little creature curled up obediently in her cardboard box bed.

“Hmmm . . . okay, Tippy,” she said softly. “Maybe it won’t hurt having you come inside the house just once in awhile. It’s awfully lonesome in there.” At that moment, Mom felt connected to the homely little dog, as if Dad’s hands were still reaching down to help them both in time of need.

In the following months, Tippy and Mom became soul mates of sorts. The cardboard-box bed was brought in from the laundry room to Mom’s bedroom, where it stayed for the next fourteen years.

“As long as I had that little dog,” Mom said, “it was like a part of your dad was still here. She brought life back into the house.”

Eventually, the rigors of time and age took their toll on Mom’s little friend; blindness and painful joints set in. With overwhelming sadness and regret, Mom asked my brother to help take Tippy for her final trip to the vet.

“I reached down to cradle her head in my hands,” Mom said, “and she leaned her face against mine as if to say thanks for all we had done for her.”

Tippy lived seventeen years after that fateful journey of terror through traffic, rundown warehouses, pain and suffering to find my dad. And looking back over the years, it seems to me now that the true miracle was not in the healing forces of Dad’s loving hands and kindness toward the little lost dog that nobody wanted—but in the difference they made in each other’s lives.

Jan K. Stewart Bass

5
AMAZING
ANIMALS

I
have learned to use the word
impossible
with the greatest of caution.

Wernher von Braun

©1989 by Danny Shanahan from The New Yorker Collection. All Rights Reserved.

Buffalo Games

A
ll animals except man know that the ultimate
of life is to enjoy it.

Samuel Butler

[EDITORS’ NOTE:
During the Iditarod, the dogsled race across
Alaska, a rookie driver came upon a musher who had stopped his
team and was gazing down a hill with rapt attention. The rookie
driver stopped to see what the other man found so absorbing.
]

We were looking down on a frozen lake—one of the Farewell Lakes. But it wasn’t the lake that held his interest. Below and to the right, a group of four buffalo were standing on the shore. Two of them were in the grass at the edge and the other two were out on the ice.

“Somebody told me that there was a herd of buffalo here, but I hadn’t expected to see them along the trail,” he said.

“Yes,” I told the other musher. “Buffalo. I know. They told us . . .”

“No—
watch
.”

I turned back, thinking frankly that he was around the bend. So it was buffalo—so what?

Then I saw what he meant.

The surface of the lake was bare of snow and the two buffalo out on the ice were having a rough time of it trying to stand. One of the buffalo on the shore backed away from the lake, up the sloping side of the ridge, pawed the ground a couple of times and ran full bore for the lake.

Just as he hit the edge of the ice, his tail went straight up in the air. He spread his front feet apart, stiffened his legs and slid away from shore, spinning around in a circle as he flew across the ice.

When he slowed to a stop he bellowed, a kind of “Gwaaa” sound, then began making his tortuous way back to the shoreline.

While he was doing this, the fourth buffalo came shooting out on the ice, slid farther (also tail up) than the last, made a louder noise, and started back slipping and falling.

I couldn’t believe it and blinked rapidly several times, thinking I was hallucinating.

“No—it’s real,” he laughed. “I was passing when I heard the bellow and came up to check it out. I’ve been here an hour, maybe a little more. They’ve been doing this the whole time. Great, isn’t it?”

We lay there for another half-hour watching them play. The object seemed to be who could slide the farthest, and each of them tried several times, tails up, happy bellows echoing on the far shore of the lake as they slid across the ice.

Buffalo Games . . . who would have thought it could happen?

Gary Paulsen

Doctola

T
he . . . dog, in life the firmest friend, the first
to welcome, foremost to defend.

Lord Byron

I graduated from veterinary school in June of 1984. In July, I hopped a plane for the deepest, darkest heart of Africa and assumed my post as the Thyolo district veterinary officer in August. My life as a new Peace Corps volunteer was moving at warp speed.

My duties were to provide veterinary care and administer the disease control programs for the Thyolo and Mulanji districts in the central African country of Malawi. With nothing more than a cabinet of mostly outdated drugs and a 100-cc motorbike, I was to supervise twenty-three veterinary technicians scattered around my districts and maintain the health of the cattle, sheep, goats, swine, poultry and pet animals in the entire area.

After a month in my new position, I returned to my office one evening after sundown. There, I was greeted by an older gentleman. He sat in the chair that I kept outside my office door. In his lap, he held a box full of puppies. I returned his greeting and then showed him into my office. We conversed in the local language of Chichewa.

The gentleman was Dr. Mzimba, one of the well-known medicine men in the district. In Africa, the medicine man is a spiritual leader and wise man, as well as a healer, for his people. I estimated his age around sixty, but my estimate could easily have been off twenty years in either direction.

In order for him to reach me, he had walked two hours to the nearest bus stop and then taken a six-hour bus ride to my office. He had left his home at 5:00
A.M.
and had been waiting for me at my office since his arrival at 4:00
P.M.
It was now 7:00
P.M.
He went on to explain that there was very little he could do for the sick puppies he had brought me, since his medicine only worked on people. He cared very much for these puppies and had “seen” that some were destined to do great things. He asked that I do all in my power to save them.

The six puppies were very ill. I explained that intensive care would be needed for many days if any of the puppies were to be saved. He agreed to leave them with me. He stated that when he felt it was time, he would return to collect them. With that, he left.

The puppies required round-the-clock care. The pups went with me wherever I went. Homemade electrolyte solution and antibiotics were all that I had available. Yet despite all my efforts, one puppy after another slowly faded away. On the sixth night, the last two remaining puppies and I bedded down for the evening. I fully expected that these two would go the same way as their litter-mates. They were not showing any improvement, and I was sure that they didn’t have another day’s worth of fight left in them.

I was overjoyed to wake to two happy and perky puppies whining for attention. They looked like puppy skeletons, but they were alive and alert puppy skeletons. Their appetites were ravenous. Frequent small meals soon became frequent large meals, and it didn’t take long for them to fill out.

They stayed with me an additional ten days, and I was wondering if Dr. Mzimba would ever return for them. On the tenth day of their recovery period, Dr. Mzimba showed up. He was overjoyed with the two pups that had survived and were now thriving. One pup was black with four white paws and a large white star on his chest. The other pup was brown with a large white patch on the right side of his face. Both pups had prominent ridgebacks.

I watched as the pups licked and kissed the old man’s face while he gently cuddled and hugged them. He pulled out a few coins and some old crumpled bills and asked what the fee came to. I charged him my standard consultation fee—a total of $3.50. He gladly paid, but before he left he gave me the honor of naming the pups. I thought long and hard and finally chose the name Bozo for the black pup and Skippy for the brown one. I told him that I once had dogs with those names, and they had been my best friends.

“Come and visit me often, Doctola,” he said. “These pups now know you as mother and father. They will not forget and some day will return the great kindness you have shown them.” Then Dr. Mzimba and I shook hands and parted company.

Over the course of the next eighteen months, I saw Dr. Mzimba, Bozo and Skippy at least once a month. Every two to four weeks, I took a three-day trip traveling from one village to the next around the Thyolo district, performing various veterinary duties as needed. At the end of each trip, I stopped at Dr. Mzimba’s village. He kindly offered me his home and gracious hospitality every time I swung through the neighborhood.

I watched Bozo and Skippy grow into fine dogs. They each reached around eighty pounds. They were twice the size of the local village dogs and were fiercely loyal to Dr. Mzimba. I vaccinated them and dewormed them regularly, and treated their various wounds and ailments. For me, it was like seeing family. Whenever they saw me, they instantly turned into playful puppies.

The dogs were treasured by the people of their village. On every visit, I heard a new story of how the dogs had run off someone trying to steal cattle, or how they had defended the village against roaming hyenas or jackals.