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

Just outside the train station, I came across a homeless man. I’d seen this particular man a number of times in the past, as I’d traveled through Amsterdam quite often, and usually gave him some change. Many homeless people call Amsterdam Central Station their home, but this man really stuck in my mind because he was always so good-natured.

That day, because of the holidays, I was feeling particularly upbeat, so I handed the man fifty guilders (about twenty-five dollars) and wished him a Merry Christmas. With tears welling up in his eyes, he thanked me pro- fusely for my generosity and asked my name. I told him mine was Dave, and he said his was Harry. We chatted briefly and went our separate ways.

As I walked up to the ticket vending machine inside the train station, I reached into my wallet, but found nothing. I realized that I had just given Harry the last of my money, and the bank was not yet open for currency exchange. I had no Dutch money left to buy my ticket to the airport. As I stood, pondering my predicament, along came Harry. He saw me standing there bewildered and asked if I needed help with the ticket vending machine, as it was entirely in Dutch.

I explained that this was not the difficulty. My actual problem was that I had no money. Without the slightest hesitation, Harry punched out the code for a ticket to the airport, and deposited the change required. Out came a ticket. He handed it to me and said, “Thank you.”

I asked why he was thanking me when it was I who was indebted to him.

He said, “Because I have been on the street for many years. I don’t have a lot of friends, and you are the first person in a long time that I have been able to help. This is why I thank you.”

Over the next eight years, I continued seeing Harry at the train station when I passed through Amsterdam, which was almost every month. He usually saw me first and came over for some conversation. A number of times we had dinner together. Dinner with Harry isn’t what most people think of as a normal meal. We would purchase pizza or fries from the outdoor vendors and sit on the curb to eat, since Harry wasn’t welcome in restaurants. I didn’t care; I considered Harry a good friend.

Then, starting in June 2002, I stopped seeing Harry at the train station. I thought the worst—that Harry, even though he was fairly young and healthy, had probably frozen to death or been killed.

In early 2003, I was in Amsterdam for my monthly visit. It was 5:30 on Saturday morning, and I was on my way to the train station. Suddenly, I heard a voice yell, “Hey, Dave.”

I turned to see a clean-shaven, casually dressed gentleman walking a medium-sized brown and white collie-type dog. They were coming my way. I had no idea who this person was. He walked up to me, shook my hand and said, “It’s me. Harry.”

I was in complete shock! I couldn’t believe it. I had never seen the man without ragged clothes and layers of dirt all over himself, and now he looked completely respectable. He began to tell me the story of where he had been for the last several months.

It all began with the dog he was now walking. Kaatje, his new companion, had just shown up one day and started hanging out with him at the train station. He and the dog lived on the street for a few months until one day Kaatjewas run over by a car. Harry rushed the dog to a vet, who informed him that the cost of surgery to repair the dog’s hip was going to be very expensive. Harry, of course, had no money. The vet made Harry an offer: if he performed the operation, Harry would take up residence on a cot in the back of the vet’s office and work for him by watching the dogs during the night shift until the surgery was paid off. Harry readily accepted the offer.

Kaatje came through the hip surgery with flying colors. Harry kept his end of the bargain. Because he was so kind to the animals and was such a good worker, when the bill was paid off, the vet offered Harry a permanent position. With a steady salary, Harry was able to get an apartment for himself and Kaatje. Harry was no longer homeless. His love for Kaatje had rescued him from the streets. He stood before me now, looking like any pleasant young man out for a walk with his dog on a Saturday morning.

It was time to catch my train. Harry and I shook hands, and Kaatje gave me a nice good-bye face wash.

“Let’s get together the next time I’m in Amsterdam,” I said.

“I’d like that,” Harry said with a warm smile.

We made plans to meet for dinner near the train station on my next trip and parted ways.

Just before going into the train station, I turned so I could watch man and dog walking happily back to a place people sometimes take for granted—a place called home.

Dave Wiley

Gremlin, Dog First Class

In the spring of 1943, a detachment of seven planes from the VPB-128 U.S. Navy Bombing Squadron was sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where a German submarine had been sighted. The weather was hot and humid. Most of the pilots and crew were young men, away from home for the first time. Many were homesick; all were afraid. Just a few months earlier, they all had been civilians in different walks of life. Now they were sailors, struggling to survive war.

One day around lunchtime, one of the aircraft crews was seeking shade underneath the wing of their plane when they spotted what appeared to be a half-starved rat trotting in their direction. As the animal neared them, they saw that it was a small dog. The dog was so undernourished that his ribs were clearly visible through his thin brown and white fur.

“Come here, boy,” one of the sailors called.

The dog stopped in his tracks and stared.

Eyeing the protruding ribs, the young sailor was filled with compassion and offered the dog his sandwich. At first the dog seemed reluctant, his brown eyes fearful, but he was so hungry he couldn’t resist. With his head down and tail between his legs, the little dog inched forward, then gobbled down the sandwich. It took several days and a lot of sandwiches before the dog trusted the men enough to follow them into the mess hall where he indulged in military chow: fresh oranges, boiled eggs and Spam.

The dog learned to love the enlisted personnel who gave him their undivided attention. And although he tolerated the officers, the sailors noticed that he had
no love
for civilians. The dog would study civilians from a distance, but closely monitor them if they approached him. If they got too close, he would bare his teeth and growl. It was assumed that the dog had been so abused by civilians that he could never forget it, and after investigating to make sure he was a stray, the men decided to keep him.

When the detachmentwas ordered back to the squadron, the sailors couldn’t stand leaving the dog behind, so they smuggled him aboard an aircraft.

Shortly after takeoff the dog barked as the men began playing with him. The pilot asked, “What is that noise?”

The radioman replied, “It must be a gremlin, sir.”

According to the dictionary,
gremlin
means “a mischievous, invisible imp said to ride in airplanes and cause mechanical trouble.”

The dog barked again, and the men had to come clean. They took him into the cockpit where he was enthusiastically welcomed by the rest of the crew.

“This must be our gremlin, sir,” the radioman said, and the name stuck.

Gremlin was indoctrinated into the U.S. Navy when the squadron returned to New York. Induction papers were signed with a paw print, and he was issued an ID card and dog tag. A crew member donated a dress-blue uniform jacket from which a cape was cut and attached to a harness. The uniform bore the insignia “Dog First Class,” and Gremlin seemed very proud to wear his uniform. He was also issued Air Combat Crew wings and eventually earned several campaign ribbons, all attached to the uniform. Gremlin seemed to sense that his uniform was special and would stand at attention during the squadron’s infrequent personnel inspections and would move only when the unit was dismissed.

He usually slept with the enlisted personnel and was completely house- and plane-broken, never relieving himself while in quarters or in flight. However, immediately upon landing, like all crew members, he searched for a place of privacy.

Gremlin soon became the most popular member of the VPB-128 and often flew on noncontact missions with his human counterparts. Gremlin’s navy career took him to five of the world’s seven continents: North America, Europe, Africa, South America and Asia, in that order.

Gremlin had several primary caretakers, some of whom lost their lives during the course of the war. When that happened, another sailor was always ready to take over tending the dog.

While many dogs are enthusiastic automobile riders, Gremlin loved airplanes. At the first turn of the prop of the PV-1 bomber, he would spin in circles, bark loudly, wag his tail furiously and strain against the wind of the prop, his ears and cape flapping in the wind, reminding the men that he wanted to go, too.

Once, Gremlin disappeared during a short stay on the Midway Islands. Rumor had it that one of the submarine crew members had picked up the dog and taken him to their base on a neighboring island. The skipper realized this would be a great loss and morale would no doubt suffer. He sent three squadron aircraft crews over to find him, but the submarine had left—probably with Gremlin aboard. The men kept searching and calling for their beloved friend. Hope dwindledwith each passingmoment.

Then one man saw a small mass huddled under a park bench. It was Gremlin—but he was shaking and wouldn’t come when called. The sailor quickly gathered the dog up and yelled to the rest of the searchers, “I found him!”

The men came running. It seemed too good to be true, but there he was. They stroked the frightened dog and spoke softly to him, and finally Gremlin began wagging his tail. He was back where he belonged—with the VPB-128.

When the squadron was sent to Samar, a hot spot in the war zone, the men had to spend most of their time concentrating on the enemy. Gremlin didn’t seem to mind. It was almost as if he understood their purpose for being there, and he was content so long as he was with the sailors.

It was in Samar that an enlisted man by the name of McKirdy assumed primary care of Gremlin. McKirdy, with his crew, was ordered on a follow-up attack of a Japanese submarine tied up to the dock at Cebu City. McKirdy’s plane was shot down and fell, flaming, into the water. At that time, bombers carried so much gasoline that even a slight crash or hit would cause the plane to burst into flames. Several planes went down that day and many members of the VPB-128 lost their lives.

There was a lot of confusion in the days that followed the loss of McKirdy’s plane, but someone finally noticed that Gremlin hadn’t been seen for a while. They finally realized that Gremlin had been on that plane—the brave and loyal dog had gone out on his last mission.

Gremlin, Dog First Class, rescued from a life of hunger and abuse in the slums of Cuba and brought into a world filled with love, unending attention and adventure, died for his country and the men he loved on March 21, 1944. He accomplished his mission with the highest degree of loyalty, compassion and love.

JaLeen Bultman-Deardurff

My Blue-Eyed Boy

I
think we are drawn to dogs because they are
the uninhibited creatures we might be if we
weren’t certain we knew better.

George Bird Evans

My dog, Harry, and I are very close. Harry, an eighty-pound Dalmatian, listens to me when I am upset, comforts me when I am blue and goes everywhere with me. He cares for no other person like he does for me, his beloved mama. Having raised him since he was an eight-week-old pup, I feel the same way about him—he is my blue-eyed boy.

One beautiful Sunday morning, Harry and I went to Central Park. Harry was running off leash on Dog Hill, along with all the other city dogs, while their owners enjoyed a spring day in the park.

I was feeling down because I had been recently laid off from the job I’d held for ten years. Being in the park with Harry was one of the ways I forgot for a while that I was out of work—and that my prospects were not looking good in a tough economy.

I was standing at the bottom of Dog Hill talking to another dog owner, when all of a sudden, we heard someone shout, “He peed on my leg!” I turned to look, and, lo and behold, at the top of the hill I saw a lady gesticulating at my beloved boy, who apparently was the culprit. Horrified, I rushed up the hill. Harry had never done anything remotely like this before.

When I got to where the woman was standing, I reached down quickly and grabbed hold of Harry’s collar in case he decided to do anything else untoward. The woman was bent over, trying to clean up her leg. She was pulling off her shoe because the pee had dribbled down her leg all the way into her shoe.

We straightened up at the same moment, and for a shocked instant, we looked at each other.

“Alexandra!” she said.

“Valerie!” It was my former boss—the one who laid me off three months before.

I apologized to Valerie for Harry’s behavior, but all the way home, I laughed and laughed, and gave Harry lots of kisses and hugs. Harry, of course, was thrilled that he clearly had pulled off a winning stunt—though, fortunately, he has never repeated his performance. To this day, when I think about all of Harry’s wonderful qualities, his “revenge for mama” still makes me laugh the hardest.

Alexandra Mandis