Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul (6 page)
Read Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul Online
Authors: Jack Canfield
Into our Wyoming Noah’s Ark came Blu. Needless to say, she was overwhelmed. To hide from the confusion of her new surroundings, Blu sought an invisible cloak in a variety of shapes. She took cover beneath the chicken coop, under the hay manger, the water trough or the loading chute—anyplace where she was in the shadows of the activity but could observe our day-to-day routines.
Her behavior gave us clues to the abuse that she’d endured before coming to our home. It left her cowering whenever a hand was raised to pat her or voices were too loud for her sensitive soul. Yet as the weeks dissolved into months and our calendar pages went out with the trash, Blu’s demeanor changed. She progressed from following us during chores to romping out front as our leader. When someone approached her with a hand for a pat, Blu no longer cringed or slunk away. Instead, she sought affection from us. If we didn’t acknowledge her when she came near, Blu would nudge our hand until she received the hug and loving words she now enjoyed.
She trotted alongside Smokey when the girls rode him bareback. Blu’s herding instincts were displayed when she gathered stray chickens and drove them back to the coop. After playing tag with the cat, Blu’s impish smile was reflected by anyone observing her play. At the close of day, Blu rested at the bedside of one of our daughters. Like our children, she listened with rapt attention to their bedtime stories. The beauty of her canine soul touched our lives in many ways. Then one cold evening, she showed us her remarkable capacity to love.
That year, eleven-year-old Joanne and her sister Kathy were each given a calf to raise for their 4-H projects. Morning and evening, they faithfully made sure there was fresh water in the trough and food in the bunker for their calves. When the colder weather arrived in late fall, they made straw bedding inside the calving shed.
One evening the cold stiffness of winter hung icicles off the barn roof and wrapped a blanket of snow across the meadow. I had just put dinner in the oven when Kathy yelled from the back porch.
“Mother . . . hurry . . . Joanne’s calf is hurt!”
Zipping up my jacket, I ran to the barn, where I found Joanne sitting on the snow-covered ground. Blu lay close to Joanne’s side while the calf lay across her lap, legs stiff. Blue wool mittens off, Joanne’s one hand cradled the calf’s head, the other clamped nostrils shut while she blew puffs of air into the calf’s mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “She’s barely breathing, Mommy.” She blew again into the calf’s mouth. “I found her lying here . . . all by herself. I don’t want her to die.”
“Honey, she could have been kicked by another cow. You need to understand that she may have injuries inside beyond our help.”
“I know.” She wiped the tears trickling down her cheek.
“Let’s get her to the house where it’s warm.” I carried the calf. Blu followed close to Joanne.
Only the kitchen clock marked the passage of time while we worked on the calf. Blu kept her vigil just paw steps away from Joanne.
The calf’s labored breathing slowed . . . stopped.
I hugged Joanne close. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“She was too little to die. Why . . . ?”
The sadness on her face was like a blow to my chest. I gulped for air. My mind whispered,
Oh honey, I wish I could
protect you from death . . . but I can’t.
I felt so helpless.
I said, “Injuries from an accident don’t always heal; sometimes the animal or person dies. And for a little while, we cry our sadness.”
Kathy took her sister’s hand. “I’ll share my calf with you.”
“That’s okay . . . I don’t want another one right now.”
My vision blurred while I explained to Joanne that when an animal or person died it was only the end of a tangible life, that her dad and I believed life was ongoing for the soul. Before my words were out, I realized that there would be time later for us to talk about our spiritual beliefs, to help Joanne build the personal strengths that would ease her through other losses. Just now, she was an inconsolable little girl, and I didn’t know how best to help.
As I watched, Blu crawled across the floor and put her head in Joanne’s lap. Blu nudged her hand until fingers moved through her black-and-white fur. Slowly Joanne bent her neck and kissed the top of Blu’s head. The dog raised her head and looked into Joanne’s eyes. No words were needed in those quiet moments when unconditional love touched Joanne’s bruised spirit. She hugged Blu and whispered, “I love you, too.”
Filled with wonder, I witnessed a black-and-white border collie—who was once afraid to love—part the veil of sadness from my young daughter’s heart.
Margaret Hevel
It’s not much to look at. Just a big old cream-colored bowl. You know, one of those old-fashioned crock bowls with a shiny glaze except on the bottom and around the rim. It’s thick and heavy with short vertical sides. For almost thirty years that old bowl has occupied a place on my kitchen floor. It came from Jackson’s Hay and Feed, one of those tin-roofed feed stores, the kind with a dusty wooden floor, the pungent aromas of alfalfa and bags of feed, and the sounds of cheep-cheeping fuzzy yellowchicks in an incubator. At $4.95 it represented a major investment for a college student drawing $90 a month on the GI Bill.
Today, it came out of the cupboard where it was stored after Cheddar, my dear old yellow Lab, had to be put down. It had just seemed too big to feed the puppy—until now. The puppy, another yellow girl I named Chamois, is growing fast. Now, at almost eighteen weeks of age, she’s ready for the bowl. She’ll be the third Lab to eat from it.
Swamp was the first. For thirteen years Swamp ate her meals from the bowl. Now as I look at it sitting on my kitchen floor, I can see Swamp as clearly as if she were here. She liked to lie on the floor with the bowl between her front legs when she ate. Her last meal came from that bowl; a special food for dogs with failing kidneys. She’d been on it since September. The vet told me she had about four months left so I started looking for a puppy.
Swamp rode with me out to a farm on a windy Kansas prairie. The farmer had about ten kennel runs. On one side were Labs and on the other were pointers. He said, “I don’t usually sell ’em to people who don’t hunt.” I confessed I was not a hunter, but Swamp worked her magic on him and soon we were driving home with a precocious yellow puppy we named Cheddar.
The bowl got Cheddar into trouble. She tried to eat from it when Swamp was holding it between her paws. A quick growl and a snap of Swamp’s powerful jaws and we were racing to the vet’s for a couple of stitches on her nose. I hadn’t thought of that for years. Now with the bowl sitting here on the kitchen floor, it seems like yesterday. And, as if it were yesterday, I again experienced the sharp pangs of grief felt so many years ago when we drove Swamp to the same clinic and said good-bye. That night Cheddar ate her first meal from the bowl, and for the next fifteen years it was filled for her every morning.
Cheddar’s technique was different from Swamp’s. She’d walk up to the bowl, get a chunk or two in her mouth and walk away as she crunched the kibble. Then she’d circle back for another bite. She always ate half the food in the morning and the other half just before bedtime. It was a pattern that never varied.
That old $4.95 bowl is probably the only thing I still own that was mine thirty years ago. It has served us well, and tonight Chamois will eat her first meal from it. I wonder if she knows how valuable it is and what it means to me. I wonder if she knows it’s Halloween and that her meal tonight will be served in a haunted bowl: a big old cream-colored bowl haunted by the ghosts of Swamp and Cheddar—and a thousand poignant memories. Will she know as she eats that a black ghost will lie down and wrap her front legs around the bowl and that a yellow ghost will grab a bite and then circle back for more? Will she see the tears in my eyes before I turn away and stare into the past? Or will she just devour the food, lick her chops and wag her busy tail?
John Arrington
We were visiting our daughter when we adopted our Boston terrier, Tad. An adorable puppy, just three months old, he became the family’s center of attention. Each morning, as soon as he heard my daughter Kayla moving around downstairs, he had to be taken down for playtime before she left for work. When she came home from work, we had him waiting for her at the door.
After three weeks we left for home. On the drive, we let Tad talk to Kayla on the phone each night. Once home, every time we called Kayla or she called us, we always put Tad on. He scratched the phone and listened intently and tried to look into the phone to see her.
One Saturday, Kayla called while we were out. She left a message. Tad was standing beside me when I pressed the button to listen to the message. He listened to her talking and cocked his head, grinning at me. I played it again for him.
A few days later, I was taking my shower when I heard the answering machine come on and Kayla leave a message. I thought it was strange when I heard her message repeat and the machine announce, “End of messages.” A few seconds later Kayla’s message began yet again.
Wondering what was going on, I climbed out of the shower, wrapped a towel around myself and headed into the living room. There stood Tad, listening to the answering machine. I stopped and watched. When the message finished, he stood up with his feet against the edge of the low table, reached over with one paw and slapped the answering machine. The message came on again. He dropped back on the floor and listened happily.
I told him “no,” and distracted him from the answering machine while I erased the message. A few days later I was in the kitchen when I heard, “You have no messages.” I headed for the living room. Tad had started the machine again. I watched as he cocked his head and looked at the answering machine. Then he stood with his feet on the edge of the table and tapped the button again: “You have no messages.” He walked around to the other side of the table and repeated the process with the same results. This really irritated him. He returned to his first position, took both paws and began slapping and clawing the answering machine. It repeated: “You have no messages.”
I said, “Tad, leave the answering machine alone.” He looked at me and then turned back to the answering machine, digging at it furiously. When it repeated the same message, he ran to me and then ran back to the answering machine, waiting for me to do something. I realized he wanted to hear Kayla talking, but I had erased themessage.
I called Kayla that night and asked her to call Tad and leave him a message. I explained that Tad had listened to her message, but I had erased it. When he tried to listen to it again and didn’t hear hermessage, he had been unhappy.
Kayla called Tad and left a specialmessage for himthat he can play and listen to whenever he wants to hear Kayla’s voice. We call it puppy love, twenty-first-century style!
Zardrelle Arnott
A
dog is a dog except when he is facing you.
Then he is Mr. Dog.
Haitian saying
During the four years I spent as an animal control officer, I learned that dogs are the first to know when spring has arrived. Dogs who never venture farther than their own backyards will somehow find themselves across town following the scent of spring. Bubba was no exception.
Each year, animal control received several phone calls complaining about Bubba—always in the spring. Bubba, an ancient, overweight and most often cranky bulldog with a profound underbite, snored in the shade of his yard all summer, and seemed content to stay behind his fence during the winter. But as soon as it began to thaw, Bubba began to terrorize the city.
Actually, Bubba was too old to terrorize anyone. His once tan and brindle coat was mixed with so much gray that he appeared at least twenty years old, and I noticed the beginning of a limp that had the definite look of arthritic hips. He never chased anyone; I don’t think he could have if he tried. Still, his appearance and his perpetual nasal congestion, combined with his bad attitude, made people uncomfortable when he got loose.
Sometimes he would get it in his head to sit outside the local deli and glare. The deli owners tried throwing roast beef at him but he just sniffed at it, gobbled it up, growled and stayed right where he was. Most people just got out of his way when they saw him coming; then they called animal control.
His owner, Tim—a thin, silent man who appeared ageless in that way men do after working outdoors most of their lives—usually showed up at the pound, apologized, asked someone to tell me to drop off his ticket and took Bubba home. He wrapped his thin arms around Bubba’s very large middle and heaved him into the back of his pickup truck. He never complained, never asked for a court date. He just apologized and paid his fines.
Tim didn’t seem the kind of person who would be interested in having a pet, especially one as difficult as Bubba. Tim lived alone in a large dilapidated Victorian house that was in a perpetual state of renovation. He had never married, and no one really remembered if he had any family. He didn’t seem comfortable showing affection to anyone, least of all a fat, grumpy bulldog. And Bubba never let anyone touch him, except for Tim, and even then he didn’t look too happy about it. Yet year after year Tim spent a lot of time leaving work to come and drag his grouchy, old dog home.
