Skidboot 'The Smartest Dog In The World' (8 page)

The stewardess leaned close, offering them champagne. He didn't think Skidboot should drink but ordered one for him anyway. He could have two for himself, then. The stewardess made little pooch noises at Skidboot, who cocked an eye and stared back at her. People always picked some idiosyncratic way of communicating with his dog, either 'tsk tsk' noises, or 'oooooo' or now, like this one, little smacks. Funny, but with Skidboot, you didn't really have to say anything. Just think it.

They had duck confit and scampi, and Skidboot licked the plate clean. Dessert next, and they both hoped it was ice cream.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Canine Einstein

David woke with a start. Skidboot, a star?
Oh, right, in his own horror movie,
David laughed. Still, he had a burning curiosity. Any dog that could fetch a hammer and find the phone was pretty special.

What was that…? Hot breath blew on his face, he knew it wasn't anything human. Skidboot stared at him with such intensity that David rolled out of bed, "all right, all right, let me get some coffee."

Russell, en route to school, yelled, "I want to see some new tricks today!" Skidboot wagged his tail so violently David thought the milk would spill. Maybe he'd start with a stick or two.

By noon, the sticks were flying, the dog running back and forth like all the countless eager mutts in Texas. Any dog could fetch, but David was sure this dog understood, well, English. Or at least the doggie version of it.

With the next branch sailing through midair, David commanded, "Whoa!"

Skidboot froze, one paw raised. The stick bounced invitingly. The dog quivered.

"Whoa! Do-NOT-MOVE!" More quivers, eyes glued. "Go get it!"

Skidboot flashed across the yard and in seconds had the stick. A Rhode Island Red strutted across the tarmac behind David's truck, immediately within view of the dog. One of the greatest chicken breeds of all time, its rich brown eggs brightened up many a Sunday omelet. Lately, the hen looked frayed, acted skittish, and her eggs tasted poorly, which probably had to do with the dog. Skidboot quivered around, stirring up dust, crouched to attack.

"No!" David commanded with authority.

Skidboot dropped to a crouch, gripped with terrible indecision, head swiveling from David's location to where the chicken paraded, then back again. He longed to launch a stealth attack, but slowly, his nose dropped to his paws even though his eyes stayed screwed onto the hen, dark with thoughts of death.

I been saying no to that dog for a year,
David thought.
Why now? What's different?

Every story has a turning point, and every life is a story. Skidboot, long the only human dog he knew, had turned, heading somewhere new and exciting and far beyond the practical. Shreds, rips, toys and tumult came to nothing. In fact, they came to a halt. Once mute with misunderstanding, Skidboot now, finally, understood. He was ready to work, just the way he was meant to.

The household temperature warmed to him, releasing its icy anger at his whoppers of chicken chasing and frantic barking, softening into the surprise of cooperation and the magic of number "Three." In the classics, Virgil, Caesar and Aeneas promote the occult use of three. Churches in the past had glorified the number three with triangular shapes, three organs, three towers, three doors, all dedicated to the Three of the Trinity. Mystical and mysterious, it seemed appropriate. The mystery of this dog was only beginning to show itself.

"When I count to
three
you touch that tree." Skidboot grew still as a French mime, his paw outstretched, waiting for David to
say the number
. He heard thirty, ten, four, thirteen, eleven—the numbers rattling through his brain like bids at an auction, but it was only after everyone had tired, and David's two buddies, Cal and Sip, got up to leave, that David gave in and whispered, "three."

In a flash, Skidboot's paw marked the tree.

"Gawd, look at that!"

"Now back up." Spoken lightly. Then, careful as a woman in heels, Skidboot felt the ground behind him, paw searching after paw, his eyes steady on David as he inched along.

"Now stop."

He stopped.

"Now go."

He went.

"Now stop."

He stopped.

Laughter surged. The men clapped, and Russell grinned, proud of the family dog. He'd seen their routine for the last three days, with David giving orders and the dog, ears perked, hanging on
every word.
Linguists would argue that sure, a dog could understand up to 100 specific words, command words such as "go," "stop" or a word to identify an item, such as "stick" or "ball." So could a child, only the child would go further and learn concepts, like "love" or "friendly." Eventually, the child would come to make sense of a sentence using a number of identifiable words, whereas a dog would still be stuck on the individual meanings.

"You ought to get that dog on the circuit," they all said.

What circuit?
David wondered.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Commando Dog

Barbara didn't compete with David, rodeo-wise. She trusted his ability to win, and he'd been on winning streaks before. In the dour, weather-beaten, tight-fisted gaggle of rodeo riders and their unhappy wives, he took pride in her restraint and whole-hearted support. She wasn't the usual rodeo wife, a disappointed woman with unmet domestic needs, who nagged her spouse, pinched up her eyes in the bright sun and tried not to see him riding, a wife who resented the circuit and who groused about the paltry pay. Instead, Barbara decided to learn some of the rodeo routines herself. Often, she would help David practice. She ducked under his occasional tongue lashing, delivered in volatile, colorful terms by a perfectionist who could swear up a steak and call down fury on any mistake. But the cloud lifted when the work was done, and he resumed his role as a rodeo rider not afraid to talk about feelings, and not afraid to show friendship, support and sensitivity.

One particularly harsh day he felt like a volcano, bubbling inside with ambition, frustration, perfectionism. He'd bellowed like Vesuvius erupting.
Everything
was wrong, why didn't she fix it, how could she…blah blah. Barbara just stood there, dumbfounded by the volley, waiting for it to subside. David roared out of the driveway, bound for a 3-day circuit, hat pulled low on his brow as the tires spun out. The last glimpse he had of his wife was of her standing unhappy by the barn gate, the wind lifting her long hair.

I shouldn't blow up like that,
he thought.
Gotta do better.

On his return, he couldn't believe what greeted him. It rose like a vision before him, odd looking, jerry-built and leaning up against the roping area as if blown there by a Northern. Yet it looked sturdy, too, and of a design he admired the minute he saw it. It huddled up against the roping area, a thing he had wanted, needed, never had the time to build for himself, and—he squinted, just to make sure he wasn't hallucinating in the hot sun—someone had built one.

A return alley.

What the…?

It was Barbara who had built it—by hand! An entire wooden return alley, stuck to the side of the corral—he was astonished. She'd made him a peace offering, a showing of love, even after his ugly yelling behavior…he felt ashamed.

While he was gone, she'd lifted, sorted, arranged, hammered and nailed the boards together, although where she found the materials, he didn't know. She probably had to measure everything out carefully, too, then get them sawn at the hardware store, then haul them back. He tried to imagine her hammering, holding the slats together, dropping nails, getting Russell to hold parts while she nailed them together. It just didn't make sense; she had no skill as a carpenter.

But there it stood, his own return alley. Other men might get a pearl snap-front western shirt or a hand-sewn leather wallet, but his wife gave him a return alley! This roundabout device set into their 150-ft. corral would soften his practice considerably; cut time off the calf's return, which would give him more good cutting and turning practice. Astonished, he stared at the contraption, feeling….loved.

"Barbara, you have got
backbone
!" he complimented, happy to see that she smiled in return. And remembering her toughness then made it easier to understand the scene that happened the next day.

He'd just driven home, turned off the key, when she flung herself out of the mobile home, yelling. Barbara was the last person he expected to yell, at least not without a hog attack or a house fire. He jammed out of the car, startled.

"I got him to lay down and crawl!"

This project had driven David wild. He couldn't seem to make Skidboot understand
crawling
. Since none of their tricks involved actual body language, only verbal language, he'd failed to convince the dog, even by falling to the floor and mock crawling, that crawling was something he should do. Skidboot might as well have been offered a Tango session, given the disinterest and his frantic eye-darting to avoid looking at David, hopelessly riddled down on the floor.
Get up sir!
he might have thought. Skidboot could not believe the ends to which this family would go. He resisted crawling. It seemed demeaning, puppy-like and servile, none of which Skidboot was.

"Look! I'll show you." To the astonishment of man and dog, Barbara flung herself into the air, and like a quarterback landing a tackle, sailed straight on top of Skidboot. Then she reached out and paddled with feet and hands stretched out, sneezing at the dusty shag carpet, Skidboot pressed underneath like a skateboard. A minute into this and Skidboot, interested in his life, lashed out in swimming-like motions, bearing up bravely under his excited load. Like some dystopian were-animal, the duo inched along, Barbara's pony tail bouncing, Skidboot's speckled tail beating out a frantic backlash underneath.

As this...
thing
pulled itself across the floor, David flew into an uncharacteristic laughing fit. He teetered into a chair, shaking with great, sucking howls, sparking Russell into even greater hilarity as he choked back his tears and giggles, as they both discovered that yes, their dog
really could crawl.

Wiping his eyes, David wondered if he was supposed to use this dog-as-skateboard routine out in the arena? Throw himself over the dog, swim with him?

"No, look!" Barbara jumped up, crossed the room.

"Skidboot, crawl!"

David's
skin
crawled as he watched Skidboot slowly lower himself to the rug, paws outspread, nuzzle thrust into the shag, eyes fixed on Barbara, and then, in a show of haunch and knobby joints, like crawling in the mud on D-Day, Skidboot pulled himself across the floor, crawling.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Who's Top Dog?

A delicious stillness settled over the evening, broken melodically by cicadas or the liquid query of a whippoorwill. The fading daylight erased the harsh edges of the day, rubbing them into soft lavender and grey, as everything grew silent and humbled by the fine light of the first star. Those same stars had looked down on the Mexican troops that raided San Antonio, who bested the Texas rangers, who forced them to bargain for their lives with "beans for death," the selection of white beans meaning life, and black beans leading seventeen to die, and the stars overhead had blinked to hide themselves from the sight.

So much bygone history. So many lives and deaths, all for the republic of Texas. And the tide of the present kept moving, pulling the past behind it, nothing ever staying still for more than its time. And now here he was too, flowing along toward some end. Some destiny. But what kind, David couldn't tell. Then the unexpected.

"Go on, use Skidboot, I give you permission!"

Barbara hugged the dog, and Skidboot stared up at her, then at David, who thought he'd misunderstood.
She must be joking.
But no, Barbara had followed her business instincts and decided that Skidboot had entertainment potential. Sure, David's rancher friends had said so from the start, but David hadn't paid any attention. But Barbara had called the Malakoff Cornbread Festival organizers. She'd described Skidboot, his routines, and they thought it sounded fine.

Trained hell,
was all David could say. One thing to have fun with a stick, another to parade it around the fairgrounds to the tune of pure ridicule. David understood the Big Win, had spend his adult years riding after it, and in his mind, the Big Win came with skill and athleticism, not by being a clown.

"What that dog's doing is extraordinary," Barbara insisted. "He has a special talent, why not share it?"

He
has a special talent! David was surprised at the flare of quick jealousy. Now I'm competing with a dog! "All Skidboot does is fetch, what's so special about that?" He felt a flicker of shame. Because he knew the dog was extraordinary, but he also knew that whatever they had together depended on both of them. He would rather shoe wild horses
while they were galloping
than trot himself into an arena with a dog.

He hobbled over to his electric Yamaha, seeking solace in music. Fingers strumming, he sounded out the notes of a favorite Beatles tune,
Yellow Submarine
. Music spoke to him, no it
sang
to him, almost as much as roping, riding or even swimming.

The microwave hummed away right next to the piano, and he never turned it on without sitting down at the piano to play a quick tune. Music drew him, usually folk tunes, "sixties standards and an occasional cowboy ditty. He seated himself, tall at the piano bench. Eyes closed, he hummed out a simple version of "Submarine" as the room fell dark around him. Lost in the tune, he failed to understand the activity at his elbow, as Skidboot wriggled up beside him. If dogs can love music, if dogs have the necessary sensor neurons delicate enough for fine hearing, then it explained Skidboot, who resisted the ability to howl and instead, delicately waved his paw, as if conducting. Head cocked, he accompanied the music for several seconds, seeking the rhythm. Then, at the crescendo, "we all live in a yellow submarine," he reached over and tapped the keys, gently. Once. Twice. David stopped.
What?