“Oh,” he said, bending forward to scratch her head. “Why?”
I went on to explain her uncanny ability to judge people, then added, “She sensed you for what you really are, while I only saw the outside.”
“Lucky for me she was around,” he said, laughing.
After two hours and several more cups of tea, the doorbell rang again. A man wearing overalls under a hooded raincoat announced the vehicle was repaired.
Thanking me profusely, the stranger headed out into the night, and a few minutes later, the taillights of his van disappeared down the road. I never expected to see him again.
But on the afternoon of Christmas Eve I answered the door to find the rainy-night stranger standing there. “For you,” he said, handing me a large box of chocolates, “for your kindness.” Then he placed a packet of dog treats in my other hand. “And these are for Lassie, my friend with the good instincts. Merry Christmas to you both.”
Every Christmas Eve, untilwemoved five years later, he arrived with his box of chocolates and packet of dog treats. And every year he got the same warm welcome from our wise Lassie.
Gillian Westhead
as told to Bill Westhead
A New Home
“Mom, watch out!” my daughter Melissa screamed as a drenched brown pooch charged under our van. Slamming my foot on the brakes, we jerked to a stop. Stepping out into the freezing rain, we hunched down on opposite sides of the van, making kissing noises to coax the little dog—who, miraculously, I hadn’t hit—to us. The shivering pup jumped into Melissa’s arms and then onto her lap once she sat down again in the heated van.
We were on our way home from Melissa’s sixth-grade basketball game. Her once-white shirt with the red number 7 was now covered in dirty black paw prints. I stared at themess as she wrapped her shirt around the small dog.
“That shirt will never come clean!”
“Well, at least we saved his life,” she frowned as she cuddled him. “Running through all those cars he could have been killed.”
She continued petting him. “He’s so cute. And he doesn’t have a collar. Can we keep him?”
I knew how she felt. I loved animals myself—especially dogs. But I also knewthemess theymade. Dogs dig through the garbage. They chew up paper, shoes and anything else they can fit in their mouths. Not to mention the little piles and puddles they make when you’re trying to housebreak them. I didn’t need a dog. I loved the clean, bright house we had recently moved into, and I wanted to keep my new house looking just that—new.
I glanced at the ball of brown fur and the black mask outlining his wide, wondering eyes. She’s right. He is cute.
The smell of wet dog escalated with the burst of heat coming out of the vents, bringing me to my senses. I turned the heat down and shook my head. “Melissa, we’ve been through this before. I told all four of you kids when we moved into the new house: absolutely no pets.”
As we pulled into the drive, she said, “But Mom, it’s the middle of February. He’ll freeze out here.”
I glanced at the pup licking Melissa’s fingers. “Okay,” I decided. “We’ll give him a bath, keep him for the night and call the animal shelter tomorrow.”
Still frowning, Melissa nodded and slid out of the van. Carrying the dog in her arms, she entered the house. By the time I reached the door, the news was already out.
“We’ve got a new puppy!” Robert, Brian and Jeremiah chorused.
“I’m afraid not,” I said, as I took off my shoes. “We’re only keeping him overnight.”
Wiggling out of Melissa’s arms, the pup scampered across the room and jumped up on my couch.
“Get down!” I shouted, pointing my finger at him and toward the floor.
He licked his nose remorsefully and sat there shaking.
“Mom, you’re scaring him.” Melissa scooped him into her arms. “C’mon, boy, I’ll take you to my room.”
“Ah-ah,” I corrected, “bath first.”
All four kids crowded around the puppy in the bathroom. I listened over the running water as each became excited over every splash the dog made. Their giggles brought a smile to my face. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have a dog.
I glanced around the kitchen with its shiny black-and-white tile floor. Picturing a dog dish, with food and water heaping into a sloshing puddle of goo, I turned toward the living room. With this messy weather, I envisioned my pale-blue carpeting “decorated” with tiny black paw prints. Not tomention the shedding, fleas and all the other things a dog can bring. I shook my head. A dog will ruin this place.
After his bath, Melissa brought him out wrapped in one of our good white towels. He looked like a drowned rat, except for his big, brown puppy-dog eyes. The boys raced around the kitchen getting food and water.
The water sloshed back and forth in the bowl. “Be careful, Jeremiah,” I warned. “You’re gonna spill—” When Jeremiah heard my voice he stopped with a sudden jerk. Water splashed onto his face and down the front of shirt and blue jeans, soaking the floor.
I ran to get towels. When I returned, I watched in horror as the pup tramped through the water. Even after his bath, his feet were still dirty and left muddy little prints all over my kitchen floor. “Wipe his feet and put him in your room, Melissa. Now!”
Melissa snatched the dog up, with the boys traipsing at her heels. I sighed as I wiped up the mud and water. After a few minutes, the floor shined like new, and laughter erupted from Melissa’s bedroom.
My husband, John, came in from work moments later. “What’s so funny?” he asked after he kissedme on the cheek.
“A dog.”
“A dog?” he asked, surprised. “We have a dog?”
“Not by choice,” I explained. “It ran under the van. And of course I couldn’t just leave him in the middle of the street.”
John smiled. “What happened to no pets?”
“I told them he’s going tomorrow.”
After John joined the kids he came back out. “You know, he is really cute.”
“Yeah, I know.” He didn’t have to convince me; my resolve was already slipping.
The next morning, the kids mauled the dog with hugs and tears. “Can’t we keep him?” they sobbed. I watched how he gently and tenderly licked each one as if to comfort them.
“I promise we’ll take care of him,” Melissa said.
“Yeah, and I’ll water him,” Jeremiah added. I smiled, remembering the incident the night before. “But I won’t fill his dish so full next time.”
How could I say no? He’s housebroken. He’s cute. And he’s great with the kids.
“We’ll see,” I said, as they scooted out the door for school. “But first, I’ll have to call the dog pound to make sure no one is looking for him.”
Their faces lit up as they trotted down the drive. With John already at work, the pup and I watched from the door as the four kids skipped down the street. Once they turned the corner, I grabbed the phone book and found the number for the animal shelter.
The lady at the shelter informed me that no one had reported a brown dog missing. However, she instructed me to put an ad in the local paper about him for three days, and if no one responded, we could legally keep him for our own. I called the newspaper and placed the ad. Although I had mixed feelings, mostly I hoped his owners would claim him.
Each day, the kids would ask the same question, “Did anyone call?” And each day it was always the same answer: “Nope.”
By the third day, the dog and I had spent so much time together that he followed me around the house. If I sat on the couch, he’d jump in my lap. If I folded clothes, he’d lie by the dryer. If I made dinner, he’d sit by the refrigerator. Even when I went to bed, he’d follow, wanting to cuddle up with me.
“Looks like we have to come up with a name,” I said Sunday morning at breakfast.
The kids cheered and threw out some names. When we returned from church, I played the messages on our answering machine, my hear
t sinking when I heard: “I think you may have my dog.”
After speaking with the lady, I realized that Snickers was indeed her dog. She explained she’d be over to get him within the hour. As we sat around the table, picking at the pot roast, tears flooded our plates like a river. Even I had grown attached to this sweet little dog.
When the lady arrived, I met her at the door. I clenched a wet tissue in my hands and invited her in. She took in the scene: four mournful children sitting in a huddle around the little dog and petting him, while Snickers, perched on Melissa’s lap, licked her tears away.
After a long moment, she said, “I want you to have him. I can see you love him and we already have another dog.”
I gave her a hugwhile the kids cheered in the background.
Snickers has definitely left his mark on our house. Still, I wouldn’t trade his muddy paw prints for anything—not even the nicest-looking house in the world! For, although he makes little messes sometimes, he has filled our hearts with love. Before Snickers came into our lives, we had a new house. Now we have a new home.
Elisabeth A. Freeman
“It might help Skippy’s feelings if you said he needed improvement instead of calling him a bad dog.”
©2003 Jonny Hawkins. Reprinted with permission of Jonny Hawkins.
Judgment Day
On Judgment Day Saint Peter stands,
A list of virtues in his hands.
As all the souls in silence wait
To see who’ll pass through heaven’s gate.
“You’ll enter first,” he says, “if you
can swear your heart was always true.
And you were constant to the end,
A steadfast, loyal, devoted friend.
Never spiteful, never mean,
Unchanging through good times and lean.
With no desire but this: to be
allowed to love eternally.”
And this is why Saint Peter’s hand
Throws wide the heavenly portals, and
With wagging tails and shining eyes
The dogs walk into paradise.
Millicent Bobleter
Mound of Dirt
The year I was in first grade I ended my prayers each evening with a plea to God to send me a dog. It was a plea that did not go unnoticed by my parents, who knelt beside me. Two weeks before my seventh birthday, which was in May, they told me that they wanted to get a load of dirt for our backyard. I didn’t realize something was up until Dad parked the car in front of a ranch house in a suburban neighborhood.
“This doesn’t look like a place for dirt,” I said, eyeing the surroundings.
While my parents exchanged nervous glances and whispered to each other, a woman named Martha ushered us inside the house.
“I bet you are a very good student,” saidMartha. I didn’t know what to say. I was anything but a good student. As hard as I tried to do well in school, I was failing first grade.
Sensing my discomfort, Martha asked, “Well, I guess you probably want to see the ‘dirt,’ don’t you?”
“Yes,” I answered, eager to get off the subject of school.
Martha set a large box in the middle of the living room floor. I padded up and peeked inside. Six black dachshund puppies clawed at the inside of the box, each begging for my attention. Snoozing at the bottom was the runt. I rubbed my fingers on a tuft of hair that stood up in the middle of her back.
Martha said, “That one will never be a show dog.”
It didn’t matter to me whether she’d ever be a show dog. Her brown eyes looked up at me with such hope. When I picked her up, she snuggled against my heart. There she stayed on the long ride home. I named her Gretchen.
As Gretchen grew, she loved to chew on bones, bury them in the backyard and chase squirrels that dared to disturb her burial mounds. Watching Gretchen’s determination and persistence in protecting her bones was a learning experience for me. I saw that because Gretchen never gave up in her battle against the squirrels, they finally left her alone.
As unwavering and fierce as she was with the squirrels, she loved children, especially my neighborhood friends. If I played mud pies with Sally, Gretchen was right there with us. If Markie and Joanie wanted to walk to the corner drugstore, Gretchen begged for her leash. If the neighbor kids put on a play, Gretchen had a part. If Gretchen slipped out of the gate, all the kids in the neighborhood helped chase her down. She was not a dog to us. She was a playmate—a friend.
Gretchen was the only friend I told about my troubles with learning. While we sat underneath my father’s workbench, I told her about my failure in school, about feeling like a dummy because I couldn’t read and about how the other children made fun of me. I believed Gretchen understood my problems because as the runt of the litter she had struggled fromthemoment of her birth. The closer we snuggled in our secret little space, the more I came to believe that maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Maybe there was hope for me. She seemed to understand how much I needed her. And I needed her a lot that summer before second grade. I wanted to get smart, and I figured the best way to do this was to read every day.
“Which book?” I’d ask her as she jumped up on my bed.
Gretchen, who used her nose to move anything I set on the bed, would nose toward me one of the books lying on the coverlet, and I’d read it aloud. It wasn’t easy for me to read, but Gretchen was patient. Sometimes she’d sigh when I fumbled with the words. Once I made it through a rough spot, she’d nestle against me and lay her snout on my heart. It made me feel better to have her with me as I read. My fears about being a dummy melted away with her beside me.
The summer passed—book by book—until it was time to go shopping for school clothes. Since it was such a hot day, my mother felt Gretchen should stay home. Gretchen whined about being left behind. She hated it when I went someplace she couldn’t go. And no amount of trying to explain to her that dogs can’t go shopping would stop her whining. I looked back just in time to see her head pop up in the window before we drove off, but when we came back from shopping, I didn’t hear her claws clicking against the hardwood floor to greet me.
My mother noticed the hall closet door ajar.
“Oh, no,” she whispered upon closer inspection. On the floor we found chewed up containers of poison that Gretchen had dug out from the dark recesses of the closet. We found Gretchen behind the living room sofa. She beat her tail in slow motion as I approached. We rushed her to the vet.
“Gretchen is very sick. The vet says she is not responding to treatment,” said my mother at the dinner table.
“She’s going to get well,” I said firmly.
“It’s best we prepare ourselves for the worst,” my father said.
“No,” I cried. “She’s going to getwell. She’s going to come home.”
I thought about how lonely Gretchen must be. She probably thinks I don’t love her anymore. She probably thinks she’ll never see me again. Gretchen had always been there to comfort me when I was sad and hurt.
“I want to go and see her,” I toldmy parents. “If she could see me, I know she’d get well.”
“Wake up, Gretchen,” I said, after following the vet to a back room in his office. Hearing the sound of my voice, her tail beat the bottom of the cage, again, in slow motion. The vet couldn’t believe it when Gretchen stood up in her cage and whined for me to open the door to hold her. It wasn’t long before she recovered and came home to stay.
Gretchen and I continued reading together for the whole following year. My reading definitely improved, but it was third grade that was the turning point of my life. That year I became the best reader in my class. My third-grade teacher understood that I was a bright child who had a learning problem. She told stories about people like me who struggled successfully to learn despite obstacles.
Although I appreciate everything my teacher and parents did for me, I feel I owe so much to that little “mound of dirt” my parents bought me on my seventh birthda
y. Persistence and determination were only a part of the story. The runt who would never be a show dog taught me that love is a healing and nurturing soil in which a broken spirit can grow whole once more.
Paula Gramlich
The Last Puppy
There is only one smartest dog in the world, and every boy has it.
Louis Sabin
It had been a very long night. Our black cocker spaniel, Precious, was having a difficult delivery. I lay on the floor beside her large four-foot-square cage, watching her every movement. Watching and waiting, just in case I had to rush her to the veterinarian.
After six hours the puppies started to appear. The firstborn was black and white. The second and third puppies were tan and brown. The fourth and fifth were spotted black and white. One, two, three, four, five, I counted to myself as I walked down the hallway to wake my wife, Judy, and tell her that everything was fine.
As we walked back down the hallway and into the spare bedroom, I noticed a sixth puppy had been born and was now lying all by itself over to the side of the cage. I picked up the small puppy and lay it on top of the large pile of puppies, who were whining and trying to nurse on the mother. Precious immediately pushed the small puppy away from rest of the group. She refused to recognize it as a member of her family.
“Something’s wrong,” said Judy.
I reached over and picked up the puppy. My heart sank inside my chest when I saw the puppy had a cleft lip and palate and could not close its tiny mouth. I decided right then and there that if there was any way to save this animal, I was going to give it my best shot.
I took the puppy to the vet and was told nothing could be done unless we were willing to spend about a thousand dollars to try to correct the defect. He told us that the puppy would die mainly because it could not suckle.
After returning home Judy and I decided that we could not afford to spend that kind of money without getting some type of assurance from the vet that the puppy had a chance to survive. However, that did not stop me from purchasing a syringe and feeding the puppy by hand— which I did day and night, every two hours, for more than ten days. The little puppy survived and eventually learned to eat on his own, as long as it was soft canned food.