| One Good --Dog. Tom
Kelly Now every man that's borne into • Damon Runyon, "Poems for Men" Permabooks, 1951 Brave men don't cry--except when remembering their One Good --Dog. No tears for these: Sonny, the plain yellow farm dog
to whom as a three- and four-year old rambling around the
place at Gaar's Mill in rural Winn Parish, I was
sometimes mean, but he always forgave. That crazy boxer gyp in Winnfield that leaped joyfully and bounded around the house to bang into my kids and knock them over while they played outside when they were toddlers. The female Shepherd mix who protected the kids as they played outdoors in Ruston, keeping always between them and the street, which she did by instinct, and who in her old age retired to the garage and prepared to die when my now-grown kids gave me a bouncing half-grown honey Cocker Spaniel for a birthday present. She figured, being out of a job, it was time to go. The Cocker, named Beauregard after the droop-eared hound on the popular 70's show HeeHaw TV, as a grown dog went totally blind, but within days unerringly patrolled our unfenced yard by smell and sound. Later in life he lost his bearings and wandered into the Highway 167 traffic, where I found him lifeless the following morning. There were the Sisters, whom we claimed as squirming weeks-old pups from the Las Cruces animal shelter cubicle wearing tags "B-1," and "B-2." Staying with the alliteration, we named them Queen Bee and Bebe. Finally, there was Clancy, who was my Good Dog, a six-months younger half-brother of Pancho, who was Miriam's Good Dog, both delivered by Bebe, Miriam's dog, after my rambunctious Queen Bee got nailed late one desert evening, having escaped our fenced yard to chase a rabbit on the Southern New Mexico I-10 service road a couple of blocks from home. After Queen Bee's departure, we never really knew when Bebe had callers in the night, but it became obvious. After her first litter of three, from which only Pancho survived, she continued her attractive manner and six months later delivered six healthy, bouncing pups, of which Clancy was last to cross the finish line. I held him in my hand within minutes of his arrival, a small, blind, wiggling, fist-sized blob, as soon as Bebe had accomplished the after-birth ceremony which mama dogs perform by age-old instinct. All the litter was given away except Clancy and his sister Nena, still with us at around age 17. Clancy was My Dog. He traveled with me between North Louisiana and Southern New Mexico during late 1996 and 1997, as we put together the initial publication of The Piney Woods Journal. He bunked with me at our first residence/office on Milam Street in Dodson before Miriam finished her work and moved over in the Fall of 1998. He traveled with me to New Orleans and Harahan during the pre-Katrina days of publishing with Dixie Web Graphics. He drove me to distraction jumping the fence and roving the neighborhood, until I caught onto his trick and installed a hot wire inside the Sixth Street compound where we moved in 1999. He was petrified of thunder, went crazy at holidays with the sounds of fireworks. He became self-trained when, upon breaking away from home and wallowing in mud, or worse, around the neighborhood, he would come in the door and head straight for the bathroom where he knew a hot bath was coming. He never would have stood before the gun as a tree dog, but he did stalk and catch several squirrels on the ground in our wooded back lot. He was smarter, and more loyal than some people I could name. He was One Good Dog. A little over a year ago, first Pancho, and then Clancy, became lethargic and morose, and were diagnosed with congestive heart failure. When it came time for the inevitable, I took Pancho for his final visit to the veterinarian, with some emotion. I knew it was coming for Clancy soon, and purposed to make his passing an honorable one for us both, by doing the deed that I had done for his mother, and burying him on the family acreage at Gaar's Mill. When the day came, I carried him to the car, loaded the weapon, and drove out to the spot. He did not protest when I took him out of the car and placed him in a shaded spot while I looked about for the right place to inter him. I faced him and raised the weapon. Our eyes made contact. In that moment, we both knew that I could not do it, and that it had to be done. I carried him back to the car and carefully drove him to the veterinarian's office, and brought him inside. The young lady attendant took him away, and asked if I wanted to be present for the final moment. It was not something I could do; turning on my heel, I started out the door. The young lady came out with me to the car, placed her arm around me, holding my hand as I sobbed a last goodbye, and never saw Clancy again. Never again, until last Monday, when through a series of circumstances too involved to relate here, a mama dog of the neighborhood with whom I had established a speaking acquaintance bolted toward me from beneath the new restaurant building next door to the Piney Woods Journal office, trailed by two just-weaned puppies from her most recent litterthe avatar of a new Clancy, marked essentially like him with silky brown --one of which appears splotches on a white coat. I negotiated with the next-door owner of the mama dog for claiming rights on the avatar. When I took him to the veterinarian office for shots, flea bath, and worming, the same young lady who saw me through the last moments of Clancy's life enrolled the new pup--Age? About eight weeks. Name? CeeJay, for Clancy Junior. Breed? Dodson Street Dog. As I write this, he snoozes in a cage beside my desk, awaiting his next feeding and restroom break. Clancy's back. In conclusion: "You may be a redneck if the last words you remember your first wife saying before she walked out the door, were, 'It's either me or them dogs'." Thus spoke Jeff Foxworthy. Pardon me while I weep.
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CeeJay