10
(2 votes)
| Rating | Rated by |  | | 10 | Aeon | | | | 10 | Viper9 | |
You must login to vote
|
|
|
I had two dogs when I was a boy. Dad brought the first puppy home when I was nine years old. She was a mix of bird-dog, bull dog, and probably some retriever. When I took her for her first walk around the neighborhood, along with my mom and dad, she was curious about everything and frightened of every noise. But when we circled the block and turned the final corner headed toward our house she instantly dropped her head to the ground and started sniffing side-to-side. She could smell home. Dad said, “She’s a tracker.” We named her Snuffles.
She grew quickly and was full of energy and curiosity. I could throw an old baseball with all my strength into the field behind our house and she would sniff it out every time and bring it back to the big ash tree in the back yard. She would drop the ball and stretch out in the shade, satisfied that she had justly fulfilled her purpose.
Her abilities became legendary in the neighborhood; she breezed through the fields trotting with her head low, her ears fanning, every foot step in a straight line behind the other, back and forth on the scent of long-lost Frisbees, balls, tennis shoes, bicycle seats and more. She noticed every smell, every sound, and every feather ruffle on every bird. She became knows as Snuffy, the wondrous.
But while she could detect every odor on the wind she would only follow one scent, whether a rabbit, a squirrel, or a cow grazing the free range; she was not distracted by nature’s abundance. I would sneak out the front door, circle around to the field and hide a mile or so from the house. After ten or fifteen minutes my mom would let Snuffy out the back door and no matter how far away I hid she sniffed me out every time.
When Snuffles was two years old we got another puppy. The younger dog was part fox hound and part sheep dog. On her first night in her new home I gave her a snack biscuit. She gently chewed and licked it for quite a while until Snuffles moved a little closer to investigate the new family member. The pup immediately stood up, straddled her biscuit and growled with all the ferocity her tiny being could muster. She really gave Snuffles the jazz. I named her Jazzy-Babe.
When she was large enough to follow Snuffles through the fields I noticed that she always stayed to the left of the older dog – always. Dad said it was in her nature; she was a pack dog, she understood her place in the pack, even though the “pack” consisted only of Jazzy and Snuffles.
And Snuffles, the tracker, always knew exactly where the fox hound was. I often joked that Jazzy had no brain of her own because she always waited for Snuffy to make a first move and would always follow Snuffy’s lead. But she was as loyal and fierce as a lioness, that little hound.
One day, on our usual Saturday morning trek through the desert, Snuffy managed to get herself surrounded by a small pack of coyotes. She stopped and held her position, but the coyotes started moving in, snarling through needle sharp fangs and yipping as they do when they have their prey surrounded. I started up the hill in a slow trot, picking up a few good throwing rocks along the way, ready to launch an all-out assault on the wild dogs.
Before I got within shouting distance, Jazzy charged in from the left, and without hesitation ran completely through one coyote, knocking it head-over-tail into a mesquite bush, and then she leaped at the neck of another. By the time I reached the melee all I saw was a cyclone of dust, fur and dog slobber amidst the deep growls of the lioness. Though it seemed like minutes it was only ten seconds or so until the four coyotes separated and formed a circle around Jazzy.
I saw plenty of blood and fur – all from the coyotes that were now frantic with anger. Suddenly the fox hound seemed to swell to twice her size; her chest broadened with courage and adrenaline, her stance widened, her eyes narrowed into dark slits and her ears laid back against her neck. She crouched for a split second and then dove into the pack of coyotes with such menace that the wild dogs winced and ran away through the cactus and mesquite, yipping in shame, leaving tufts of bloody fur in their wake.
I threw a few rocks after them with no effect. Then, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happed, Snuffy resumed tracking the scent with Jazzy the fox hound to her left, her eyes on the retreating coyotes.
As the years and the seasons rolled along it was always the tracker out in front, head low to the ground, with the fox hound to her left, head up, eyes on the flock – just cactus and mesquite, but a flock just the same. Twelve seasons passed until the day came when the old tracker lost the scent. Snuffy would no longer go into the fields, she could not trot, and her walk became clumsy with wide, floppy steps. Finally, on a September morning when I was off in foreign lands serving in the military, Snuffy laid down for her final rest.
Dad buried her at the base of the old ash tree where she had learned to track as a pup. To this day the fox hound, ever loyal, spends her days under the tree, always to the left, always in her place, always with her eyes scanning the field – waiting for the tracker’s first move. I think this season might be her last. She has chosen her final resting place. Dad wrote and told me that, for the first time in ten years, he saw a coyote in the field behind the house.
------
The worst thing in the world is the homesickness that comes over a man occasionally when he is at home.
- E. W. Howe
|
