Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Took Riker, the Pembroke Welsh corgi, my stepdog, to the vet this morning. Nothing serious. He's developed an on-and-off-again front limp.

Of course it was off this morning. The vet probed and prodded and groped the poor old critter, found nothing broken or out of place, and then gave me some kind of anti-inflammatory med for him.

Riker's just gettin' on up there. He's about 13.

Y'all forgive me, but all of my dang feelers are all touchy, for a lot of reasons.

Takin' Riker to the doc, helpin' him in and out of my front floorboard, since he can't do it by himself anymore, thinking about him gettin' old -- and the sudden realization that what I really want to do for a livin' is WRITE -- reminded me of this piece.

Published Nov. 17, 1997. Publisher retains the copyright.

--ER


Best Friends:
Some fuzzy thoughts on all the dogs I've loved before

The neighbor’s dog, the neighbor lady says, has no name, but he is called “Pooch” because that’s what she thought when she first saw him.

He’s a fine old hound, part something and part something else, and he’s usually quiet, which is really all I ask for in a dog until some stranger actually enters the premises or the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the premises uninvited.

But his name should be “Radar.” Like Radar on the TV show “M.A.S.H.,” who could hear the choppers flying in wounded soldiers before anyone else, the neighbor dog can hear the sirens of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances several seconds before people can.

And like Radar, he sees fit to announce it to the world -- about the only time I hear a peep out of him. But this is no peep. Can dogs bellow? This is a bellow. Or something. Sort of a plaintive wail. But sometimes it sounds like he’s almost mooing. It’s hard to describe.

But it is unmistakable, once you’ve heard it. And it is the oddest sound I’ve heard come from a dog in a long time. He howls in the key of E. I just happened to have my guitar out the last time he took to hollering. It’s an E, always. Weird.

The soon-to-be-stepdog, Riker, is already living on the place, and he seems to get along with the neighbor dog. The biggest hoot so far came when the neighbor dog was announcing incoming sirens the first time with Riker present.

Good grief. There was the neighbor dog locked on that E. There was poor Riker, trying his best to keep up with the neighbor dog’s bellowing. At first, there were a few tentative barks. Then Riker sort of warbled a little. But damned if he didn’t finally land smack dab on that E with his pal next door.

There hasn’t been a pooch on my premises for at least 15 years. The future stepdog, a Welsh corgi, is a fine addition to the environs, even when he’s barking at every leaf that falls, every shadow that passes and every alley cat that saunters by.

He’s got me to remembering all the dogs that came before him, and there were more than a few way back when in Oklahoma.

So, to all the dogs I’ve loved before …

There was Lady, a German shepherd, when I was tiny. My dog, Lady. My big brother had a German shepherd named Lady, too. Used to be, he’d tell stories about his dog Lady, and I’d tell stories about my dog Lady. It wasn’t until a few years ago that it dawned on me that it was the same doggone dog.

There were Puppy and Blackie, nondescript pups my dad brought home from the stockyards one day. They disappeared not long after. A rabid skunk was found on the farm. My dad took no chances. The pups were just gone all of a sudden. My brother probably thinks they were his, too.

There was Snoopy, a red-brown mutt that was cute as a button as a pup, and pretty handsome when he was older – until he went middle-aged crazy after my indiscretion with the kind of “new dog” that always breaks old dogs’ hearts.

Snoopy couldn’t compete with Duke, the new dog in my life, so he’d hit the road for weeks at a time. Later, it was months between visits. He was the running kind, a rake and a rambler. If he heard music in his dog mind, it was old Jimmie Rodgers train songs. Snoopy lived on the lam, for sure. He’d come home and sometimes he’d be banged up, but never very badly. And he’d always be famished. He’d eat up, heal up, get petted up and then be gone again. Then, he just stopped coming around.

Ah, Duke. He was some kind of mix. They were all mixes of some sort. You know, just country dogs. Duke was a cool little guy, weighing in at about 25 pounds, with lots of white and a little dark gray. His name was Duke Ellington for one reason: so his full name would be Duke E. (Redneck) and so I could stand out in the yard and holler “Duuuuke-eeeey!” Yeehaw. Attention-seeking behavior, yes.

Poor Dukey. Once he’d succeeded in wresting my affections from Snoopy, and Snoopy had taken off, Duke became my full-time bud. It didn’t last very long. Dukey died with a chocolate chip cookie in his mouth. I tossed him a cookie and he got all excited and made a beeline for the highway. Seconds later, there was Dukey, spinning on his side, gone, cars and trucks stopped all over the shoulder, and a bit of cookie still in his mouth.

That did it for me for quite awhile. There was real mourning here. It took a long time to chisel his name into a concrete block for a headstone, but I did, and placed it where Dukey was buried at the end of what used to be a milk barn.

Eventually came Coconut, a little more-black-than-brown wienie dog. She was the niece, I think, of a dog belonging to kin of mine in Dallas. Just a puppy. We called her Coco. Clambering off the school bus one day, I saw her apparently sunning herself in the middle of our big gravel circle driveway.

“Here, Coco!” “Here, Coco!”

No response. This was not my first rodeo, when it came to the untimely demise of beloved critters, so I took a deep breath, steeled myself and walked up to her. There was a little pool of blood. Now, I’d had dogs hit out on the highway, but in our own driveway?

My brother was the culprit. Let’s see, I was about 12 or so. That made him about 24. He and his low-riding Corvette whacked Coco upside the head as he was leaving the house. He claimed to know nothing about it. Right. Another one bites the dust.

Why’d we keep taking on dogs with it so unsafe on the farm? There was probably some denial going on. The state highway was a lonely one for a long time. Maybe we just didn’t accept that it was no longer a country road, what with all the traffic coming and going from town, Fort Smith.

We didn’t tie dogs up because we just didn’t believe in it. It seemed crueler than letting them take their chances. And we didn’t have a fenced yard, I think, because to us, a fence was made of barbed wire and was meant to keep cattle from roaming, not dogs. Pity a country dog tied to a tree or stuck behind a fence.

Somewhere in there were Tiger and Snowflake, a few that just answered to “Hey” or anything else you hollered – and Prissy, And boy was she. She was “Pet of the Week” in the Fort Smith paper. When we picked her up at the animal shelter, the little terrier was shaking like a leaf.

Prissy was the only pooch my mom ever let in the house, because she was in such pitiful shape. She just stayed swaddled in her blanky in her little box, shaking, for weeks, wide-eyed, paranoid. Loud noses and sudden movements freaked her out. It took a long time for her to decide that nobody on the place was going to beat her. Damn the one who did. But, she turned out to be the happiest one of the bunch.

Riker, the going-to-be stepdog, is a happy little fellow, too. He’s as safe as can be. He’s a crate-trained city dog. He’s got more yard now than he’s ever had, behind a secure chain-link fence. And he’s taking full advantage of it.

And he’s got a stepowner who, for all the old grief for all the dogs he’s loved before, still has a doggie-shaped hole in his heart that the little guy fits to a T.

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