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She's no Lassie, but we love her anyway by Susan Wildemuth Spud, our beagle mix, came into our life when our son, B.C., was 4 and she was a pup, rescued from the humane society by my husband as a present for the boy. Husband and I had been talking about getting another dog for weeks; it had been almost a year since our first dog had been hit by a car and taken to the special place on Grandpa and Grandma's farm just down the road from us. It was a surprise, that summer back in 1987, that brought my husband home early. His familiar voice sounded funny coming through the screen of the dining room window during the middle of the afternoon, "Anybody home?" "It's Daddy!" said our 4-year-old, who had spent most of the morning farming the kitchen linoleum, but was now excited at getting to see his dad at this busy and unexpected time of day. It was haying time—July—and hotter than the dickens, but there stood my husband wearing one of his old work coats with an altar boy look on his face. That look didn't fool me for a moment, I know this man and what that expression means. Our son, his eyes as large as saucers, tugged at my jeans, "Daddy's coat is wiggling!" "That better not be a snake," I said, taking two steps away from the window.
Unable to hold back any longer, my husband cut loose with a belly laugh that is uniquely his and comes straight from the heart of this Teddy-bear man. Unzipping his jacket, he reached in and from the folds of cotton fabric produced a wiggling bundle of black and white fur. "The lady at the human society said her name is Spud, but we can change it if you guys don't like it."
With a face only a mother could love, it didn't take long before we all grew attached to her, especially B.C.; she became his constant companion and self-appointed guardian angel. It wasn't unusual for me to look out my kitchen window while I was doing dishes and find them fighting imaginary mutants in the backyard. It's really something to see a preschooler with a plastic red rake and a little spotted hound decked out in a dish towel cape taking on a pair of villainous brown coveralls on the clothes line. Or to see the same loyal little dog perched on top of the old tractor tire, surveying the surrounding area like a sentinel on guard duty, watching over her boy while he builds cities out of sand and old margarine tubs. Spud is no Lassie; she's picked up some bad habits over the years. She likes to chase cars up our driveway scaring the bejeebers out of anybody who doesn't know her, occasionally dines out in the neighbor's garbage cans, thinks the window seat in the old blue pickup belongs to her and has a three-ear-a-day sweet corn addiction. She sometimes barks when nothing or no one is there just so someone will come to the back door, then wags her tail at us, and has this "it wasn't me" look on her face. Sometimes she leaves her catch of the day, usually something from the highway with tire treads on it, laying on the sidewalk for us, expecting praise for the meat that she has supplied us with. Spud has been with us some nine years now. Her muzzle, like my husband's hair, is getting a little white in it, her once lean body is getting a little padding around the curves like mine, and like my teen-age son, her summers of chasing invisible mutants are over. She spends the majority of her time these days laying in the shade on the cool cement of the garage floor while her boy shoots baskets, still watching over him with a vigilance that would make Lassie proud and waiting, very patiently, for the next car to come up the driveway. Story by Susan Wildemuth, a writer who lives in rural Illinois with her husband, son and Spud the Dog. 28 ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING JULY 1997 |
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