Dusty came to us as one of a set of three puppies--himself and two of his sisters--that my Uncle Noot presented to us as a house-warming gift when we first moved in down on the river. According to Noot, one of his mongrel bitches ("as fine a stock dog as there is in the country") had had a litter of five pups by a magnificent but itinerant shepherd dog that had wandered through the area a while back. Uncle Noot said the serendipitous match was so highly regarded that neighboring farmers had snatched up two of the pups as soon as they were old enough to leave home. He claimed that, in spite of overwhelming demand and monetary offers, he had saved these three just for us. Mom was skeptical because she knew Uncle Noot was prone to tinker with the truth, and indeed we found out later that Aunt Jenny had suggested some new and unusual sleeping arrangements if Noot didn't get rid of those "pot-lickin' hounds". But, since we didn't have a dog yet, and since no farm would be complete without at least one, Dad consented to keep all three.
As things turned out, one of the female puppies died, and Dad managed to unloa...er...give the other one away, so that Dusty became our resident farm dog. He prospered according to the dictates of his rather uncertain pedigree and grew into a medium-to-large dog with thick, shaggy, light-brown fur, and a large plume-like tail. The heavy fur was an asset in the winter, but a definite liability in the summer. Not only was it hot--Dusty panted and slobbered all summer long--but it provided a handy home and hiding place for dog ticks, chiggers, cockle burrs, and assorted other vermin and debris. Since fastidious grooming was never one of Dusty's priorities, he always looked and smelled a bit seedy. But two white spots, one on his chest and another on his forehead, seemed to confirm his shepherd ancestry.
Despite these encouraging signs however, we began to suspect that there may have been some wormy branches on his family tree; as he grew, our suspicions turned to certainties. By any objective standard for judging farm dogs, Dusty turned out to be an abject failure. He was worthless as a stock dog, he was a disaster in the woods, and as a fighter he was an embarrassment. His only redeeming quality was his unbounded love for everything and everybody; he always looked for the good time in every situation, and never thought anything but the best of everyone.
Dusty never grasped the concept of working stock. His idea of driving cattle, was to charge into the herd, grab the handiest cow's tail in his teeth, and swing at the end of it while the cow ran and the herd scattered. He had no conception of herding cows in a particular direction--any old direction was fine with him as long as the ride lasted, or until the cow kicked him silly. Dad had several counseling sessions with him about this practice, but neither of them emerged from these discussions any the better for it.
Dusty must have had a bad nose, because he never used it for anything other than to keep his face from falling off. His idea of hunting was to hit the woods at full gallop, crashing through the brush panting and yipping and yapping and scaring everything over the ridge into the next holler. He could clear all game from a patch of timber faster than a forest fire. Any time I got the gun and started down the hill for a squirrel hunt, he would wag his tail excitedly and run ahead down the path stopping occasionally to look back at me as if to say, "Come on, hurry." As soon as we crossed the creek and got near the edge of the woods, his enthusiasm would boil over; he would crash the brush and I wouldn't see him again until I got back to the house, where he would be lying in the shade of the walnut tree, panting furiously and supporting a fresh population of burrs and ticks.
Dusty's response to aggression was to crawl around on his belly in front of the other dog, wagging his tail and whimpering. If the other dog refused to change his mind and play, Dusty would roll over on his back and lay there while the other dog gave him a good, but contemptuous, olfactory going over. It was not pretty to watch.
Dusty remained a good natured but good-for-nothing pup until the end of his days. He never had a quarrel with anybody or anything--except cars, about which more later.
Dusty developed an odd relationship with a young Rhode Island Red rooster one summer. Mom kept her chickens locked in the chicken house at night to protect them from midnight visits from foxes and bobcats, but during the day they had free run of the place to scratch and supplement their diets with whatever they could find.
The rooster, whom we christened Chanticleer, began to get aggressive as he matured, and soon you had to keep an eye on him if you were in his vicinity. He liked to slip up behind you and try to get a spur into the back of your leg. My two sisters were afraid of him, and they began carrying an old broom when they had to go to the barn. If Chanticleer made a move towards them, they swatted him with the broom. That usually took the starch out of him for a while, but his attention span was short, and he would soon be at it again, attacking anything that moved. I kicked him ass-over-teakettle a couple of times, and I told Mom that I was going to kill him if he didn't learn some manners.
One hot August morning however, I witnessed the beginning of a beautiful, if somewhat unlikely, friendship. Chanticleer spied Dusty trudging half asleep from the barn towards the shade of the walnut tree. He (the rooster) puffed himself up and watched Dusty approach. Then, when Dusty was a few feet away, he charged. Dusty was caught by surprise but managed to dodge reflexively just in time to avoid being shredded. The rooster turned and glared at Dusty. Dusty gazed uncertainly at the bird and waved his tail tentatively from side to side a couple of times. Chanticleer charged again, but this time Dusty was awake and ready. He waited until the rooster flew into the air, claws and spurs extended, before he hopped easily aside and out of range. The bird faced him and glared again. Dusty dropped his head down to rest on his outstretched front paws while his hindquarters stayed aloft, his tail wagging furiously now. Dusty barked and made a jump at the bird. The bird rose up to meet the charge but Dusty outmaneuvered him again with a last-second dodge to the side.
This game of tag continued, and the rooster, although never able to lay a feather on Dusty, showed no intention of quitting. But the heat and the beckoning shade began to dampen Dusty's enthusiasm and, as if to end the game, the next time Chanticleer charged, instead of dodging aside, Dusty pounced and smothered the bird to the ground under his big front paws.
I started to intervene to prevent what looked like the rooster's certain end, but then I thought, what the hell. He brought it on himself, and I didn't like the bird anyway.
Instead of tearing into the rooster though, dusty began to play with him. He used one big paw to pin the glaring rooster to the ground while he proceeded to gnaw and slobber all over the poor bird. When he took the bird's head in his jaws I thought he would surely bite it off, but Dusty was only playing.
To his credit, Chanticleer took the mauling like a man--he uttered neither peep nor squawk throughout the ordeal. Occasionally, he wiggled almost free before Dusty forced him back to the ground with a big paw.
After almost ten minutes of this gnawing and drooling, Dusty stepped back and freed the rooster. The bird, completely exhausted by now, sat in the dust and panted with his beak open. His proud feathers, askew and stuck all over with a muddy mixture of saliva and dust, made him the most bedraggled and pathetic looking rooster I've ever seen.
Satisfied that he had gotten all the fun he was likely to get out of the bird, Dusty continued on his journey to the shade. I laughed and gave him a cheer for teaching the bully a lesson.
After a while, the bird recovered enough to stand and begin preening his disheveled feathers as best he could. I figured he had learned a lesson and would at least think twice before attacking Dusty again. But one of the things I was to learn on the farm was that God did not create many creatures dumber than the chicken.
I watched in disbelief as Chanticleer, his dignity partially restored--although he still looked like a drowned rat--marched purposefully to the walnut tree. Dusty, snoozing by this time, heard him coming and opened one eye just in time to leap out of the way of another sneak attack.
The whole process started over again, and for the rest of that summer, Dusty and Chanticleer, like Inspector Clouseau and Cato, amused themselves for hours each day with this game of martial combat. In fact, they became the best of friends, and we often found the two of them side-by-side in the shade of the walnut tree, recuperating between rounds of their game.
--To be continued
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