Monday, May 29, 2017

Snip the Dog

     “Oh yay! Another dog story,” she said, with sarcasm dripping like butter and syrup off a hot stack of pancakes.
      Here it comes!  Yet another dog story.  Snip, the sewer dog.
     This dog’s name was Snip or Snippy.  Snip was always there.  He is among my earliest memories.  The earliest one I can remember, I am standing in the old iron crib, too small to get myself out.  I may have wet the bed.  Mom, dressed in her old red coat, the one she wore for “everyday”, and her bonnet, was chasing Snip with the broom, trying to get him out of the house.
   “Snip!  Get out!”  Snip, tail tucked between legs, tried to duck under the broom and between Mom’s legs. 
      There had been a bad thunderstorm, and Snip was deathly afraid of thunder.  I may have two stories confused, but this may have been the hailstorm when hailstones broke through screen, window glass, hit the living room carpet and bounced up to dent plaster on the ceiling.  If so, I slept through the worst of it.
     Why Mom and I were home alone, I don’t know.  Where were Dad and my two older brothers?  We were home alone.  Mom was running around in near-panic, trying to get Snip out of the house, worrying about me, dealing with the results of the storm.
     I’m guessing it must have been a Monday.  My mother was awakened from her nap by the thunder.  She donned old red coat and bonnet to rescue the wash from the line.  With clothesbasket, she struggled through the porch into the house, and Snip slunk into the house as she opened the door.   
     Snip was not a kid’s dog much.  His bad-weather home was the back porch, where he was allowed to stay.  I tried to get him to move out of my way.  He was rather deaf and irritable in his old age.  I had a set of goggles my dad sometimes used when driving the tractor or perhaps in a blizzard, as they were lined with fluffy wool.  I struck Snippy across the back with the goggles.  He reciprocated by nipping me on my left temple.  After that, I dealt with him much more cautiously.
     He once bit my younger brother, too.  It may have been because my brother was discovered sharing Snip’s Growpup in skim milk.  He was sitting on the step where Snip ate his breakfast, dipping his chubby fingers into the dog’s pan, finding the contents pretty tasty himself.
    Anyway, Dave allowed that when he got to be a dog, he was going to bite Snippy.  We treated Snip with respect.
     Snip was really Dad’s dog.  He was a farm dog, good with cattle, a fierce protector of the place.  One morning, I remember Dad carrying a dead badger by the hind legs.  In those days, we had an open porch on the front of the house, no doors or windows or even screens.
     In the night, there was a ruckus on the front porch (which I slept through).  Dad got up to find that Snip had cornered a badger on the front porch.  Dad grabbed a baseball bat (barefoot and in his skivvies) and finished off the badger.
     In days to come, we all would appreciate Snip’s efforts.  After his demise, we had problems with badgers getting into the chicken house, killing hens and raiding nests.  That didn’t happen with Snip on watch.
     Dad told the story of Snip getting bit by a rattlesnake when he was still emerging from puppyhood.  He laid around for six weeks, mostly in the barn where he could keep his wounded nose in soft moist dirt or mud.  After that, Snip hated snakes and killed everyone he could find.
     Snip was part German shepherd.  He had shaggy coat that never got clipped or groomed.  He always smelled terrible, for a good reason.
       When I was young, we lived in the new house, which had been moved from Papa’s homestead to the farm where it now sits.  Where the old farmhouse sat some fifty yards east of the present one, there was still a large hole, the old basement.  The sewer system for the new house drained from the septic tank into the very bottom of the cellar for the old house.  It was supposed to drain further through a pipe into an old abandoned well fifty feet or so further east.  Sometimes it did, but there was always a small open pond in the bottom of the old cellar. 
     In the summer, the cellar site grew up with horseweeds exceeding six feet tall.  It was like a jungle.  The open sewer pond drew balls, basketball, baseball, any kind of ball, like a magnet.  It was an unpleasant job to find your way through the tall weeds, kneel down and rescue the ball from the effluent.  It was so bad that many times the errant ball ended the game.  It had to be retrieved, cleansed under the tank house faucet and allowed to dry out.  Many an argument ensued over who had to go get the ball.    
     Snip loved that sewer.  In hot weather, he would drop down into the cellar for a drink and a little soak.  He would emerge from the weed jungle dripping and shaking, finding himself quite refreshed.  Needless to say, Snip was not a lap dog.  He was often shunned.
    A family friend, Don, was the only child of a single mom who taught at our school for a year or two.  He liked to hang around with my two older brothers.  After he and his mother moved to the Denver area, he would come out during the summer break and spend a week or two with us.  He loved the farm, but unfortunately, he had hay fever.  When he left, he always had a puffy swollen face with rheumy eyes and runny nose.
     Don nicknamed Snip “Sewer Dog.”  Fitting as the name was, it didn’t really stick.
     One day, Snip didn’t show up for his breakfast.  He didn’t make an appearance for three or four days.  Dad told us at the supper table one night, that he had discovered Snippy. 
     Snip was down beside the sewer pond.  He had dug a bit of a hole beside it and laid down in it.  Dad said it was like Snip had tried to dig his own grave and bury himself.
     Dad finished the job for his old friend.
      After a decent interval, we adopted Queenie, a stray who had tried to adopt the grocer in town.  She would be better known as Ruff, in honor of Dennis the Menace’s dog.

     While Ruff was much more kid friendly and had no attraction to the sewer, she couldn’t replace Snip as farm protector. 

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