A dog named Butch

I've never been all that much of a dog person. Cats are my preference. But growing up on a farm, we always had a dog. For most of my years on the farm, that dog was Butch. And given how many pictures we have of Butch and me, it appears he hardly left my side!

A German Shepherd mix, Butch was a fierce protector of our farm and us kids, he was as good a cow dog as you could hope for, he was a member of our family.

Butch greeted every visitor to our farm a bark that kept them in their cars until Dad called him off. His bark may have been worse than his bite, but no stranger ever opted to check that out.

Though Butch was allowed in the house, he could only come as far as the kitchen. Not in the living room. Not in the bedrooms. When Dad went off to bed, Butch positioned himself at the kitchen door and waited there until Dad got up in the morning to go milk cows.

Like many dogs, Butch wasn't too fond of storms. When the thunder boomed and lightening lit the sky, Butch snuck into my folks' bedroom and lay down on the floor next to Dad's side of the bed. Dad never sent him away.

Butch was pretty much everywhere on the farm. He checked out the laundry when Mom was washing clothes in the basement. He went with us kids to get the cows up from the pasture. He raced along side our sleds when we shot down the hills in the winter. He wore a path from the house to the fence line where he ran each time one of us drove down the lane.

Butch was a good and faithful dog. Writing this blog reminds me of what a good friend Butch was and it lets me help other dogs who could be as good for a family as Butch was for ours.

From now until September 3, for every blog that mentions the Pedigree Foundation , the Foundation will donate 20 pounds of dog food to help feed the more than four million dogs that wind up in shelters and breed rescue organizations each year. The 'Write a Post Help a Dog" goal is to donate 10,000 lbs. of dog food from this blog effort.

If you have or had an important dog in your life, think about joining this campaign. Check out the rules here.

Gamboling through life

Our next-door neighbors breed dogs. A fact we did not know when we bought our acreage four years ago, but of which we were soon aware. The barking was incessant and loud every time we stepped out our back door. Every walk across our lawn required navigating an obstacle course of dog droppings. Their dogs treated out yard as their own, particularly when it came to bathroom duty.

The fact that the dogs are white German shepherds, a breed that is simultaneously beautiful, graceful and eerie when seen loping across our front yard in the early morning mist did not change our desire to have them stay home. It took several increasingly blunt visits to get the owners to finally take steps to keep their dogs in their own yard.

This is a prelude to stating what is no doubt obvious – we have never been fond of these canine neighbors.

So it surprised me that I laughed when I looked up from my breakfast coffee this weekend to see the latest litter of pups exploring our back yard. Gambol is an old fashioned word but it fit exactly the spirit with which these four pups played. They chased, they tumbled, they sprang, they romped. They Gamboled.

They ran across the garden, their white paws turning brown with every step. They chased in and out amongst the sunflower stalks, pausing from time to time to chew one to the ground. Through the grape arbor. Around the edge of the raspberry patch. From their yard to ours and back again.

Their parents were restrained by the invisible fence, but the pups suffered no such restriction. It lifted my spirits to see such irrepressible, free-spirited living. It helped, I’m sure, to know that there was nothing growing at the moment that they could damage.

But their puppy antics – their gamboling – made me laugh. And now I am in the spirit to gambol. Our neighbors’ dogs finally left me a gift I was delighted to receive.

Failure worries dog life insurers

"Failure worries dog life insurers"  This was a headline in the Des Moines Register yesterday.  When I read this, I thought that with all the economic woes the country is facing, the failure of people who insure dogs just could not be high enough on the list to be the lead on the business page.  I launched into reading the article fully prepared to tsk and cluck and shake my head at a country so flush we can have dog insurance.  I also thought of the two Mastiffs my son and his wife keep and wondered if they have insurance for their animals.

Several paragraphs into the article, I couldn't find anything about dogs.  I went back to the beginning. Maybe in my haste, I had read past the point.  All the way to the end. Still nothing about dogs.

I read the headline again.  I have been known to misread headlines.  But no. It said "Failure worries dog life insurers."  

I read it again and again.  Finally. Finally. Finally, I realized dog was the verb. Worries was the subject!  I didn't exactly slap my head, but I had to laugh.  "Hey, David," I called to my husband. "Listen to this!"  We had a good laugh over my misread of the headline.  

I love a day that starts with a laugh.  And I'll take a good laugh when I can get one. Even at my own expense. That headline is a keeper.