A Tail Told by JD

(This is a tribute to a beloved dog that I've included as a central part in many of my Head Trainer tributes. It was in the month of April some years ago that Charlie left to go chase rabbits and eat rib eye steaks with the Head Trainer at the Big Kennel. This April, I decided to share her story and what she meant to me during a time of personal struggle with evolved into personal growth and peace of mind. It is hard to tell her story without also telling my own, but this is a story about one special dog

--JD)

Every once in a lifetime, there will come along a dog that is truly special. You'll not know exactly how it came to be, but when it is time for the dog to pass on to the Big Kennel, you'll know beyond any doubt that that was the one dog in your lifetime you were blessed to share your life with.

I guess I'm lucky--I had that special dog and she gave me eight wonderful years of her life in which many things changed for me, good and bad, and she was there. She was in my life when it was at its emptiest, and she was there on the upswing. She welcomed into our household the one person who was more capable than even her of making me feel special and loved, the woman who my sun rises and sets with every day that God allows me to awake in the morning. That woman is my wife.

But above all, this special dog--whom I called Charlie--had a spirit of determination and never gave in to obstacles that were in her way that I learned from each day of the eight years we spent in each other's company.

It is for what she did for me that I tell her story:

July in West Texas is brutally hot. Temperatures in the triple digits are not at all uncommon, and because the air is dry it is to approaching cold fronts what kindling is to a match--a perfect set up, with a little moisture from the southeast Gulf flow, for severe weather. And in West Texas, severe weather usually means tornados.

And it was on a hot July afternoon that I had been out chasing such storms with 35mm camera in hand. I was enrolled in summer school classes for completion of another degree, and for this atmospheric science project, I was hoping to catch a tornado actually on the ground that I could photograph.

I was a good two hours or so away from the college town I was living in, and was in a maze of roads we call "turn roads" in West Texas. These are actually county roads that are generally unpaved and cut through farmers' fields on their way to their paved cousins who eventually turn into "farm to market" roads which eventually intersect with state roads which eventually intersect with interstate highways. The storms were off to the west and too far to chase with any success. Besides, my old brown 1980 pickup only had a straight-six engine in it at the time, and while that was good for gas mileage, it was lousy for speed. And speed was what I needed if I wanted to catch up with the one storm that looked promising enough to perhaps drop a twister out of the sky that I could photograph.

Reaching into the cooler for the ever present one-litre bottle of Coca-Cola, I took a swig then lit a cigarette and sat down on the hood of my pickup. Sighing heavily, I unfolded my topographical map and looked for the nearest paved road that would eventually take me to the interstate highway back home. I'd been chasing storms all week long, and this Friday was the first hopeful opportunity I'd had, but again, it wasn't to be. With a project deadline quickly approaching, I really needed to get this done. Besides, it was costing me a fortune in gas bouncing around all over the West Texas countryside in my pickup.

I stubbed out my smoke, put the cap back on the coke and stuck it back in the cooler before getting in the pickup and heading out. I found my paved road and headed for the interstate. I hadn't been on the road for more than a mile when I saw something on the side of the road that looked like a piece of a re-tread that those big 18-wheelers fling off from time to time. Except this road was way too small for a big truck to go down. The closer I got, the stranger it looked--until I came right up on it.

It was a dog.

Didn't look like much of a dog, that was for sure. Curious, I pulled over and stopped. It was a dog all right--a dog that was near death and had accepted it. From what I could initially tell, it was a black dog and it looked skeletal. It was semi-curled up, laying down and had a Butterfinger candy wrapper in its mouth. It was eating the candy wrapper. Around it were rocks that had been chewed on. . . and several dead puppy carcasses. As I looked around, I noticed that there were no houses anywhere in sight--and this was West Texas where it is so flat you can see forever.

At that moment, the dog raised its head and opened its eyes. Our eyes met, and then locked on each other. The dog held my gaze without suspicion or fear. The dog was resigned to meeting, and then accompanying Death wherever it was to lead her. As I looked past the dog, I saw two badly decaying coyote carcasses. I looked back to the puppy carcasses and then to the dog. The dog was defending the puppies from the predacious coyotes that roam the plains at night. The dog managed to defend itself against the coyotes, but not her puppies.

The dog and I looked at each other again. This time, I saw something different in her eyes.

I saw a glimmer of Hope.

I cautiously walked closer to her wondering if she might be rabid, wild or who knows what. As I got closer, I could tell that she looked to have some Doberman in her, but it was hard to tell how much because she was literally only skin and bones. There was only a hint of any muscle mass left in the one leg that was exposed. I could count the vertebrae in her back as easy as I could count the telephone poles that lined that small farm to market road. Her face was a horrifying mask of malnourishment and despair.

Oh My God. . .

As I approached, she again lifted her head. She did not growl nor did she snarl as I leaned down to her. I knew better than to get down to the same level of a strange dog, but there was no way this dog could get up. She had given up on trying to stand days ago. She allowed me gently stroke her head, and she continued to look at me--and this time, I saw something besides Hope in her eyes. I saw Defiance. I saw the Will to Live.

Why in Heaven's Name would somebody do something like this to a dog?

I looked for a way to pick her up that wouldn't hurt her, and there was no way. I moved my pickup closer, put my camera gear in the toolbox, got out several blankets and made a makeshift bed on the seat right next to me. I then took another blanket with me over to where the dog was still laying, but had never taken her eyes off me. I talked to her and told her exactly what I was going to do, then quickly moved her onto the blanket. She was so light. . . and she never uttered a protest even though it had to have been painful on her bones. I then picked her up in sort of a "sling" fashion and gently placed her on my seat where the ride would be smoother and more comfortable.

Once in my pickup, I covered her with the other blanket and turned on the air conditioning so that the ride would be quieter on the two hour drive back to town. Fortunately, I had just filled up with gas and could make it non-stop. I reached into the cooler and pulled out some ice and let it melt in my hand--and she licked the water out of my palm. I kept doing this for several miles, all the while still petting her and talking to her. Finally, I made it to the interstate where I needed my undivided attention on the road.

I had first started working with Dobermans in the late seventies while still in the military. It was part of what they called "de-programming" for people like me who otherwise would spend countless nights fighting the demons that infringed upon your sleep or who would tell their tales of terror to the nearest open bottle of tequila or whiskey or gin or whatever was quick, convenient and cheap. And like so many other veterans, I was to do all of that and more later anyhow. But working with dogs was far safer than what I had been doing--and besides, I liked the dogs in the military kennels, especially the Dobermans.

From that point on, I always knew that Dobermans would be my preferred dog--there was just something inexplicable about how a Doberman and myself could always get along, and how I could seemingly always get them to do what I wanted to so much faster and better than even the trainers of whom it was their primary job to train these same dogs.

And now I had one right next to me in my pickup. Albeit, a broken down, emaciated almost hairless and most certainly lame one, but nonetheless, it was a Doberman all the same. Wasn't a very good example of one, but it was a Doberman and her head was now on my lap as I sped south down the interstate smoking cigarette after cigarette and becoming enraged over who could dump such a dog and simply leave it to die. I knew the odds of finding whose dog it was were nil, and what's more I knew it was wasted energy. But I still allowed myself the delicious fantasy of finding the person who did this. . .

I felt something wet on my hand where her head was resting and was fearful that it might be blood or something. I looked down. . . and saw that she was trying to nose and lick my hand. . .

At that point, I said to hell with the speed limit.

Pulling into the vet's office, I was afraid to leave her alone in the pickup--she'd already been abandoned once. So instead, I sat outside and honked the horn until a very irritated assistant came out. I pointed to the passenger side seat and the assistant went from irritated to concerned to incredulous in less than a second. She went and got some help--a sort of doggy stretcher I guess you'd call it, and the two of them unloaded the dog and rushed it inside as I held open the door.

The vet's prognosis wasn't good. Virtually no hope is what he said. I insisted that there WAS hope--and I gave him a hard, no B.S. glare to encourage him to rethink his prognosis. It took about thirty seconds. Here was a full grown female Doberman who weighed 28 pounds. Twenty-eight pounds. She was too weak to stand up or walk, and she was malnourished to say the least--she'd been eating whatever she could drag herself over to. And adding to the situation was the fact that she was covered with ticks, fleas and an assortment of sores. The vet told me my pickup was probably infested with fleas. No problem, I told him, I'll simply have the whole thing fumigated--just worry about the dog and not my damned pickup.

The vet ran blood tests which revealed amazingly enough that the dog was heartworm negative. Had she been positive, it would have been all over right there. No way could she have been treated in that weakened condition.

Finally, the vet told me that it was going to cost an incredible amount of money to get her well and whole again, if that would even be possible. He'd already ascertained that I was a non-traditional college student and asked if I had a job. I have THREE jobs, I told him, all of them crappy, but they pay the bills. School is covered under my GI bill. I then took out my one Visa credit card--which thankfully was clear--and pointed it at the doc, and with a look usually reserved for those who least wanted to see it, told him to charge whatever it cost and if I ran out of credit, just let me know and I'd mow his yard and wash his cars for however long it took to pay him back.

The vet was quiet for a moment, then he looked back at me with equally hard eyes and told me my money was no good at his place. He then began barking orders at his assistants and inserting an IV into the dog who continued to look at me with Hope. Together, the vet and I began removing the ticks and fleas by hand since he didn't trust a chemical on her in her weakened state. An assistant rubbed small bits of canned dog food on her lips while another sponged her off and kept her moist.

And we were all talking to her that day. . .

I had named her Charlie that very day in the vet's office after one of the assistants remarked that "the dog was as skinny as her Aunt Charlotte." I didn't have much use for the name Charlotte so I shortened it to Charlie--and that's the name that went on her medical records.

Through the years, Charlie and I were inseparable. After a few days upon leaving the vet's office, she was able to stand and sort of wobble her way around my backyard. Pretty soon she had put on some weight and could actually run a bit. I found the most unusual way to exercise her was to wait at night and take my old government issue "mag light" and narrow the beam down to just a "dot" and run it around the fence. Charlie, for whatever reason, wanted to chase and catch that flashlight beam so bad that she would run herself silly around the backyard chasing it. After discovering that, it didn't take anytime to get her back in shape and almost good as new except for the gimpy rear left leg that was permanently damaged from who knows what. . . She kinda gimped/hopped on it and relied upon her right rear leg for strength and thrust when running all out or chasing a rabbit.

Charlie hated the back of the pickup truck, and since I never let dogs ride back there anyway, I couldn't have cared less. Charlie's rightful place was in the front seat of the cab with me. Sometimes she'd stick her head out the window, but more often than not, she was riding "girlfriend" style right next to my side wherever we went. And go places we would.

I had a few friends during that time, but they were all married and had families of their own. I had no interest in dating and was still adjusting to my return to society. My closest friends all lived a good day's drive from me, so Charlie and I made many a long drive during all hours of the day and night to see our buddies--who were also single and had flexible schedules. Charlie and I had a lot of long, in-depth talks in the middle of the night on those lonely backroads that criss-cross all over Texas. We talked about God and what He was about. We talked about the future, the past and the present. We talked about the odds of me ever marrying and Charlie getting a "Mom." And we just talked as only a guy and a dog who was found on the side of a road can talk.

And Charlie helped me de-stress and re-adjust into a world in which I thought I would never fit back into again--I saved Charlie and Charlie saved me.

Charlie never learned to swim, but that didn't stop her from getting chest deep in any mudhole, stock tank, pond, river, lake or ocean we happened to stumble across. She loved camping and we'd load up the old brown Chevy pickup every summer and head up to the high mountains of Colorado with a couple of coolers, some sleeping bags, a tarp for the back of the truck to make a tent out of, and a couple of guns and fishing stuff to find breakfast, lunch and dinner with, and we'd have ourselves a ball. On one such trip to New Mexico, we encountered some marijuana farmers who were coming down from the mountain as we were hiking up. They didn't like us being there and told us so. I told them to "F.O." and Charlie gave them a very nasty, primal snarl. One fellow reached for his gun and Charlie nailed him in the crotch as I drew down on the other two. Upon disarming them, I stripped them, smeared them with sugar water, and lashed all three of them to a tree and we headed back down the mountain to find a Ranger and make a report. Charlie saved my bacon on that mountain as the odds were three armed druggies against one honest citizen--plus one devoted Doberman.

In the city, Charlie adapted. She was friendly with people, but she hated the smell of alcohol--especially beer and whiskey. That was fine with me because I'd walked away from The Bottle for the last time two years before finding her. Now I had a damned good reason to stay away.

I had done finished up the last round of school, been in and out of advertising (prior to the last round of school) and was back working for Uncle Sam when I got my Doberman puppy. I took Charlie with me to pick it up from the German couple who had brought it over. On the ride back, the puppy--as puppies will do--bit at Charlie. And Charlie laid the law down right there in the pickup causing the little puppy to scream and howl with fright and perceived pain and causing me to blow through a stop sign and incur both a horn AND the finger from the driver who narrowly missed me. Yet, there wasn't a mark on the little wimpy puppy who would later grow to become my most prized working/companion Doberman ever who was absolutely fearless and had a legendary threshold for pain (Just not as a puppy).

The personality traits of many dogs we had that Charlie raised were all of her doing--I'm convinced of that. She was the undisputed matriarch of our clan of dogs, and she ruled both the house and the yard. And while the other dogs rode in crates in the back of the brown Chevy pickup, she continued to sit in her rightful place in the cab right next to me.

Charlie first greeted my wife (to-be) in typical, gracious Charlie-like fashion. It was a cold, sleeting late November night when my wife-to-be (I didn't know that at the time) came over to the house. I had prepared steaks (rib eyes) out on the back porch, homemade bread, black-eyed peas, new potatos and an excellent "blush" table wine. We finished the meal, gave Charlie and the other Doberman a few tidbits of leftover ribeye, and I chunked the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and headed for the living room where I had a roaring fire going in the fireplace. It was cozy, it was romantic, and it was the perfect setting.

Charlie thought so too apparently, and so she promptly jumped up on the couch between the two of us, gave my wife-to-be a Charlie-Kiss, cut loose with a long AND audible Charlie-Fart, and then promptly jumped back off of the couch to go lay down by the fireplace. After opening the windows and front door to the frigid cold to air out the living room, I feared that the "mood" was lost. Was Charlie trying to tell me something?

Apparently not, because my wife-to-be became my wife of then and today--not necessarily because Charlie jumped up that night and blew one right in her face, but rather because I was a kind and compassionate dog lover as was she. Plus, we were--and still are--pretty head over heels crazy in love with each other.

Charlie became fanatical about guarding my wife--her new "Mom." One night, someone was messing around near one of the bedroom windows. I was still downtown finishing up paperwork from a raid on a crackhouse earlier in the day when she called me. I told her to get the gun, call my partner (who lived far closer to us than where I was at the office downtown) and get both Dobermans with her in the master bedroom. I danged near tore the transmission out of that government car getting to the house and was radioing several cops I knew who were assigned to the district in which we lived. Sure enough, when we all converged on the house with guns drawn, we found footprints under the window and evidence where it appeared someone had begun to pry the screen off. My wife said when she heard that going on, the Dobermans went ballistic, but that Charlie waited by the bedroom window waiting for the scumbag to open the window and climb in. She said Charlie had Death in her eyes and absolutely would not let her into the bedroom, but would instead block her way and then return to her position underneath the window waiting for someone to try and sneak in. . .

Both Dobermans got steaks that night. Big ones.

Throughout Charlie's time with us, she raised a number of dogs that we brought into our household. Only one went bad, and that was another rescued Doberman whom I believe honestly suffered from what is now called Rage Syndrome--only this was directed at other dogs AND people. And that dog was three years old when I got her from the shelter and had been abused as well.

But what's so right about Life is also what stinks about it. Because as Life goes on and you experience all that is good and wonderous, you also face the realities of Time. And the realities of Time are that we all age--even miracles that have beaten so many odds like Charlie.

Watching Charlie age began tearing me apart. Many a time The Bottle loomed closer and filled my thoughts. My temper would snap from time to time. She would no longer be able to jump up into my pickup, but instead I'd have to help her. This was far too undignified for such a majestic dog as Charlie, in my opinion. So I'd curse the ministers of Fate and Time each time I had to help my beloved companion into the cab of my old brown Chevy pickup which had by then racked up almost 200,000 miles--over half of those with Charlie riding shotgun with me.

And pretty soon, my wonderful companion who I had snatched from that bastard we call Death eight years ago, knew that the bastard was ready to come calling again. We closely estimated Charlie's age at seven closer to eight that fateful day at the vet's office, so eight years later, she was definitely on borrowed Time. Her eyesight was going and she would stumble into furniture that we hadn't moved just so she wouldn't be confused. She slept more and ate less--and started losing weight, down to fifty-six pounds from the normal sixty-eight, then down closer to fifty. She was looking gaunt, tired. . . and old. Death was closing in on her and I was powerless to do anything about it.

I've seen Death all over the world. I've avoided it and I've narrowly missed it on many occasions. I've bestowed it upon those who deserved it and cursed it when it unjustly claimed those who didn't. But I've never actually beaten Death--instead, I've just managed to outrun it. But now, because I couldn't help Charlie outrun it much longer, there was something I had to do.

So Charlie and I got in the pickup again--just the two of us--and we drove back up to that no-name country road where we first met. I'm not sure it meant anything to her, but it damned sure meant something to me. And when we got there, we jumped out of the truck. I again grabbed a coke out of the cooler and lit up a cigarette and just stared out into the countryside. Charlie wandered around sniffing for a bit, then came around to my side and sat down--nudging her face against my hand the same way she had for the past eight years. It was late April. Summer was on its way. Just the way it was back when we first met here.

And again, we talked. I told Charlie she was going to have to tell me when Time had finally caught her, because I wanted to fight Death on my terms. I told her I couldn't save her this time, and therefore she would have to let me know when it was time to go.

Another coke, another cigarette and more thoughts of The Bottle. And still, Charlie sat patiently, understanding. . . nudging my hand with her head--now filled with definite gray around her once rusted muzzle. Eyes no longer as bright and comprehending as they once were. Willing, but no longer able to chase a flashlight beam around the backyard. Legs that were almost as weak as they were when we first met.

And a few days later back at the house, Charlie let me know it was Time.

She might have been ready, but I godamned sure wasn't.

It had been years since I last cried. Crying simply wasn't allowed at my house once you were past the age of five. But The Bottle was allowed and it was sitting squarely in the middle of our dining room table along with a full pack of cigarettes. Somehow the house seemed emptier. . . It was the longest ride to the vet's office I'd ever made. . .

I was a wreck at the vet's office and demanded that I go to the back room with Charlie. . .

Here's what I want you to do, Doc: First, put her to sleep so I can say goodbye. Then I'm gonna leave the room and you do what you have to do. . . 

I was wearing sunglasses and insisted on going alone. My wife was a wreck as well, even though she insisted on going to work and locking herself in her office all day long and taking no phone calls, not even coming out for lunch.

Here are the instructions, Doc, I've written them down for you. I want her buried here at this special place where I bought the land just for her. She loved chasing jackrabbits out here--now maybe she'll finally catch one. Just send me the bill 'cause I gotta go home and get drunk. . . 

And back at home, I sat at the dining room table and stared at The Bottle. Oh how I wanted it. How I wanted that fire scorching down my throat and exploding in my belly and then the pure feeling of not giving a damn to rush through my head.

It had been ten years. Ten years of Victory against a foe that had defeated so many. And eight of those years were with a scroungy old gimp-legged cur dog I called Charlie.

But Charlie was now gone. And even though I still had the other Doberman and Alex, I felt alone.

You've never quit at anything in your life, JD, don't quit now.

I took The Bottle and threw it in the dumpster--smashing it to pieces. If the choice was between getting drunk and getting teary-eyed, well, teary-eyed it was. I closed the blinds, sat down in the floor with my remaining Doberman and our German Shepherd, Alex (who was to later follow Charlie to the Big Kennel in a tragic and completely unexpected manner) and cried my effin' eyes out. The other two dogs knew that something was wrong, and they were morosely silent except to occasionally offer a sympathetic whimper or whine. My wife and I didn't speak to each other when she finally came home--red-eyed and with running mascara, and we both cried all night long.

I took the picture album of all our dogs and put it on the bookshelf where it stayed for several months before I could muster up the strength to bring it down and glance through it once more.

Seeing the early and original pictures of Charlie after I first got her home and she was still emaciated, and comparing them to the pictures of when she was healthy and radiant made me realize just how special our relationship with Man's Best Friend really is and how much we truly owe universal and humane decency to those animals that we have chosen to domesticate.

The decency, love and devotion I showed and bestowed upon Charlie was reciprocated a thousand times over during the eight years I was blessed to have her in my household. Charlie knew she had been given another chance at life, and she took full advantage of it. She lived with the kind of zest that many would do good to emulate and she never got down on things, but rather took them as they come. So long as she and I were together, everything was all right. We might not have had a whole lot of money early on, but she ate all right as did I--and we always had money to put gas in the old brown pickup truck to go bouncing around in the countryside.

And when I finally make it up to the Big Kennel myself, one of the first things I'm gonna do is find that old brown truck and Charlie and I are gonna go for one helluva ride.

But the first thing I'll do is find God Himself--The Head Trainer--and thank Him for sending me Charlie.

She was truly one of His miracles.

--JD

Copyright © 1999, 2001 by J.D. Kinman. Reprinted with permission of the author.