Jack

Have I written about Jack? A couple of months ago my grandpa's favorite dog was hit by a car. Well, she hadn't been his favorite always, but everyone had been hit except for her and Bernie, and Bernie is kept on a chain because she chases deer. At least she used to. Now she's been chained for so long she doesn't have any muscles. But she's a very sweet dog. Anyway, we thought Grandpa needed a new companion, to run around the fields and ride in the truck with him. So Katie went to the pound and found this darling one year old Border Collie mix. He's so cute and sweet. So, long story short, he moved up to the farm. Trouble is, he has SO much energy that he just overwhelms my grandparents. He acts like a puppy, because he is one. That means he jumps on people and chews on hands. It's not that pleasant. And he does it more now that he is chained up (yep, that's the solution), because he never gets to run off his energy. So, Grandpa doesn't like him. At all. What to do? On Tuesday we took Jack to his first obedience class. He did really well. He's very smart. And then yesterday and today my mom and I went to the farm to exercise him and practice his lessons. He's really quick to understand that if he sits when we say sit he gets a treat. The problem is, if you have no treats, and you just want him to BE, he jumps and jumps all over you. And since there's no food involved, he doesn't get the idea that jumping is not a good thing. He's really cute, and he runs and runs in the field. He loves to chase a stick, and most of all he loves to dig out gopher holes. That's the funniest sight -- he finds a hole, and is absolutely sure the gopher is just inches from the entrance. So he actually sticks his lower jaw into the hole, bites down with his upper teeth, and tears the roof off of the tunnel. He'll go on doing this forever, as far as I can tell, failing to understand that the tunnel branches in 12 places and the gopher and all its friends are long gone. Jack ends up with a mouthful of dirt and plenty of crud on his paws. That same crud soon ends up on one of us, when Jack starts jumping again.

The thing is, he really is a great little dog. He's so sweet and eager to please. He just isn't in the right situation, being on a chain and all. So today I let him spend lots of time off the chain, just running and exploring. He was having a great time, running and leaping and circling and then coming back to us. Just when we decided to put him back on his chain, because it was getting sorta dark, Jack just disappeared. Gone. Vanished. We called and called and yelled and yelled and coaxed and begged and offered food, and he didn't come. I began to fear that he had caught one of grandpa's precious kittens and was eating it in secret. I began to fear that he had been caught by a giant kitten and was being eaten in secret. That could happen, really. Mountain lions and all that. Anyway, we drove up the road and back, no Jack. Dug a dim flashlight out of the glove box and started walking in the direction he'd last been seen. Moved with great stealth. Heard a crunch. Another crunch. Hmm, crunch. I let my flashlight wander over the tall grass in the direction of the crunch. Once over, back, forth, and then... two little eyes! Ah-ha! The little bugger was out there! There was a fence between me and Jack... a tangle of wires and old pieces of lumber, really. I climbed over gingerly, carefully avoiding the barbed wire that runs along the top, and hoping that this fence wasn't electric. I got over without any serious injuries, followed the crunching, and then spotted his ears. Cute, floppy little ears bobbing up and down in time with the crunch crunch. He'd found, and I have no idea why this was where it was, a miniature landfill. A shovel marked the spot, and from beneath a thin layer of earth emerged banana peels, chicken bones (crunch), and other less readily identifiable but doubtless delicious "food" items. I picked Jack up, relieved that he hadn't been munching on a kitten, or a dead cow, or deer, or .... ugh. I made my way to a gate, realized that I had no way to hold the dog, open the gate (complicated mechanism) and unhook the electric wire at the same time. So I put Jack down, stuck my hand through his collar, and the two of us wiggled under the electric wire and the even lower barbed wire without being snagged or electrocuted. Whew! I attached Jack to his chain, got in the car, and wondered. What in the world are we going to do with this dog?