Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Jan 11, 2007
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Dogs Intuition
I was just sitting here reading through one of the threads on my page - in fact it was Abby's story about her new puppy - and it suddenly made me remember my old dog which I grew up with when I was a youngster. In fact, I would have been around seven years old at the time when I selected him from the litter that our bitch had just given birth to. The rest all went to good homes when they were of the right age as my parents knew a lot of people in the area as they ran a small shop and a cafe where a lot of the locals came to eat. So it was quite common for Butch, the one we kept, to bump into his brothers and sisters while I was taking him for his walks. It was amazing just how excited they got when they all met up.
They were black pups, except that Butch had this white mark on his chest which grew into the exact shape of a spread-winged eagle after he was fully grown. He also had bronze patches on each of his legs just above his paws. He was the strongest of the lot and could easily have pulled me over at any time if he had the mind to. He was so strong that he could easily pull me along on my sledge in the winter time.
We also used to take in truck drivers as well as the other businesses, so we were always kept busy and Butch would lie there on the floor in the passageway keeping any eye on things. He was always made a fuss of by the people who used to come into the shop or the cafe, as well as the drivers when they stayed over night. When he was a small puppy one of them even trained him to close the living room door on command. Unfortunately, when the same driver returned some months later and gave the command, he had forgotten that our dog was no longer a small puppy. As Butch jumped up and pushed the door, it slammed shut with such force that all the beautiful engraved glass, which used to adorn the top section of the door, came flying out and shattered all over the floor. Of course Butch took fright at this event and scurried away to a place of safety, leaving me to incur the wrath of my mother as she shouted and screamed. Even the driver, who had caused all this, had disappeared upstairs a bit sheepish, as he knew that my mother had some temper.
Butch was also a great guard dog. He always gave us a bark if he heard anyone prowling around at the back of our house and his growl would be enough to scare away any potential burglar. Yet he had his soft side, as shown one day when one of our cats gave birth to litter of kittens. My mother made sure that the dog was kept well away from the box where they were in the living room. Yet somehow with all the hustle and bustle there was in our house, someone had left the living room door open and Butch got in. My mother screamed when she saw this, as Butch was standing over the box. She made a rush to get there, but was totally surprised to see that Butch was actually licking the small kittens, helping the mother out as it were. It was hard to believe, when you saw this large ferocious-looking dog with his massive tail that could shatter an empty milk bottle in one swipe, as he often did, that he could be so gentle.
There was another trait that our dog had that would prove to be very fortunate for us. He had the ability to read a persons manner and could tell us straight away if a person was up to no good. This was born out one day while he was lying in his usual spot in the passageway with us all having to step over him. When a young man came into the cafe part of our house Butch, who was normally placid, jumped up and growled at him, showing all his teeth at the same time. All the time the man was in there, Butch paraded up and down that passage way and would not settle down at all despite being told to do so. At one point this man asked if he could use the toilet. At that time it was outside at the back of the house. I had to hold Butch back as the man made his way out there and again on his return, I had never seen my dog act that way before.
It was not long after the man had left when the police came, asking if we had seen anyone matching a description which they read out to us. It matched that man perfectly, so they started to take notes. At that point Butch started barking and scratching on the back door. We let him in and he went straight to the toilet door and sat down still barking. The police followed him out there and, after calming the dog down, went in. After a short time they came out holding some rather wet looking wallets which they had found inside the cistern of the toilet. It turned out that the man was a pickpocket. He had worked his way around the town that day and used our toilet to dump all the empty wallets. He was later found and arrested at the railway station while waiting for his train to the next town.
After that incident we used Butch all the time to check anyone who came asking for a room for the night. If he showed his teeth or growled at anyone they did not even get through the door. This did indeed happen a few years later when a man who said he was a truck driver came looking for a room for the night. Butch took an instant dislike to him, growling and showing his teeth. I even had to hold him back, so the man went elsewhere. He did not even look the type to be a truck driver. He had smooth hands, not what you would normally see on a truck driver, and was very edgy and evasive when my mother asked him the simplest of questions. Then when she asked him where he had parked his lorry, as there was a lorry park not far from our house, he did not seem to know where that was. A few days later we read a story in the local paper about a man who robbed all the other residents and the owners of a small guest house and left during the night.
So it seemed that we owed a great deal to our dog Butch and his intuition. He was one of a kind and he stayed with us right up to when we had to have him put down at the age of fourteen as he was suffering from canker in the ear which the vet told us was causing so much pain that we would be doing him a service. Yet all these years later, I still think of him.
