Man's Worst Friend

Pat's unfortunate string of subpar hunting dogs

Someone told me recently that there's a fairly exact correlation between a diminishing intelligence quotient and the ownership of dogs. If I understand it correctly, the IQ drops five points for every dog acquired over the years. That would put my present IQ at about 40. A few more I dogs and I won't have any IQ at all. I'll be down in the negative numbers. My wife, Bun, agrees with that assessment, and she is a lot better at math than I am due largely, I suppose, to the number of dogs I've owned.

My present dog, Clem, is totally useless. He spends most of each day sleeping under my desk. Every time I hear the expression "that dog won't hunt," I think of Clem. I don't think he was designed for hunting, anyway, so I can't really blame him for that. What he was designed for, I have no idea. He's pretty good at sleeping under my desk, so perhaps that is what his designer had in mind.

Besides sleeping under my desk, Clem's other great pleasure is riding with me out to the dump. I can't criticize him for that, because going to the dump is also one of my great pleasures. Discarding all that useless stuff somehow gives me a sense of accomplishment. Acquiring it years ago probably gave me a sense of accomplishment, too. Clem, of course, doesn't discard anything at the dump, or at least anything I know of. I think his joy comes primarily from the cookie.

Some time ago, a new woman took over the pay shack- at the dump, and she leaned out the little window and inquired, "Would the shaggy old snookums like a cookie?" This sort of thing happens to me quite often, so fight away I said, "Sure." I have to tell you, that cookie was about the worst thing I've ever tasted. So as soon as we were out of sight of the pay shack, I gave the cookie to Clem. He loved it. Among his other deficiencies, Clem has no taste.

When we got home, I told Bun about the cookie incident. She responded by looking first at me and then at Clem and then back at me.

She said, "Have you ever heard the theory that after a while dogs and their owners start to look like each other?" I don't know where Bun picks up this kind of nonsense, I really don't. What bothered me most was that Clem seemed almost as offended as I was.

I am not a person who has ever shopped for dogs. All my life I have simply acquired them. They show up at my house and decide to stay until they expire. Maybe there is some kind of marker on my front gate, put there many years ago by a hobo dog. The marker more or less means, "This guy is a sucker for strays." It's also staining my gatepost.

I got my first dog when I was five or six. For some unknown reason, he was called "Happy." I would play little practical jokes on Happy, and he would bite me. That was pretty much our relationship. Even now, when my hands get tan in the summer, you can see the little white bite marks on my fingers. At least I think that's where the marks came from.

After Happy, I had one or two inconsequential dogs, and then Strange arrived. I don't know if he was the worst dog in the world, but he was at least in contention. My mother first named him Stranger, in the hope he was just passing through. After a while the name was shortened to "Strange," which was generally thought to be much more appropriate. I won't go into detail about his bad habits, but if he had been human he would have been arrested in most states.

In appearance, Strange seemed at first to be your simple little brown-and-white dog. Upon closer inspection, however, you would notice that he had a scraggly mustache that drooped down on both sides of his mouth. His nose was rather prominent for a dog, and on each side of it were little bulging eyes about the size of double-ought buckshot, and just as hard, too. As for his character, all you would have to do is invert the Boy Scout Law and you would pretty much have it: untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, etc.

New friends of mine from school would occasionally drop by. "Geez," they would say, "is that your dog?"

I'd usually admit that he was, though sometimes I might lie and say, "Naw, I think he's just passing through."

In the middle of Strange's sojourn with us, which, as my grandmother claimed, lasted about forever, I acquired my one and only registered bird dog, a beautiful Irish Setter. His name was Butch Garrion III. He actually belonged to the local Catholic priest. The arrangement was that we would house and feed the dog, and Father O'Toole would come out to the farm and use him during pheasant season. I for one approved of the arrangement, because otherwise Father O'Toole would use me for a bird dog. "Here, boy! Here, boy! C'mon, boy," he'd call out. "See what you can flush out of that thorn thicket!" So I was glad to be replaced by Butch. I don't know how good of a bird dog he was, because Father O'Toole never got any pheasants. I suppose somebody should have told him we hadn't seen a pheasant on the farm in years.

The one nice thing about Butch was that he was beautiful. Dumb as stone, but beautiful. Whenever a friend stopped by and asked, "Is that your dog?" I'd say, "Yeah. He's registered."

"Who's the other one?"

"Oh, he's just passing through."

One summer my mother decided we would drive down to Lewiston, Idaho, and pick fruit. Butch was sent back to his owner, but that left Strange. "What about Strange?" I asked my mother.

"I've arranged for Strange to stay with Rancid Crabtree."

"Rancid!" I exclaimed. "But if Strange acts up, Rancid is liable to shoot him!"

"What's your point?" Mom said.

On the day we were to leave, I took Strange over to Rancid's shack, which he had built up against Greenhorn Mountain. He didn't have a dog of his own, which I thought a little suspicious. Everybody in our part of the country owned at least one dog. Back then, I didn't realize that not owning a dog was a sign of intelligence. Rancid's other sign of intelligence was that he had never worked at a job in his entire life. What little money he needed for tobacco and whiskey he made by running a trap line. It was the kind of life I had planned for myself, but I somehow got distracted.

Rancid stared down at Strange. Strange stared back.

"That it?" Rancid said.

"Afraid so."

"You hongry, dog?" Rancid said. He turned and took a skillet of leftover gravy off his barrel stove. "It's grouse gravy," he said. "Best gravy in the world." It was summer and a long time before grouse season, but I didn't bother to ask how he managed to come up with a grouse for his gravy.

He set the skillet on the floor in front of Strange. The dog gobbled up the gravy and then licked the skillet clean.

"Wouldja lookit thet?" Rancid said. "Shoot, now Ah won't even hef to wash maw skillet--not thet Ah was plannin' to!"

"He's got a lot of bad habits," I said. "Some of them are even crimes he could be arrested for."

"Tell me one of them," Rancid said. I told him.

"Shucks, Ah never even know'd thet was a crime! Glad you told me."

I left Strange with Rancid, not at all sure the dog would survive until we returned. We went off to Lewiston and picked fruit until I was about ready to expire. After days and maybe weeks of this torture, we returned home. Right away I walked over to Rancid's shack, to see if Strange had survived. Rancid was sitting on his front porch. Strange was lying beside him, gnawing on the skull of some unfortunate animal.

They both looked pleased with themselves. I thanked Rancid and then called Strange. Picking up the skull, he reluctantly followed me home, but afterwards scarcely a day went by that he didn't go over and hang out with Rancid. They seemed to enjoy each other's company.

"Two peas in a pod," my mother described them.

And she was right. One day they were sitting together on the porch, and I noticed that they both had scraggly mustaches that drooped past the corners of their mouths, and on each side of their prominent noses they had little bulging eyes about the size of double-ought buckshot. And just as hard, too.

By Patrick F. McManus