The Dogs and I: True Tails from the Mississippi

Text © 2013 Kenny Salwey

All photographs from the author’s collection. Photo on page [XX] by Dennis Anderson. Photo on page [XX] by Mike Roach.

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To all dogs:

They make our

lives better.

And to Jo.

She was a big dog in a little dog’s suit.

Spider and Kenny and Misty

Introduction

It has been said that a dog is man’s best friend. That statement does not say nearly enough. They are so much more than that.

Dogs mean many things to a great many people all over the world. They are found almost everywhere on earth, and the word for dog is part of many languages. English alone has more than thirty phrases that begin with the word dog, such as dog-ear, dog days, dog-tired, dogtrot, and dog tag.

One of my very first memories is of a dog. I grew up on a small farm in the hill country of Buffalo County, Wisconsin, about five miles east of the Mississippi River. My family raised cows and horses, chickens and pigs, sheep and cats—and yes, there was always at least one dog on the farm as well. Our farm dogs helped us with herding and hunting, guarding and petting, and a whole lot of other things along the way.

All of our farm dogs were mixed breeds. We could make only a sort of educated guess as to which breeds were involved in the makeup of each dog. Their heritage didn’t matter to us, though, because every one of them found a niche in our daily family life, and in our hearts as well.

Some of them lived long lives, some short, just as it is with all things in the great circle of life.

After I left home, it was only during my military service time that I found myself dogless. From then on there has always been a dog by my side—well, let’s face it, mostly a bit ahead of me. Folks like to say they train their dogs, but as far as I’m concerned my dogs train me about as much as I train them. Over the years I’ve learned that it’s always good to be more like a dog.

Over the course of my life I have had many animal friends, both wild and domestic. However, none can compare in terms of companionship, lovingness, faithfulness, and friendship to the noble dog. In the pages of this book I have shared the stories of each of my dogs, from the very first one, when I was a small child in the Mississippi River hill country, to the present day as I approach seventy years of age as an old-time river rat. I hope you will enjoy this walk down memory lane with my four-legged friends.

A Motley Pair

My first memory of a dog is from when, as my hill country folks would say, I was knee high to a grasshopper. I was maybe three or four years old. As I was walking between our house and the barn, I was suddenly attacked by our dog, Brownie. She was short-haired, all brown except for some white on her chest and front legs, and stood about knee high to an average sized adult person. Brownie charged straight at me, leaped into the air, landed against my chest, and knocked me flat on my back. Then she stood on me and thoroughly washed my face, which no doubt needed it anyway. I wrapped my arms around her, and we laughed and yipped and rolled about in the hot summer’s dust. After that, a rasslin’ match somewhere among the farm buildings became a daily routine.

Over the next couple of years Brownie and I made many happy trips tramping back and forth from the house to the garden, where we would help Ma until she’d chase us out of there for knocking over her plants. From there we headed off to the pig pen. I’d crawl up on the board fence to watch the old sows lie on their sides grunting contentedly as the baby pigs nursed. Brownie, on the other hand, was anything but content. She’d jump up and down, barking as if to say, Get up, you big brutes, and do something. They never did.

We also found fun near the chicken coop, where we liked to sit in the shade of a giant old elm tree that overhung the chicken-wire fence. The chickens came and went as they pleased in and out of the coop, scratching in the dirt and picking bugs out of the grass. Being of the Leghorn breed, they were lightweight and could fly a little. Now and then one would fly high enough to clear the fence. Then the race was on! Brownie and I would chase after the hen in a helter-skelter fashion until I caught it and tossed it back inside the fence, where it would ruffle its feathers and slowly strut about among the rest of the flock.

So it was that our days passed—until Pa brought another dog home. We’d never seen anything quite like this new dog. He was quite large, maybe ninety pounds or so, and looking at him alongside Brownie was like seeing Mutt and Jeff in person.

The two dogs met in usual dog fashion. They walked stiff-legged round and round, each trying to sniff the other’s behind. They would break apart suddenly, run a short distance in opposite directions, and then return to their sniffing ritual. The new dog had coarse, wiry, tight-knit hair. His face seemed square, and bushy eyebrows stuck out so far they nearly covered his eyes. His tail was docked short. Pa said he’d had a dog that looked like this one when he was a kid, back in about 1920. That dog had Airedale blood in him, and Pa figured this one did too.

Even though our new dog had some years on him, Pa thought he’d work out just fine. There was one problem, however. We couldn’t come up with a proper name for him.

Then one morning as the family was eating breakfast, our hired man, Orville Blank, looked up from his stack of pancakes and declared, You know somethin’, folks? A number of years ago all we heard on the radio and read in the papers was ‘Wendell Willkie’ this and that. Why not call him Willkie? Ma and Pa stared long and hard at Orville and then said in unison, Why not? My brother, Gerry, nodded his head in agreement, and I did too, even though I didn’t know Wendell Willkie from Jack Frost.

Around that time I was old enough to start going to school. School put a dent in our ramblin’ times, to say the least. Every day I’d run home from school to be met in the yard by Brownie and Willkie. A whole lot of jumping, barking, tail wagging, and hand licking went on before I could get on with my nightly chore of carrying wood from the woodshed to the house. As I worked to take a piece of wood from the pile and stack it on the rickety old sleigh, Brownie stood guard on one side of the pile and Willkie took the other side, watching for any mice trying to escape from their hiding places in the wood pile. They never ate any mice they caught; they just killed them and spit them out. After a while, I’d gather up the dead mouse, carry it to the barn with the dogs watchfully tagging along behind, and feed their catch to the cats.

Then I’d return to the loaded sleigh and pull it over to the house, where there was an outside-inside wood box mounted in the kitchen wall. The box sat on hinges and had a handle on the outside. I’d grab the handle and tip the box out to fill it with wood.

Now came the tricky part of the whole operation. I’d put one hand against the top of the box, put the other on the handle, and push with all my might in order to tip the full box back in to the kitchen. I was always careful not to let it slam shut too hard. Most times this went according to plan, but occasionally my top hand became pinched between the wood box and the kitchen wall. At first I would try to remain calm, hoping I could simply pull my hand out of my glove. That was not always the case. Now I’d begin hollering, hoping Ma would hear me from inside the house. If that didn’t work, I’d holler and pound on the wall with my free hand. When that failed, I’d holler and pound once in a while and then just stand there, waiting in hopes that Gerry or Pa would find me and free me from that god-awful box.

Meanwhile, the dogs sat nearby, ears perked up watching and listening to me carrying on. I wondered why they didn’t bark once or twice to sound the alarm. I guess they were having too much fun watching my antics to spoil it all with barking.

No matter. Somebody always came to rescue me from my wood box plight, and the two dogs and I went on to seek other adventures around that little hill country farm.

Just as my early childhood days passed away, so did Brownie and Willkie. What a motley pair they were. I guess you could say we were a motley trio. But we sure brought each other a whole lot of happiness.

Workin’ Dogs

Rover looked like he had some sort of herding shepherd in him. He was medium sized, maybe fifty pounds, and his hair was long and white with some large brown patches. His ears hung down a bit, and he mostly wore a smile.

The thing Rover enjoyed most in life was rounding up the cattle. In fact, he was so good at it that each morning before milking, all we had to do was stand out in the barnyard and call, Here, Rover. Come on, boy. Here, Rover, and the cows would start coming up out of the pasture toward us. They knew full well if they didn’t head for the barn old Rover would soon be with them, making sure they did.

Rover would circle around behind the herd and nip at the heels of those who lagged behind. Once he had all the cattle headed in the right direction, he’d slowly follow, letting out a yip now and then just to be sure the herd knew he was still with them. He never chased the cows so hard that they ran, because that’s hard on them when their udders are full of milk. Pa wouldn’t have stood for something like that.

When all the cattle were in the barnyard, Rover took his place outside the wooden fence, where he waited on call in case he was needed.

Before the evening milking, the job was more challenging. The cattle had been grazing all day in the large daytime pasture. A crick ran through the middle of it, and wonderful old burr oaks and cottonwoods stood along the crick banks, offering the cows shade near the flowing, fresh water. It naturally followed that on beastly hot, humid dog days of summer, the cows preferred to remain lying under the trees, chewing their cuds and relaxing. No amount of hollering, Here, Rover could coax them from their