April 2007                                                The Megaphone                                                     Page 6

The Dog I Never Had and Other Dogs I Did Have

by Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen    

When our Fearless Leader suggested we write about dogs we had as children, I was stumped since I never had a dog when I was a child. But I thought perhaps I should write about the Dog I Never Had as well as the four I have had as an adult. Of all these dogs, the Dog I Never Had was by far the most interesting.

I was not allowed to have a dog as a child. My brother, however, had several dogs as a child. I was not allowed to have a dog because my brother, who was eleven years older man me (and still is for that matter) would get a dog and then, after a while, would not take care of it, leaving the feeding, etc., of the dog to our already over-worked mother. At least that is what I was told whenever the subject of Jane Ann having a dog came up.

“May I have a dog, please?” I would ask plaintively.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t take care of it.”

“Yes, I will.”

“That’s what your brother always said, but he never did. So therefore you can’t have a dog.”

But I still wanted a dog, and gradually the Dog I Never Had began to take shape.

At first the Dog I Never Had was a Boxer. I had read a story about a Boxer named Lucky in Jack and Jill Magazine. I fell in love with Boxers and thought they were the most handsome and bravest of all dogs. So the Dog I Never Had would of course be a boxer. 

But then in third grade I sat next to Nancy Mraz, and she got me to reading the great Albert Payson Terhune books about Collies. I was a little offended that the dog heroes of his books were always Collies since, after all, Lassie was doing enough to popularize Collies, and the Dog I Never Had was a Boxer. So I tried desperately to make Lad A Dog and Wolf and all the other Sunnybank Collies into boxers. Now that is difficult to do. After all, Collies have noses, tails, and hair, and boxers don’t. So gradually over the years the Dog I Never Had turned into a Collie.

But not just any Collie. The Dog I Never Had became the most beautiful, intelligent, and bravest of all dogs. The Dog I Never Had became an all-time champion dog show winner. One day I bought a copy of Dog World magazine at Tam’s Drug Store and smuggled it into the house with all the stealth of any junior high boy sneaking Playboy past his mother. Up in the privacy of my room, I opened the pages of Dog World and was introduced to an amazing array of breeds of dogs, all developed over centuries for certain tasks, including just being adorable little pets (the Toy category). Looking at the selection of Collies, I picked out one that I was sure was the spitting image of the Dog I Never Had, and soon we, my dog and I, were embarked (sorry) on a fantastic show career.

No Collie, indeed no purebred dog, ever won as many awards as the Dog I Never Had. He never lost a best-in-breed prize, and seldom finished anything other than first in Best of Group. In fact, the Dog I Never Had was the first and only dog to ever win the Westminster Kennel Club Dog show three times in a row. I used the chalkboard in my room, to list the other contenders for prizes, selecting Best of Breed from the pictures of dogs of the various breeds. I ran into trouble with the chalkboard and the shows the Dog I Never Had was winning. From reading Dog World, I discovered two things – 1) the preliminary rounds of dog shows are divided into two groups for each breed based on the gender of the dog and 2) seeing the words “Best Bitch in Show” on my chalkboard made my mother extremely irate, so irate she erased my entire dog show.

But the Dog I Never Had was more than just a show dog. He was also a hero. I lost track of all the lives he saved, pulling children out of lakes, dashing in front of speeding cars and racing locomotives to snatch a little one out of danger at the last possible moment, barking ferociously to alert the family to a fire, placing himself fearlessly between some poor unsuspecting soul and a rattlesnake poised to strike.

But then one day the Dog I Never Had faded away into memories of childhood when my brother handed me a black puppy with a splash of white on its throat, the offspring of his two dogs, one a Border Collie and the other an English Cocker Spaniel. And as brave and beautiful and wonderful as the Dog I Never Had had been, he could not compete with a real, live, wiggly puppy, a puppy that could lick me on the face.

I was fourteen when Vic gave me Splash. Thirteen years later I held him in my arms as the vet gave him the needle that ended his life but also prevented the convulsions and suffering I knew he would have if we had let his kidney failure run its course. Splash was the most faithful dog I have ever had. For half of his life, while I was in college and then when we first were married and lived in a mobile home park, he lived with my folks and saw me on an occasional weekend. Yet he remained my dog. Whenever Dad would bring him inside, first he searched every room in the house for me and when he couldn’t find me then and only then would he lay down at Dad’s side. When it came time to put him down, I could not bear the thought that the last time he would see me I would be leaving him again. He had enough of that during his life. So I held him in my arms that last day.

Three more dogs have found homes in our hearts following Splash. After the hair problems of the Border Collie mix, we went to a short-haired dog, a Dalmatian, that Gordie named Scout, after Tonto’s spotted horse. Scout was the dog of the childhood of our two boys. When David began to crawl, he went first to that dog. Dalmatians are pretty hyper dogs, but Scout never budget while the baby tried to pick her spots off. As you might expect from a dog that wears a clown suit, Scout was a fun dog to have around.

We had Scout for thirteen years when she became so crippled by arthritis that we had to have her put down. It was hard on the boys, then 12 and 10, but we finally explained we had to think of the dog’s needs. Because of the hair problems of the Dalmatian (that soft white hair is like soft pine needles except that the hair has a barb on it that makes it almost impossible to get up) so we went to my first love, the Collie. We named her Carpenter after a Collie our next door neighbors in Elwood, Lowell and Jean Butcher, had owned. Explanation – Carpenter is a name for a dog “that does odd jobs around the house.”

Carpenter was a sable and white three-month-old pup when we got her. She was the most sensible dog I have ever seen. One week after we got the pup, our two daughters, then 4 and 2, were placed with us for adoption. It was an exciting time, but also a traumatic time as our family expanded and adjusted to the new dynamics. And Carpenter knew she must behave differently. She would roughhouse with the boys, but around the girls she was gentle and protective. That winter Gordie and the four kids built an igloo in the snow. But Carpenter would not let the girls in it until it was done, she had gone in and inspected it, and then, deciding it was safe, she finally let the girls inside. Our favorite story of Carpy was probably when we had a swim party and cookout for Paul and his college friends on Race Day. One of the girls had left a half-eaten hamburger on her plate sitting on a lounge chair. Carpenter lay not five feet away watching that hamburger, occasionally looking over her shoulder at the crowd. But she never touched it – not until the girl had climbed back into the pool. At that point, the dog rightly assumed she would not be coming back for it and with two gulps it was gone. But only after 20 minutes of watching it.

Carpenter was twelve years old when her health failed very quickly due to a tumor on her pancreas. We lost her just before Christmas. We had thought to wait until spring to get another dog, but in January we gave up, and got another Collie pup, this time a tri-color (black, gold, and white). And to carry on the legacy of Carpenter, Gordie named this one Plumber, and Plumber has indeed done many leaks around our house. I’ve regretted that name in many ways. It’s humorous, but she grew into such a beautiful dog, it seems inappropriate.

We got Plumber during the coldest week in Indiana’s recorded history, January 1994. It was 20 degrees below zero outside (up from 27 below a few days earlier) with a foot of snow in the back yard. I do not recommend getting a puppy during that kind of weather if you have any hope of housebreaking it. With Carpenter, when she would indicate she needed to go out, we would take her to a specific spot in the yard we had designated as “Dog Patch” and within three days she was trained to go straight to that spot. Plumber picked up the idea of going to the door, but she couldn’t comprehend that we needed some time to don coat, gloves, boots, scarves, etc. She went to the door, waited a good ten seconds or less, and then relieved herself. So we gave up on taking her to the back of the yard; we just opened the door (we have a fenced yard). She never got off the patio that winter, and eventually it looked like we had yellow wall-to-wall carpeting until finally spring came and the snow melted.

Plumber was so different from Carpenter. She had one wild and woolly puppy hood that lasted for three years. There was the time she was playing with the boys, now in college, and came tearing full speed at them. They were sitting on a couch that separated the family room from the computer area, and suddenly at the last second David realized she wasn’t going to stop. She leaped and he caught her above his shoulder in mid-air before she sailed into the computers and printer. I took her to obedience school, but she flunked the final exam of "down stay." Not only did she get up, she took half the class with her. Apparently she thought it was time for recess.

But around the age of three, the Collie DNA kicked in, and she too became a sensible, loving, obedient dog. She is now thirteen and deaf, but even with some infirmities of age, she has remained a sweet-tempered dog, especially around our eight grandchildren. Someday soon, I suppose, we will have to make that most difficult of decisions, and after Plumber, I am sure we will get another dog and it will be a Collie, possibly a rescue dog this time. (And unless it comes already named, it will probably be called “Gardener” for, you guessed it, yard jobs.)

None of the four dogs I have had – Splash, Scout, Carpenter, or Plumber – have ever matched the achievements of the Dog I Never Had. None have ever won Westminster nor even an obedience trial. None of them have ever saved anyone’s life, although I’m sure they would have if the opportunity had ever arisen. But they have all given us love and faith, and with a simple wag of the tail, have shared their joy with us. And that’s all we could ask for in any dog.

Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen, '59

Northwest Indy