A Dog's tale...

                                              A Dog Tale

    October 2006 was a very memorable month for my family in our new home in the country. The leaves were starting to blanket the lawn; the wind was brisk and chilled, bringing in hints of weather soon to come.

    It wasn’t the typical day for a barbeque on our wooden deck overlooking the rolling fenced pastures our backyard faces, but we decided it was a prime evening to have friends over and fire up the grill for a cookout anyway.

    Everything was ready as the guests started to arrive. The time came all too quickly for the family and friends to start one by one saying their goodbyes to prepare to depart for their own homes. By the time the feast was over and the kitchen and deck were cleaned, it was well past midnight.

    My wife, being the trooper she has always been for the last thirty years, looked at me exhaustedly, and asked,
“Would you let Tucker out? I have got to get to bed.”
“I sure will hon, you go ahead to bed, and I will be in momentarily”. I told her.

    With that the beautiful mother of three went off downstairs to retire to our bed. She was literally exhausted, and was looking forward to the fresh sheets and hand made quilt she had dressed the bed up with earlier that day.

    I called out to our boxer, who was 116 pounds of pure cat hater. Though he was a giant baby with our children and practically any other human within licking range, he hated cats with a passion.

    Tucker slowly made his way up the stairs as I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out on the deck. He joined me there, and then he went down the five creaky wooden stairs to the grasses level. Where he would start the search for only the perfect spot to relieve himself. I walked on the additional eight feet to the deck's rail, and lit my nightly cigarette to enjoy quietly by myself, without my wonderful wife telling me every bad thing that was happening to my body while I had the evil thing in my mouth.

    As I leaned on the rail and exhaled the wonderful gray cloud I had had in my lungs, I looked to the sky and thanked God for my home, my wife and children and all the people he let me enjoy minutes earlier. Although I felt I had to apologize for the cylindrical paper full of dried weeds I was enjoying so fully.

Suddenly in the pale sprinkle of the flood light from our eaves that cast a faint glow on the farthest section of the backyard, I noticed a black and white streak running parallel to the fence that separated our property from the rest of Virginia,
   
    “Oh my lord it’s a cat,” I thought to myself as I started calling out to Tucker hoping he would concentrate on me, and not notice the furry streak as I had. He looked up at me as if to say, he hadn’t found the perfect spot yet.

      At that moment my nightmare had become reality when he saw what I had seen moments earlier, and suddenly morphed into cat killer. The old dog started digging his paws into the damp earth and was building speed quickly as he came upon the cat. I was stunned, I threw my little piece of heaven on earth off to the side of the deck, and started running down the stairs toward him, hoping to catch him before he enjoyed a midnight snack right there in front of me.

    He jumped the final two feet left between him and his prey, and was on top of the animal in an instant. He grabbed the cat at the midsection, and started shaking it as if it were on fire and he was trying his best to put it out.

    I had made it to within twenty feet of the two before I heard a noise, it was as if a whale had surfaced and quickly grasp a breath of air, before returning to the deep. It must have startled Tucker as well because he suddenly threw the beast from his mouth. As it landed some fifteen feet away from him, he quickly looked at me, still coming wildly at him.

    He being the true cat catcher he was, was not about to be one upped by a feline, that simply wouldn’t do, he charged the animal again except this time when he got within ten feet of it, it turned on him, threw its tail up in the air and shot another blast that hit him square in the face.

    I think it dawned on both him and I at the same time that this was no cat, it was a skunk who had, by now hit him squarely two times. The second of which couldn’t have been more precise if he had a bulls eye painted on his face and his nose was the small 100 point button.

    Maybe it was the cigarettes finally catching up to me or the fact I hadnt ran much since high school but I was still a good fifteen feet from him as he turned and bolted past me. I stopped and looked back to the deck just in time to see my old friend miss all five steps leading up to the deck and quickly disappearing into my house!

  I turned and ran back toward home as fast as my wheezing body could; I made it to the door just in time to hear my wife scream in our bedroom downstairs. As I ran to get to her, my nose noticed the dog must have rubbed all over the carpet on the way down to greet her. The house was filled with an odor that I could only liken to a mixed cocktail of gym socks, soupy garbage, and stacked corpses.

    I was almost to the stairway leading to our bedroom when Tucker yet again met me coming back up the other way after his short but vibrant visit to my bed. I grabbed his collar and walked him blindly to the deck as by this time the skunks potent potion had swelled his eyes practically shut.

    Once securing the animal on the deck with a leash I headed downstairs to meet my wife who was totally bewildered and had already had the time to fall asleep only to be awakened by the stinky canine jumping into our bed on top of her. She was now standing beside the bed, her hair going every which way but the way she wanted it to, and holding her nose.

    “What the heck happened,” she asked puzzled. I filled her in on the whole story as we both stood in the house while the smell just kept blossoming into a crescendo of the opera “putrid”.

  I spent until four in the morning bathing and bathing our wonderful old dog Tucker who miraculously never again attacked a cat.

Word Count - 1,194