THE BUCK
THE BUCK
Jan 4, l983 Oct 16, 1995
You knew that one day it would happen, but you didn’t know what day or how. For the last couple of years every time I bought dog food for the Buck, I would wonder if it would come out even or would there be two, five, maybe six cans left. Since his last, and final jaunt to California, he’s been strictly on Senior Cycle. I used to have some dry food to go along with the soft stuff, but the way we was losing teeth, it seemed a little cruel. When he was hungry, he wanted the soft stuff and he wanted it now! Well anyway, I got six cans of Senior Cycle left in the pantry. He left us about a week to soon.
You know, Buck was one smart dog. He knew that over the years we changed brands of dog food, but he figured it useless to respond to the mish-mash of trade names. There was Skippy, Alpo, Cal Can, Cycle and several lesser kinds- but, as Dan Wright would say, “what the hell”, Cal Can has a good ring to it, so if it’s time for chow just say “Cal Can” and don’t forget a little fresh water now and then.
Having lived with that little black dog the better part of the last thirteen years, it will be impossible to forget him and the incredible things he did. I’m certain that over the next few years I will continue to find “things” he was connected with. The most probable is socks. I never knew why but he either loved my socks or hated my socks. Wherever I would leave them, he would be sure to move them, most often in the middle of the night. For a long time I thought he just packed them into the hall, or bedroom, or family room, until a couple years ago, when digging in the flower beds, I kept finding my socks. Buried treasure? Some future food source? Who knows - he never told. This is a big yard and I’m missing a bunch of socks.
There’s a TV dog on the Frazier show called Eddie. This dog’s claim to fame is that he stares at people to the point of total exasperation. The Buck could outstare Eddie, hands down. How did he learn to do this? How did he learn anything? There was no “pedigree” to this dog. Obviously, he had a mother and father, but as a pup was abandoned with a sister along side a country road. If I got the story right, the two of them, each weighing something less then a half pound, were found and taken to the pound. When Bev and Therese bought him in mid-January l983, he came with something like a guarantee: “If he doesn’t live for the next few days, come back and we’ll give you another one.” I’m sure he heard that and accepted it as a challenge.
The Buck was kind of a replacement dog, himself. Tippy, a black and white female dog about Buck’s size, had lived the good life in our household from the late 1960’s to the early 1980’s. She ended up with a huge tumor that, right or wrong, was caused by eating designer cat food, rather then dog food. You see, Tippy was raised with Grayboy (or Klondike) a striped gray cat, and, given a choice, preferred Meow Mix to Kibbles and Bits. Not being aware that this new dog understood what people were talking about, we probably mentioned something about being a replacement, which he, of course, took as a challenge.
Mentioning Tippy’s tumor makes me wonder if Buck didn’t help do himself in with his diet of plastic. When the Vet reported that Buck’s liver was oversized and like mush, could it have been caused by some toxic substance, like plastic? Buck loved presents, and especially liked presents made out of plastic. Christmas gifts (read plastic toys) might just as well not be wrapped. He knew they were for him, and even if he was admonished not to unwrap them, he felt it his right to lay motionless under the tree for a couple of days staring at them. Most of these “toys” had a little whistle embedded, which was immediately unbedded. Buck didn’t want his toys making noise. A favorite sport of the Buck’s was retrieving, which deserves a page or more later on, but his eating plastic ties in with this and the sport of Frisbee. Frisbee catching dogs are a dime a dozen, and most of them stand a couple, three feet above the ground. Buck rarely caught a Frisbee in mid-air, but he retrieved them, shook them, and often took a bite out of them, until he had chewed them down to couple inches in diameter. This generally took a good six or seven months, so it wasn’t like he was attacking a pizza or something.
Between sessions of composing this, I wander around (and even take a few days off) and keep seeing and hearing things that makes me recall the Buck. Like Bev asked me the other day, “Do you want a carrot?” Sounds simple, but carrots and the Buck were synonymous. If he heard the word he was underfoot staring at you. If you kept silent but opened the crisper he picked up the sounds and smells and was underfoot staring at you. He liked his carrots big, and he liked them raw. He also liked to lay in front of the TV and gnaw that big, raw carrot and leave a pile of orange sawdust (or is it gnaw dust?). Laurie relates the story that when Buck stayed at their house he would save his big, raw carrots until 2 or 3 in the morning and then position himself under the bed and do the gnaw. One of the classic stories of the Buck and carrots is from years back when Cal used to garden in our back yard. He planted carrots, which grew and grew. Buck discovered the carrot patch one day and proceeded to dig one out. He then firmly grasped the green top in his teeth and twirled, dervish-like, until the orange and green separated. His reward was the freshest of carrots and a mouthful of dirt. What a dog!
Say too-doo-ta-doo to any Brunelle, or grandchild thereof, and they’ll know what it is. What a legacy this is for future generations. Until the Buck came our way the word wasn’t in our vocabulary, and whatever the official name is for the cardboard roll that they wrap toilet paper around, would still be unknown in our households. Sometime in the dim, dark past someone removed the empty roll off the roller, placed it to their mouth like a megaphone and said “too-doo-ta-doo”. Like the racetrack bugler calling Man-Of-War to the colors, the Buck was at the bathroom door and a new game was invented. You know, that was started years ago and to this day nobody just removes a spent roll and tosses it in the garbage. Instead, it is usually placed on the top of the tank. During Buck’s casing of the house he’d check the bathroom and when he spotted the empty roll would come and get you and lead you to “the roll”. Lassie used the same technique to save Timmy a time or two. A legitimate question might be, “Well what was the game?” After a couple blasts of too-doo-ta-doo you would throw the roll. Buck, depending on how he was feeling, might bring it back a time or two, but the final act would be his adding a few ounces of cardboard to his diet.
They say that dog to human years is a ratio of seven to one. If this is somewhere near accurate then the Buck was just a few weeks short of 90 years old having lived 12 years, 9 months and 12 days. I think this accounts for his transcending about four human generations. Elvira, Roy Sutherland, Leonard Toyer, the Dahls, Art Hunt- all Buck’s friends born in the first two decades of this century viewed him as a contemporary. To the little kids, those born since 1980, saw him as the reincarnation of Toto, the cairn terrior used in the Wizard of Oz. To us in the middle, the depression babes and the baby boomers, we saw him evolve from a rodent like life form to something a degree or so short of ethereal. To illustrate my last remark, the Buck made several trips to California. If dog years and dog miles are somewhat the same, he would be close to the million mile club. Anyway, with Pat, Therese and Jordan living in the Sacramento-Stockton area between 1986 and 1995, he had occasion to hang out down there quite a bit. On all the trips down the first pit stop was always McDermitt, Nevada/Oregon where he had the State line marked pretty well. We never opted to head west to Sac on Highway 50, but a couple of times when the Buck was with us we chose to go home that way. The first time, in about ‘87, we found a wide spot in the road along the American River mid-way to South Tahoe. Buck needed to stretch and drain his radiator which is natural for a traveling dog, so nothing unusual here. About four or five years later we’re trekking east on 50 and the Buck is comatose on the floor in the back until we approach “The Spot”. The Buck explodes into the front seat and tells us “this is it, this is it”. And it was. His spot on the American River twenty miles or so, as the crow flies, from where gold was first discovered in California.
Before you get the idea that this was the most perfect, well behaved, smartest and most impeccable dog that ever was, please discount it. At times he was the most obstinate, obtuse, stubborn and ill-bred critter that ever was. I think the most accurate word to describe him was that he was a pest. Again, to be as successful a pest as he was required more then normal dog smarts. If I wanted to dig a hole and he wanted to play fetch, the ball was always in the hole. If he wanted to play Frisbee and I was raking, the Frisbee was always in front of the rake. His turf was the east end of Meadow Drive and any dog-walkers, joggers or uniformed delivery folks that dared invade the area did so at risk. Substitute mail people viewed him as a Tasmanian Devil, but the regular postal people knew he was full of baloney. To UPS, though, he granted no slack. He didn’t like the shape or sound of the trucks, and he hated the brown uniforms. While walking him in the truck stop area near Fernley, Nevada, a UPS guy was viciously attacked, verbally. I mentioned stubborn. On one trip back from California, Bev, Katie Jo and I stayed at a motel in Winnemucca. In the morning we loaded up the car and was ready to leave, except the Buck wouldn’t come out from under one of the beds. All the whistling, coaxing, threating was to no avail until I was inspired to say, “come on Buck, let’s go see Pete”. Buck loved Pete Barinaga so he was out in the car waiting for me to get up off the floor and get going with the look of “what took you so long”.
While Buck enjoyed life pretty much at the pace he lived it here at Meadow Drive during most of the year he had no use for winter. Cold was not to his liking, and snow served no purpose at all. I told him a time or two that our irrigation water in the summer depended on snowfall in the winter, but that just bored him as he yawned and stretched and repositioned himself below a heat register, any heat register. He loved the irrigation water in the back yard in the summer, though, and Monday became his favorite day, particularly if some of the grandkids were over. Retrieving tennis balls, or Frisbees, in the water was great sport and taxed his endurance plowing against the six or eight inch depth of water. The source of the water was the ditch at the back of our lot. Dropping plastic toys or tennis balls in the ditch and watching them float down to Dahl’s yard provided endless hours of dog fun. Also, the ditch was his cool-down area after countless retrieves back and forth from the deck. When you told him it was the last one you were going to throw, or when he was just plain pooped out, he’d head for the ditch and jump in. When he emerged he looked something like a New York subway rat, but never mind that, if you had a few throws left in you he was ready to retrieve a few more. Potis figures that his retrieval trips approximated a one-way trip to Island Park to the east, or The Dalles, Oregon to the west. Pote also figured his visits to N. Owyhee Street to number a 1000 or so. Crossing Morris Hill Road had to be an adventure he enjoyed and the odds of getting hit by a car had to be about 1000 to 1. The one time he was hit must have hurt like hell as he slept sitting up for about a week.
It was on N. Owyhee Street that Buck’s cousin Abby was hit and killed by a car. That happened in Dec. of 1987, but the Buck never forgot Abby. When you mentioned the name his ears would go up and he’d head for the window and look out expectantly. For those of you who may have forgotten, Abby was Nick and Laurie’s Christmas present in 1982. The dog was a cockapoo, and, true to the breed, was high-strung and somewhat impulsive. She was our second experience with a cockapoo, the first being Rudy. Rudy had a vehicle experience too, but survived. In his case the car didn’t hit him, he hit the car going full speed across Meadow Drive. Knocked him colder then a wedge; but he regained consciousness halfway to the vet’s on Franklin Road.
Contemporary with the Buck and Abby palling around, the Fritz family down the street had a mutt they called Pupster. The Pupster was something like Tramp in the Disney movie. Fortunately, he had a dog tag because he would journey far and wide and whoever found him would always get him back to the Fritzes. One time he was found up in the Robie Creek area, and returned. I don’t know whatever happened to Pupster, but he vanished. Again, Buck never forgot Pupster and hearing his name would cause a lot of excitement. I think Buck enjoyed hearing about Pupsters adventures, but being the smart canine he was, preferred his trips in the back seat of a Camry.
While it is sad to think that the Buck is no longer with us, the memories he gave us are precious things. Knowing that he was getting old and could go any time, most of us older folks were prepared. The grandkids, however, felt that the Buck, who was older then all of them in people years, was supposed to last forever. I’m sure they felt a special bond to him as he did to them. All of the kids, from Katy born in late ‘83 to little Michael born in late ‘94, were guarded by the Buck while they slept at our house. While they slept Buck would lie silently by the bed, or in front of the bedroom door if it was closed. His record was spotless: Not one grandchild was ever stolen.
As the word was received of Buck’s passing, the reactions of the grandkids were touching. Jordan told Grandma Bev that he said some prayers to Cal and Gwen and asked that they bring Buck to visit him every Friday. “Of course” he said, “Nobody will see him, but I will know he’s here.” Jeff liked the Buck a whole lot. He told his folks that the Buck wasn’t just a pet, “he was his friend, his best friend”. Back in Virginia, near Jefferson’s home at Monticello, the students at UVA and parishioners of St. Thomas Acquinas Church said a prayer for the Buck. While Bea was chasing little Michael around some of the new construction, Jone took the opportunity to write Buck’s name in the Memory Book for All Souls day.
And remember we will.
4 years ago • Notes