THE SUPER DOG CHRONICLES

SUPER DOG COMES TO LIVE WITH US

Early in June of 1969, Kim and her daddy had been over in the Texas Piney Woods along the Trinity River. Kim walked in with this tiny little red ball of fur nestled in her arms. It looked like a wind-up toy. It seems this woman my husband knew had a litter of puppies she was going to drown if somebody didn’t take them away. They were really too young to leave their mother—being only 4 weeks old—but soft-hearted little Kim grabbed the bully of the litter and claimed him for her own. I’m told that all 5 or 6 pups appeared to have a different daddy, and if you watched long enough, you would see a different little male dog trotting down the road that matched a puppy in the litter. In deep East Texas, they bred these little dogs with great noses to be squirrel dogs.

When I put down a saucer of milk for the puppy, he started lapping so hard that his little hind end came up another notch with each lap, like an old schoolroom clock, until he fell in the bowl face first. That first night was miserable. We put him in the laundry room in a box with blankets, and he howled. Then I put a ticking clock in the box with him. And he howled. I moved the box to my side of the bed, and he howled … until, finally, I put my hand in the box with him. I slept with my hand hanging off the side of the bed touching him all night long. The next day, he got his first flea bath—he was covered in them. Then he went to the vet in my purse. When we walked in, the vet’s wife and her German shepherd were in the waiting room. While she and I were talking, I put my little partner down on the floor, and he bristled all over and charged the humongous shepherd barking like crazy. The big dog’s eyes got really big, he yipped, and ran around behind his mistress and hid. At that moment, “Super Dog” just fell out of my mouth, and that became his name. The second night of Super Dog’s life with us, my arm was so sore from hanging off the side of the bed that I put him in bed with me. And that’s where he slept for the next

18 years. Those first mornings when I took him outside, he had a terrible time negotiating the St. Augustine grass because it was so tall—almost two inches high. Later, when he was about three months old, my mom and I were standing by an oak sapling and Super Dog was sniffing around. He walked up to that tree, gave it a good sniff, looked it up and down, then, lifted his little leg to whiz on it. And he fell on his back like a big bug. But, not to be deterred, he jumped up, looked around to see if anyone was watching and approached the tree again. Up and down he looked, then sidled up to it again and quick as a wink, hiked the leg and propped it on the tree, took his whiz, and finished with as big a huff as a 3” x 6” dog could give. I’m sure glad I had a witness, since no one would have believed it. Super Dog would chase anything that would run from him, especially cats. It didn’t matter that most of them were three or four times his size. There were a few exceptions, one being an old tomcat that had lived in the field where we built our house. Old Tom didn’t give up his territory easily, and most mornings when I took the mighty Super Dog out, Tom would plant himself square in the middle of the sidewalk and dare Supie to come close. At first, he charged, barking like crazy, but Tom stood his ground and slapped the devil out of the pup, knocking him ass over teacup, but Super Dog knew how to handle that. Tom became invisible from that point on, and Supie would walk around him like he didn’t exist, never making eye contact. He went everywhere with me in my purse or in my pocket. Kim would put him in the basket of her bicycle, and with his ears blowing in the wind and his little paws propped on the front of the basket, off they would go. She came home one day upset and worried because Super Dog had jumped out and landed on this head, and she was afraid he was hurt. Not our boy. He was tough. At just a few months old, he fell in love with pickup trucks and would jump into any truck he saw with an open door. As little as he was, he could jump like a kangaroo. One afternoon, I couldn’t find him. I called and called, whistled and whistled … no Super Dog. Kim rode through the neighborhood on her bike. I drove all the major streets around looking for a little squashed dog. After Kim went to bed crying, I drove around all night in my night gown, crying and calling. When I had exhausted all my options, I finally called the City Pound, though I held out no hope of finding him there. A really sweet lady told me I should come see if he had been picked up, so, reluctantly, I drove all the way across Houston to the Pound. When I got there, an old Black gentleman took me down the rows of dog runs telling me to slow down and look carefully at all the dogs. I had already walked past one particular pen full of little dogs when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little red dog standing on the heads of all the others and barking like a fool. IT WAS SUPER DOG! The man said, “Lord, that little dog sure does know you!” When the vet on duty said he looked like a five-month-old puppy, I started telling him that he was older…. The vet said, “Lady, if a dog is under six months of age, it will cost you $5. Over that, it will cost you $20.” While I stood there crying all over my smelly, wiggling, licking ball of fur, I told the vet, “I don’t care if it costs me $100.” He said, “This is definitely a five-month-old dog.” I’m sure when the dog catcher saw him and opened the door to his pickup, Super Dog jumped right in and took up his shotgun position ready for a ride. On the way home from the pound, I stopped by Kim’s school. The whole class cheered, and I had to take him in for them to pet. Thus ended his first brush with the law.

SUPER DOG GOES TO WYOMING

When he finished growing, Super Dog was 12 pounds of rock-hard sinew and muscle, a purebred Madison County Mouse Hound (as we later dubbed him) with long red hair

and upright foxlike ears. He had the attitude of a bullmastiff, and he was one of the most amazing athletes I’ve ever known. Super Dog, Kim, and I moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1970, arriving in January to find the area in the grip of an exceptionally cold, snowy winter. We bought a ranch just eight miles east of the Capitol building, but those eight miles might as well have been eight hundred, it was so remote. One day, driving up the road to the main house, I dropped Super Dog out on the snow-packed road and clocked him at 30 mph for a short distance. There was an old barn on the ranch that was filled with cast-off junk. It probably dated back to the 1800s. As clean up began to make room for our horses, Super Dog got really busy chasing mice, and there were plenty of them. One day, I looked up to see a mouse hightailing it down the length of the barn with Super Dog in hot pursuit. At the end of the alleyway was a wall of hollow clay blocks with a five- or six-inch diameter hole in one of them down close to the floor. The mouse beat Super Dog to the hole, but Supie was moving so fast he couldn’t stop. His nose went in the hole, but the rest of his body wouldn’t fit. His little red butt caught up with his head making him look like an accordion, just like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. After he bounced back a couple of feet, he picked himself up and turned around to trot back down the alley, but you could see his eyes were crossed with a lot of @&@#**@ swimming around in his brain. He looked around as if to say, “Just like I planned it!” and trotted off to find the next mouse. As the snow began to melt, gopher runs that had been under the snow began to appear. The great hunter went to work. One day he looked up and a gopher had dared to stray from his hole. Super Dog flew over the ground and got him. It was his first genuine kill. He shook that gopher all over for several minutes making sure it was good and dead. We cheered and clapped as he trotted back, proud of himself, and then he started spitting and gagging from the gopher hair. Yuk! He hadn’t realized they had all that hair. Oat hay was stacked outside, and every time bales were removed from the stack, mice shot out in every direction. We had a retarded cat that refused to chase mice, so, of course, the Super Mouse Dog had to be called in. When a bale was moved, Supie was at the ready. He caught mouse after mouse, but because they had hair on them, he was done with them once he’d killed them. The cat would sit on top of the hay bales and Super Dog would catch the mice for him. They made a great team. While we were driving across the pasture one day, Super Dog, ever on the alert, spotted a big jack rabbit, and Super Dog bailed out the window of the pickup and took off in hot pursuit. We followed the chase, and in a few minutes, a gorgeous gray fox that, no doubt, had been about to catch the jack rabbit, jumped out of some rocks and joined the parade. The fox’s coat was in transition from winter to summer colors. The ends of his hair looked were gilded, like he was surrounded by a golden aura. The jack rabbit was in front stopping every now and then to let Super Dog catch up. Then there was Super Dog, with the fox bringing up the rear just running for his life. Once again, I couldn’t help being reminded of a cartoon. In the end, none of them caught anything, but Super Dog was proud of the way he had handled the situation. Every day I went to the back of the ranch to feed our herd of 150 black, white-faced yearling heifers. I would load hay and range cubes in the pickup and my main ranch hand, Super Dog and I would set out. After I got to the heifer pasture, I would put the truck in grandma gear and get out to scatter the feed. Since the plains around Cheyenne have few gulleys or trees, there was no danger of hitting anything, plus I had my ranch hand on board. I got up in the back of the truck and Super Dog drove for me. He would stand up with his paws on the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead, and first make a gentle loop to the right and then a gentle loop to the left. We went all the way across the pasture until I had put out all the hay and cubes. Of course, I had to be sure the windows were up so my driver didn’t jump out of the truck when he spied a gopher or a jack rabbit.

ESCAPEE

Early in the 1970s, Kim, Super Dog, and I returned permanently to Houston from Wyoming. We crossed the state line into Texas on Easter Sunday after driving for 18 or 19 hours straight through from Denver. That entire part of the world was still in the grip of winter, and we hadn’t seen anything green the entire trip. It was drab and brown all the way. It was a beautiful sunny day and about 150 miles north of Houston, we suddenly hit springtime. The early grass was green as an Irish hillside and the bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes were covering the entire landscape. Due to the holiday, there were few cars on the road that morning, so I pulled off the road and the three of us leaped out and just rolled in the gorgeous wildflowers. I cannot tell you how good it felt to be back in Texas. [editor’s note: Mom ommitted the part about her second husband in Wyoming. The brief marriage had not been a happy one.] We moved into an apartment in Houston and started our lives over—again. Super Dog had never been restricted to an apartment and now had to stay on a leash anytime he was outside. Whenever the door opened, he shot through it, and the hunt for him began. He was a hunter and had a lot of hunting to catch up on. He could dig like a dragline, and he demonstrated that skill on our small fenced patio. He also had the uncanny ability to squeeze through the smallest hole, just like a rodent. He was a master escape artist, and we spent a lot of time searching for him. Since all walks had to be on a leash, I decided to get a second-hand bicycle so I could ride with Kim and let Super Dog run alongside. I ended up with a secondhand man’s ten-speed that must have previously belonged to somebody about 6’4”. It had been a really long time since I’d ridden a bike, and probably never a ten-speed with the brakes on the handlebars. First rattle out of the box, I ran through a hedge and hit a wall, embarrassing my daughter a lot. Then I tied a couple of leashes together, hooked Supie up and started down the sidewalk—I did not want to get out in the street. As we peddled along, Super Dog would run ahead sniffing every bush and power pole. Our first crisis came when he circled me and tangled the leash in the bicycle chain. After that problem was corrected, off we went once more. Supie ran ahead and went between two street sighs and stopped to lift his leg. I could see what was about to happen but couldn’t stop the dang bicycle in time to avoid yanking the poor little guy’s head into one of the poles. Talk about a dog seeing stars! When he picked himself up, he turned around and glared at the offending pole, and I’m sure he thought, “I’ll never pee on that pole again.” That was our one and only dog-walking trip on the bicycles. Neither Kim nor Super Dog would go with me anymore! That summer I met a really wonderful man. Maybe I should say I became reacquainted with him. We started dating and one night, he came to take Kim and me to dinner. An hour or so before he arrived, Super Dog had escaped from the patio and Kim and I had been looking everywhere for him, she on her bicycle up and I had walking down along the creek behind our apartment. We had looked and called and cried, but couldn’t find Supie. When Jack Cole arrived to pick us up, he found two devastated females in place of the effervescent dinner dates he was expecting, and dinner was a sober event during which all we could think about was getting back home in hopes that our escapee would be waiting at the door for us. We had gone to a restaurant within walking distance, and on our walk home, we passed within half a block of a parking lot where a dog obedience class was taking place. Jack asked Kim and me to look down the street, and there, silhouetted by streetlights stood a little dog with upright ears preparing to totally disrupt the obedience class. I would have recognized those ears anywhere. You guessed it. It was the mighty Super Dog! I like to believe that he was as glad to see us as we were to see him.

FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH

How many times did I save Super Dog from the jaws of death? He had a real mouth on him and an attitude to match. He could make the mildest mannered dog in the world want to fight. I often wondered what he was saying in dog language. It had to be pretty bad. Of course, he always picked the biggest dog around to tick off. After Jack and I married in 1972, we moved into a nicer apartment in Houston. The buildings were brand new and the landscaping was not complete yet, so there was still a lot of mud about the place. I opened the door to take Super Dog out without his leash one day. We did it all the time. Nothing ever happened. I didn’t intend to go far with him, just a quick potty break. One of my neighbors had a pair of Dalmatians, a male and a female. She was passing our front door just then—with her dogs on leashes, as they were supposed to be—when Super Dog blasted out after them. The Dalmatians went into protection mode for their mistress, who was was wearing a cute little white bikini with a white lace cover-up and high-heeled sandals. She was like a fashion model,

just tripping along with her dogs. Then her dogs yanked her down into the mud. Both of the big dogs jumped on Supie. The male got him by the throat, and the female got him in the stomach. I jumped into the fray and knocked the female off, but the male wouldn’t turn loose. When Jack heard all the commotion and came running out, he said he saw me trying to pry the male dog’s mouth apart with both hands with Super Dog hanging out of the big dog’s mouth like a ragdoll. I was finally able to open the Dalmatian’s mouth and force him to drop Supie, and I scooped him up and left Jack to help the mud-covered neighbor up and apologize. I washed all the mud off Supie, dried him off, and put him in his bed. When I set him down, he was sitting up, eyes staring straight ahead. I would pull his legs apart so he would lie down, and he was stiff, like a mechanical toy. He didn’t move a muscle, just sat there staring, but his bat-ears shook. We called the vet who told us he was obviously in shock and that we should just give him some time to come out of it. When he finally did come out of it, I was on the floor beside him. He blinked at me, screamed, and fell back in fear of me. He cowered every time I reached to pet him. I guess in his little dog brain, I was the one who had hurt him, since I was the first person he saw when he came out of shock. After a few hours, he forgave me and no great damage had been done by the big dogs. The next encounter was with a Rhodesian Ridgeback/ Yellow Lab cross. Supie could really pick ‘em. He was really into protecting his space and his humans. One afternoon when we were at the farm in Madisonville, the neighbor dog of Ridgeback/Lab ancestry, wandered up to our house. Supie was off chasing something else and had not seen him. I knew there would be trouble when he did, so I wanted to get him inside before he saw the other dog. Now, the neighbor dog was the size of a small pony and didn’t have on a collar. Every time I started to go get Supie, the neighbor dog followed me. I finally straddled the big dog and got him by the scruff of the neck to try and put him in a horse stall. About that time, Super Dog showed up and launched himself, grabbing the big dog in the flank. Big dog threw me off, and even though he was a sweet tempered, young dog, he grabbed Supe by the neck and started shaking him like a rat. Fortunately, he didn’t have a good grip, or he’d have broken Supie’s neck. Again, I grabbed this dog’s mouth and tried to pry it open with my hands. I kicked him and hit him, and finally, he dropped Supie. Somebody finally heard me screaming and calling for help, called the neighbors, and I scooped up my little pal and checked for damage. There were a few holes, but nothing serious. Once again, when he finally came to, I was holding him and loving on him, but he thought I had ihurt him, and he was scared of me. All the way back to Houston that afternoon, he sat on the back seat of the pickup and every time I reached for him, he cringed and cowed. Again, he forgave me after a few hours, but I still wonder, what in the world went on in that little dog’s head There were other encounters. A Malamute, a Doberman… so many I can’t remember them all. The mighty Super Dog thought he was protecting me. The miracle is that he survived every fight with no real damage. Somebody told me how lucky I was that none of those other dogs ever turned on me while I had my hands in their mouths, but you know, I never once thought about that. My little pal was in danger, and I was going to do everything I could to save him.