I am so sad. I lost my best friend last week. Buddy was a big black dog who was 10 years old, weighed 140 lbs, and had a curl in his tail. One day my sister came by with a friend and her friend’s granddaughter. When the little girl saw Buddy, she asked, "Grandma, how did they curl that dog’s tail?"
Buddy never had a leash or a collar, nor was he ever penned up. When he was a pup, he rode to town with me to my office one night. I left the door of the office open. He normally came on in, but this time when I came out Buddy was gone. I drove all over town calling him until about 1:00 a.m. The next morning I went by the city worker’s garage and told them if they found my dog, I would give the finder a hundred dollar bill. About an hour later, here came one of the city employees with my dog to the coffee shop. He made the mistake of going to City Hall bragging about finding Hackley’s dog. The City Manager overheard him and made him give me the money back.
Buddy was the perfect companion, friendly, loyal, and always took a walk with me. One day on our walk he discovered a litter of pups someone had thrown over Horseshoe Creek Bridge and he wouldn’t leave until they were finally rescued by the Oak Grove Police Department.
Buddy loved deer meat and would drag a carcass someone had shot and left lay up to the house for me to butcher, cut up and freeze. I carried a saw in my truck and when I would see a deer along side of a road, I would stop and saw off the hind quarters for Buddy. I was at a Rotary Luncheon in Paris. The speaker was the local conservation agent. I asked him a supposedly hypothetical question if it would be legal to cut meat off a carcass found on the road for my dog. He assured me it was illegal, and if anyone was caught doing so they would be issued a summons. I quietly left the meeting and drove my truck out of sight behind the restaurant. Just that morning, I had found a deer south of Paris on Highway 15 and had the hind quarters in the back of my pick-up to take home to Buddy.
Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers@aol.com
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