Рита Браун: Animal Magnetism

Not until I was in my late teens did I realize I understood dog communication, thanks to Chaps, and thanks to PopPop and G-uncle (G for Great) Bob. Canines, cats, and horses have many more ways to communicate than we do. Ears swivel, pupils dilate or contract, hackles rise or fall, tails wag or stand straight out, and the range of sounds they absorb and react to is wide. Their acute hearing picks up a tiny gurgle from a mouse as well as the snort of a stag a quarter of a mile away. Fortunately for me, hearing is my strongest sense, nudging into the cat and canine range but still well beneath their powers. When I was five I heard things. Mother thought I was expressing imagination. Finally, she took me to a doctor for tests. She realized then that I wasn’t making things up.

Chaps, born into the long-standing contract between humans and dogs, played his part. I learned to play mine. He’d run ahead, stop, look at me, and say, “It’s safe up to this point.” Most people don’t realize what their dogs are telling them when they run ahead and stop. Now, this isn’t true with a pack of foxhounds, although it can be true with a foxhound kept as a pet. Their job is to put those noses down and pick up scent. But pets, the dogs that live with people, continually warn, protect, look out for their owners. So often the owners don’t get it.

The human part of the contract is this: you share food, nurse them when they’re sick, give them a warm, clean place to sleep, and a quiet passage out of life when they become too feeble or face pain.

As I was learning all of this I was loving every minute of it. I found I could communicate with animals better than with people. Actually, I didn’t communicate with people, at least not grownups, for I am of that generation that was sternly instructed, “Don’t speak unless spoken to.” Most of my childhood was spent silently observing, good practice for a writer. Good manners taught me silence and the animals taught me to observe without judgment. If an adult noticed me and began a conversation—usually with “How’s school?” or “How’s Chaps?”—then I could reply. However, I was not to ask questions. That would be rude. I could question the family (within reason) but no one outside of the family.

Chaps could smell emotional states. We give off scent but our olfactory organ is poor, so we can detect stinky sweat, the sweat of fear, or the opposite, cleanliness, or fragrant flowers, but not much more. Consider that a foxhound has about one hundred million scent receptors. You and I bump along with ten million. We can’t imagine the texture, the medley of odors that an ordinary canine can process, understand, act upon. They even have the ability to process how long ago scent was laid. It’s a dazzling gift the gods have given them.

They have another great gift: the ability to love. Chaps loved me, even when I was distant and just walking down a dirt road, oblivious to his overtures. He loved me when I was mean, which wasn’t often. He didn’t require that I be beautiful (good thing), smart, witty, or a fascinating conversationalist. He loved me and I loved him.

I taught Chaps to retrieve using duck wings. PopPop brought me a duck wing that one of his duck hunting buddies gave him, since he knew I wanted one. He tied it to a fishing line and gave me his old fly rod. I’d cast the wing, then reel it in. Soon, for he was a smart fellow, Chaps would run after the wing if I cast it. I had to put a little sinker on it because the wing was so light it just fluttered. With the sinker I could send it out there. When Chaps dropped the wing at my feet or let me take it from his mouth, I’d give him a little treat. Mother cooked up meat treats, then dried them. Now these things are available commercially.

This is not to say I can train gun dogs, but I could probably learn. Chaps showed me the basics. Dad said I could sell him for seventy-five dollars, which was a lot of money. PopPop Harmon praised me. I’m not sure I did all that much, since retrieving was bred into Chaps, but I lapped up the praise. I didn’t want the money. I cried. I begged Dad to let me keep Chaps. He did. Mother said I’d never learn the value of a penny if I didn’t earn some—this coming from a woman whose money burned a hole in her pocket. But she loved Chaps, too, so Mickey, Chaps, and later Tuffy, another tiger cat, and I lived together until Chaps, at the age of five, developed a liver condition.

He was so young. I knew enough to understand it would be cruel to keep him going when he’d only go downhill. Once again we visited the vet by the Mason-Dixon Line, only this time Dad drove us. I accompanied my friend. He kissed me. Surely he knew this was an act of grace. I cried. I couldn’t help it, and God bless him, the vet cried, too. Chaps left earth peacefully and without pain. The force of grief as well as gratitude was beginning to be part of my emotional development.

I know I do not have as big a heart as Chaps or most any dog. Humans don’t. We are cursed with ego, selfishness, and ignorance, overlaid with arrogance. We try. At least some of us do. If I could love to the level of Chaps, I reckon I’d be a saint.

Chaps, while he taught me how to communicate with dogs, taught me most about love. I can’t live without the love of dogs. I don’t know how anyone can.

Aunt Mimi’s Butch. Photo by Julia Buckingham Brown .

Animals Can Save Your Life

T hanks to a scrappy fox terrier named King Edward, I learned at the age of six that animals can save your life. They can also help you to stick up for yourself.

King Edward, Ed for short, was owned by Mother’s good friend Diddy Pocahontas (I will refrain from using her real last name should some distant relative be one step ahead of a running fit). Diddy swore she owed her life to King Edward because before she found the lump he’d kept poking at her bosom. Once she realized something wasn’t right, she marched into the doctor’s, thereby losing her bosom but keeping her life. She never doubted King Edward after that.

Diddy did not get her missing bosom rebuilt. This was in the early fifties and plastic surgery was in its infant stages. She used the empty cup of her bra for a purse. In the warm months she’d wear low-cut bodices, reach in and fish out her money. No one said anything except her mother, Mary, who continually urged her to wear a falsie.

Diddy’s response was, “You can always tell how much money I have by looking at my bosom.”

Mary’s response goes unrecorded. It wasn’t charitable.

Mary, getting grand in her sixties, told anyone who would listen that she was a descendant of the original Pocahontas, whose bones lay safely in the Episcopal churchyard which she visited frequently. She visited it frequently because only the dead would have her. She was a holy terror who couldn’t help bullying her own daughter and anyone else who got in her way. King Edward couldn’t stand her. And if your four-footed friend doesn’t like someone, pay attention. They aren’t worth liking.

Now, Mother was the hub of social and political activity in two counties, Carroll County, Maryland, and York County, Pennsylvania. One of her sayings was “Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.” She shepherded many friends and not a few enemies. Everyone had dogs, cats, horses, birds, and most of the local farmers ran cattle. Mother prided herself on knowing everyone, and that included pets and work animals. One June, she organized a picnic. People outnumbered June bugs. She had guests that were newborn and two in their nineties. Julia Brown threw a great party. She was never short on guests.

Everyone brought their dogs. Butch, my aunt’s Boston Terrier, was there, and Tiny, Lila Meeney’s dachshund, along with Diddy’s King Edward and Chaps, my Chesapeake Bay Retriever. He was four then. So many dogs. I loved it. As the decibel level increased, the dogs retreated, for the noise troubled them.