 
I would die. Then one day my mother went out and, with the last of her meager savings, bought a Yorkshire terrier. My father, who had recently lost his job at the factory, named her Trixie, and every day he would put the little dog on top of my iron lung so I could watch her. Somehow Trixie awakened in my frail breast a will to live, and when I finally recovered I determined that one day, God willing, I would have a dog just like her. Well, not really. But that was one of the stories I used to offer up to my bird-hunting, waterfowling, coon-hunting, rabbit-hunting, fox-hunting friends when asked how it was exactly that I had come to own a Yorkie. Another had to do with how a Yorkie had saved my platoon and me in Vietnam by sniffing out a tunnel full of Vietcong. Ah, the perils and temptations of false pride! But more on that later. The true story is that thirteen years ago, my wife, Patricia, and I took a canoe-camping trip in North Carolina with our daughter Greta and her Yorkie, for which Patricia fell hard. Two weeks later Greta sent us a female puppy from a trailer park kennel in Tennessee. Patricia named this scruff muffin Dixie Belle Berubi (the kennel owner’s last name) Ellisor (Patricia’s maiden name) Gaines. For nearly a decade and a half she has gone by Belle to her friends — and they are legion. Now, dogs and I go way back. I grew up in a house full of them, and Patricia and I have owned fifteen. But before Belle they were all males, and all but two were either upland-bird or waterfowl dogs — working dogs — dogs definitely bigger than a dust mop. Belle was something distinctly new for me; and something, I’m chagrined now to admit, I was a tiny bit ashamed of. As well as worried about. When Belle came to live with us, we were in New Hampshire, a fairly benign environment for a lapdog. But we were about to drive up to Canada, where we live for part of each year on three hundred wild acres that are home to a large and hungry population of coyotes. “She won’t last two weeks,” I told Patricia with a mixture of scorn and trepidation (the latter because Belle had already made my lap her favorite nest whenever I was reading or writing, and I had come to find her presence there…not altogether unamiable). To give her at least a chance with the coyotes, I decided to train her to come whenever I blew a whistle. I had trained ten hardheaded male dogs to do this, so, I figured, how hard could it be with this little thing? Unquestionably too hard for me. And also for my hunting pal, C.V. Child, who is known for a Teutonic hand with dogs. On his annual woodcock and grouse trip to Nova Scotia during Belle’s first autumn there, C.V. undertook to train her to come and heel, and worked at it slavishly for days with no more luck than I had had. On the command to “come,” she would do so if a treat was in the offing or it suited her whim; otherwise, she would look at C.V. and me with amused disdain, like a debutante whistled at by construction workers, toss her head, and trot off about her business. Increasingly, that business became rabbit-hunting forays into the woods and wild rose thickets of our property that would often have her missing for hours, during which Patricia and I could do nothing more than chew our nails. Once, with night falling, we drove out in the woods into which I had watched Belle disappear around noon, hollering hopelessly for her to come, and left our truck there with the doors open, the headlights on, the engine running, and Dolly Parton singing at top volume from a tape. Maybe it was the call of her hillbilly Tennessee genes, but an hour later we found her curled up in the driver’s seat snoozing to “Coat of Many Colors.” For twelve years since then, Belle has demonstrated over and over that her staying power is at least equal, and perhaps related, to her stubbornness. She has insouciantly eluded coyotes and bald eagles in Nova Scotia; survived many daylong and a couple of overnight jaunts in the Alabama woods, where shooting dogs is considered a sport; picked up in her mouth and killed a water moccasin; and outlived eight of her bird dog brothers — all while doing absolutely nothing she is instructed by human beings to do for her safety. Which raises this question: Is Belle, in fact, a “good dog,” as the heading of this column claims? Well, certainly she is always willful and often naughty. And it must be admitted that she is no Westminster beauty queen with a long, silky coat and come-hither eyes. Belle’s eyes are mostly defiant except during thunderstorms, and she is happiest when her coat is clotted with tangles and bits of briar and leaf. She is also temperamental, impatient to the point of disgust with all male dogs, and haughty to other females. And she barks peremptorily for table scraps. All these things I, and she, will readily admit to. But also these: No dog of the dozens I have slept with is better in bed. By that, let me be quick to add, I mean that she will cuddle against your stomach or back like a hairy, heated neck pillow for twelve hours straight if that is your wont (as it often is Patricia’s), adjusting perfectly to your position with a fetching, soporific little snore. And perhaps to please me, but more likely not, she has become a good if improbable sporting dog, flushing and treeing ruffed grouse in Nova Scotia and fetching the bluegills and bass I catch from the banks of the lake we live on in Alabama. Unquestionably, she has, in face-card spades, that most clearly defining and touching of canine characteristics — loyalty — as well as a deeply feminine intelligence, a big-hearted capacity for spontaneous delight, and infallible taste in people. And there is this: She grins. Do all good dogs grin? Perhaps not, but they should. Finally, did I mention that she holds her paw up to her mouth when she grins? Well, not really, but I am trying to train her to do it. Good dog or not, somehow this Yorkie over the years has become talismanic to Patricia and me; and, to our friends, emblematic of us and our life. For the past thirteen years, every visitor to our home in Nova Scotia (if it is a visitor we want back) has left a signature in a guest book alongside a photo, taken by my wife, of him or her holding not one of my glamorous setters or golden retrievers, or the photogenic English cocker Sumo, but Dixie Belle Berubi Ellisor Gaines. Back to the aforementioned false pride: On the day I finally shed it, some two years into Belle’s reign in our household, I filled my lower lip with Skoal Long Cut and drove with her in my pickup down to the lobster dock in East Tracadie, Nova Scotia. Reggie Beshong, Angus Cotie, and the other fishermen had hauled their pots for the day and were sitting around the dock having a smoke. I drove up to them, rolled down the window, propped my Yorkie in the crook of my arm so she and I were looking at them face by face, and said, “Howdy, boys. How was the fishing?” Well, not really. |
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