I was hoping to get some insight into his breeding, his genetic makeup. Officially he is a mutt. But if I had to guess, I would call him part feist and possibly part Mountain Cur. Dr. Andy Johnson agrees with my guess, having looked him over and examined his mouth he said, "Yeah, I think he's part Mountain Cur." I wonder if his makeup is a series of accidents or the result of purposeful planning, selective breeding. His kind of qualities and instincts don't just happen. Do they? Maybe God made him, a designer dog, just for me. That is often how I perceive him, a dog God opened up and poured full of energy, speed, drive, intelligence, sweetness, and hunting instincts and then placed him in the path of a string of people who would eventually funnel him to me.
My son was working for the Greenwood Leflore Public Library. They have a branch library located near the "home" of the little dog they came to know as Pee Wee, a small, reddish brown thing weighing about 25 pounds with a face that should be in movies and eyes that can melt my heart and yours. Forrest, my son, and his coworkers took note of the creature and quickly came to care for him. They looked for him every time they worked that branch. They took him food. They petted him. They talked to him. They even let him inside the library where Pee Wee was, my son assured me, "Always a perfect gentleman. I saw right away he was a one in a million dog."
Then one day my son saw a terrible sight. Despite a leash law in Greenwood, that neighborhood has a roaming population of large dogs. Forrest looked out a window and saw a big pit jump on Pee Wee. Forrest promptly went to the "owner" and asked if he could have the dog, the little one. The "owner" said yes, so Forrest and co-workers took the little thing to the vet, Andy Johnson, and got his shots and procured some de-fleaing. Andy guessed him to be about nine months old at the time which was February 2017. Then Forrest took the little fellow home.
To make a short story long, my son called me. It wasn't working out with the other dogs, could I take Pee Wee? he couldn't turn him back loose on the streets, he had to find the fellow a home. Bear, our outside dog, needed a companion, so I drove over to my son's and picked up Pee Wee whom they were attempting to rename Oliver. Immediately the little fellow started working on my heart.
On the drive home, I tested his responses to "Pee Wee" and "Oliver." He didn't turn his head when I said, "Oliver" but he responded strongly to Pee Wee so I stuck with that name. At 333 West Monroe Ave, he quickly became the king of the back yard. Not that he is mean or that he is in any sense of the term a watch dog, but he is proud of his domain and patrols it constantly. Not even a butterfly crosses that yard that he doesn't know about. A squirrel doesn't scoot down a limb without him seeing. A bird never lights nearby without his knowledge. He is that attentive.
Bear had been making trips with me to the catfish pond where I train for my charity swim. He knew the drill, to run behind the truck and hang out or follow me when I swam. The first time I took Pee Wee to the pond, I was instantly amazed. From the first I saw that he loved to run. Bear likes to run. Pee Wee loves to run. He is fast, 25 mph is no problem for him. Despite his diminutive size, his stride is strong, smooth, and stunning to watch. Sometimes I cry just seeing his joy as he runs like the wind only for the pure fun of it. His mouth seems to smile while he races along, eating up the ground, barking at the birds that rise from the fish ponds. It also makes me emotional to think of my dad and how he would have loved to see this fellow run and work a field like his bird dogs used to.
At the pond, he followed me dutifully while I swam and made every lap. Bear makes one lap and lounges for the rest of the time. Pee Wee, on the other hand, makes all the laps, but he doesn't just follow, he hunts along the way. He sniffs, chases birds, runs off to check out an adjoining ditch, comes back, gets a drink, rolls in dead stuff. In short, he has the time of his life.
That first day at the pond, we took a walk after I swam. That is when I knew he had something special besides energy, speed, and intelligence. Instead of walking along with me on the pond levee like Bear, he stayed in the ditches in the thickest stuff he could find. It didn't take a socket rientist to see he had hunting instincts. You can't teach a dog to hunt. You can work with them, encourage them, give them opportunities for it to come out, but they have to have those instincts inside them. He has them. He's a one in a million dog.
As soon as squirrel season opened, I took him and Bear to Carroll County where we walked around. Pee Wee rared up on a tree, though he did not bark. He also trailed something trying hark to unravel the scent puzzle something had laid down. He ran and sniffed and hunted. He had the stuff but he was raw. He knew he was a hunter but he really did not know how or what he was hunting, but he was hunting.
As of this writing, I have had him out only a few more times. I quickly learned that he had another instinct that can't be taught. He hunts in circles and always comes up behind me after making a large loop. He has treed a couple of times, but he leaves the tree. He doesn't know he is supposed to stay there. We have fun when we go out. I don't know if I can make a squirrel dog of him or not, but we will go out and chase stuff, the wind even, as long as I have him. It's his nature to hunt, and I am determined to take him as far as I can. If he never gets properly trained, we will still go out, still hit the bush and woods and have fun.
Daddy did that. In his final years of hunting, he and his dog dutifully hit the bush in search of "birds" as quail are called around here. When he was younger and the bird population higher and his dogs were well trained, he averaged killing around 250 birds per year. Slowly that number went down and down and down until his yearly totals became two or three. The last year he hunted, he didn't kill a one, but he and his dog went hunting anyway. I'll do the same with Pee Wee. We will go to the woods and tromp and stomp around. We will have fun. We will hunt. He deserves it. He's a one in a million dog.
A note to the reader: I have written about Pee Wee before and I probably will again. But I penned this piece as part of a competition I am having with each of my current Comp I students. I have five sections of the first semester of freshman English. We are writing about the best dog we ever knew and the best essay in each class will be rewarded with a good grade and a Snickers Bar. I plan on gaining weight next week.
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