After we had to give Whitey away, and after the winter weather turned cold, we learned that our new landlord misrepresented the heating costs for the house. We ended up paying almost all of our money all winter to keep the house mostly warm. I was steamed. When spring came, I wanted to move. The landlord asked us to stay, and in order to keep us there, he offered to insulate the attic, and to replace the furnace in the summer.I pretty much felt that he owed us big time for our trouble. We were taking the kids to a woman who lived out in the Evergreen area of Kalispell for daycare. She always had a lot of dogs hanging around her house, for some reason. I noticed a young dog hanging around who had a kind of unique look to him. He was mostly a sort of liver color and white, but had a black ring around his tail. He was clearly part lab, but I didn't know what else. Later I learned that his mother was Brittany.
I called him over to me, and he came halfway across the yard, then laid down to rest for a minute before coming the rest of the way over to me. I thought, "What a great, laid back dog." He had a wound on his paw that might have been a bite puncture, but looked to the babysitter's husband and me like a .22 bullet wound. There was plenty of evidence in the way he interacted with men that he'd been beaten. He was very thin and bony.
I went home and told my wife, who said, "No way. No dog." I bought a big bag of dog food and took it to the babysitter's who agreed to feed him every day. He was running loose, but spent most of his time at the babysitters. I told my wife I wanted to bring him home, but she of course mentioned the landlord's prohibition of pets. My attitude was, "Screw him." He lied to us about the heating bills, and as far as I was concerned, he didn't have anything to complain about.
Finally, after a couple of weeks of lobbying her, my wife went to work one morning and left me a note. "Go get your damned dog." I went and got him, and named him Rufus.
Rufus became a real member of the family. He almost always slept in Molly's room. He was very close and affectionate with Andy and played with him energetically. He loved Syd, my wife, and you could see that devotion in his eyes when he looked at her. But he was mostly my buddy. For a long time, I took him everywhere with me. I was teaching guitar lessons at a local music store, and he'd go with me and wait patiently through all the lessons. I went to the community college for a while and took him to class with me. Later, when I went on the road with a band, I was gone a lot and couldn't spend as much time with him, but we were very closely bonded.
Rufus was really smart. He had an old wiffle ball that he loved to play with. He'd take it in his mouth and throw it across a room, then chase it and catch it and do it again. Once when he was doing this, and I was sitting on the couch reading, he lost the ball under the couch. He came to me and cried, so I got up and took a stick or tree branch or some such thing that Andy had brought in, and batted it out from under the couch. Rufus continued his game, but soon lost the ball under the couch again. Back he came to me, and I retrieved it again. Finally, the third or fourth time this happened, I said, "Nope, that's it. I'm not getting it again." Rufus walked back and forth a few times, then reached down, picked up the stick, pushed it under the couch, and tried to get the ball himself! That's the only time I've ever seen a dog try to use a tool.
In our ignorance, and because we did not have a fenced yard, Rufus spent a lot of days on a chain attached to the garage out back. Kids from the high school would come by and let him loose, so we eventually had to put padlocks on both the collar end and the garage end of the chain. Sometimes when he'd get loose, if his chain came off at the collar, he'd be scared to death, and cower in the yard until someone came home. But if it came off at the garage, he'd run happily all over town dragging that chain behind him. I guess his chain gave him some sense of security.
At one point, a long haired white split eye cat decided he was going to live with us. We really didn't have anything to say about it. We named him Jack, and he hung around for a couple of years or so before he decided to go live somewhere else. Rufus adored him. Jack liked to rub against oil pans, and get filthy dirty. Rufus would sit out in the backyard with Jack and groom him for hours, cleaning off the oil and dirt. On cold days, Rufus would curl up and Jack would lay on top of him to keep warm.
Once again, though we were very ignorant about caring for dogs. We didn't have a vet, and we didn't act all that responsibly. I read about a free clinic where people could get shots for free for their pets, so I took Rufus, as he hadn't had his boosters for years. When he got the shots, the vet gave him a cursory exam, and pointed out a tumor that had grown at the base of Rufus's tail. We didn't have money to get it checked, so just hoped he'd be OK.
One night, not too long after that, Andy brought Rufus in for dinner, and said, "There's something wrong with Rufus." He was stumbling around and seemed afraid to move. It didn't take long to realize he'd gone blind sometime during the day. We made him as comfortable as possible for the night.
The next day, I took him to the first vet I could find who'd see him right away. They examined him and told me that he had cancer through and through. Cancer in his spleen caused pressure that caused the tiniest blood vessels in his body to burst, including those in his eyes. His eyes filled up with blood and blinded him. He was anemic, and could never survive surgery, even if it was an option and we could afford it. Having no other choice, I told them to put him down.
It was the first time I ever had to do that. I wasn't sure I'd survive it. I made it out to my car, and drove out on the highway, but I hadn't driven but a few feet on the highway when I had to pull over and just sob. I broke down numerous times over the next few days, and as I'm typing this, I'm having to wipe my eyes.
I loved Rufus with all my heart, and felt guilty for not having taken better care of him. He was a wonderful dog, and when he was gone, I had no desire to get another dog. My wife said that since both kids would soon be grown, she'd like to have a kid-free, dog-free house in her future. I didn't argue, just continued to grieve. Six years went by.
TO BE CONTINUED . . . Next: George
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