UNSTOPPABLE PRIDE
GERARD EMERY
©
In Petswood kennels the days of summer where filled with a lot of hard work, But also many rewards. One if these rewards was the serenity of country living. Long lazy days where not a norm but when the days work was done, it was a time to spend with my favorite dogs.
One of them was Pride a beagle of outstanding abilities. Pride had been raised along with Lady a blond cocker spaniel, and Boots a shiny black colored cocker spaniel. These three had grown up together in Mrs Desloges home before the kennels where built, they were great friends and played together, ate together and slept together.All this was fine until one day Lady became of age and went into her first heat. Pride figured it was his right to have her, and so did Boots.
She was too young and Mrs Desloges had to separate the two boys from Lady. This caused a bit of discontent between the fellas that would eventually escalate. After Lady's first heat was over the three where reunited, but there was growing hate between Pride and Boots.
There were daily arguments over food, or who would get the ball, and other things that dogs fight over. Pride had taken to disappearing for a few hours at a time, but Mrs Desloges didn't worry too much, because she could hear him off in the woods every once in a while. She could tell he was hunting by his "aarrrouw aarrouw!" sounds off in the distance. Pride was a natural born hunter, nobody had shown him he just had it in him. According to Mrs Desloges on one of these outings Pride had come back with a chipmunk in his jaws, and deposited it at Lady's feet. A prize for her. Boots had tried to take hold of the prize and a terrible fight broke out between Pride and Boots.Joan [Mrs Desloges] had a hard time separating them, and made the decision to keep them apart for good. She had somebody build outside pens.
Putting Pride in one, Lady and Boots in the other, Boots sometime strutting his stuff in defiance at Pride. As if to say she is with me and not you looser.
Often Pride would jump the fence around his pen and would try to get at boots. Joan had to keep making the fence on Pride's run higher and higher. to prevent him from jumping over it. Pride was a natural fence jumper, how this had come about nobody knew. The fence was now a full seven feet high, and seemed to be containing Pride for the moment. Within a week he had learned a new trick. he would run at the fence jump as high as he could, hook his claws into the chain links and climb like a seasoned mountain climber the rest of the way. This was observed by Joan after watching Pride for several days, when he had still gotten out over a seven foot fence.
The solution was to cover over the pen entirely with wire, this made Pride very unhappy and he yelped and barked, and carried on for days then finally accepted his faith.
This had all happened before I came along. I was hired as a kennel hand in 1962. Now Joan had a kennel built in a bungalow style building, and had large chain link fences for outside runs. These being ten feet long by six feet wide, and cement floors. All except one was a special for Pride the beagle.
The first four feet having wire across the top to stop him from climbing the front of the run and running off to the woods. How smart were we as human beings, the problem was solved or so we thought. Pride being a super dog, just climbed into the next pen and took off at will. [Stupid humans].
So we as smart humans bought more wire and covered the next four pens on either side of Pride's. This seemed to work because for a full month he never got out. Then one day after letting ever one out in the morning for they're first run to do they're business, I heard the familiar " aarrouw aarrouw! " of in the woods. Good God we need more wire said Joan, and off to the hardware store she went.
© GERARD EMERY
. Updated: 28.02.2009 with the agreement of author.
