Just before my senior year I high school, my parents moved to Southern California, into the LA basin area. During the settling in period, they rented a cottage in Lawndale, and when they felt more economically secure they bought a small home in northern Torrance, not far from the refinery. That was the beginning of my seven year drought, a time period when I did not have a dog in my life. I was busy with school and sports and dating. Girls are more interesting, even than dogs, and life is more interesting still when you gently pet them. During this period, too, I began a long interest in Scouting, joining an Explorer Post group in my senior year. Explorers were for older guys and had many activities where we could involve our dates. Our group had two main “outdoor” interests: camping and small boat sailing. I remember helping with the construction of the second “sabot”. My task was shaving (tapering) and sanding the mast, and later giving the vessel its final coats of varnish. After the boats were finished, we all had to take formal lessons in handling them, and pass the required tests, before we could go sailing alone. Most of these lessons were conducted in the LA Harbor, just behind the breakwater at an old military post. We camped on the beach, ate our own cooking, including grunion we caught at night, and tried to drown ourselves by the numbers during the day while learning the finer points of sailing. I have distinctive memories that can still awaken me late at night of a close encounter with a US Navy destroyer, and being later swamped again near the opening of the breakwater by a sudden gale. The boat “sank” in both incidents, but I was able to scramble to a dock in the first incident, and later to the breakwater with painter in hand. A sabot is a small boat, designed for one person operation and salvage. Each time I was able to empty the boat of water and return to “base” with only a story to tell. Connected with boating was swimming. I did not learn to swim until after I had graduated high school, and was attending our local community college. Swimming was a necessity for solo boating when the Post traveled to lakes near LA like Arrowhead and Big Bear, or when camping at lakes in the Sierra. Explorer Scouting was and I hope still is a great program for learning a great many new skills. I was afforded many opportunities for experiences that made my life richer. Adding to that richness was college life. I loved community college. It was a great place with immense breadth of learning activities. Those experiences broadened further with a year at UCLA and two more in Silver City, New Mexico. I completed my BA in 1964. I had not had a dog since 1957. When I started to work, I found that the long evenings could be dull and lonely with only work, reading, and the radio for company. I decided I needed a dog. I first did some research on dog breeds and decided that I would start with a Labrador Retriever. I contacted the local vet and asked for information about local breeders. One call convinced me that purebreds were out of my financial league. He wanted $350 for one male pup, with a $100 deposit now. The pups would not even be bred for another eight months, with weaning to follow beyond that. I went to the Humane Society and found a lab cross female for $5 and $35 for the vet to spay her. I didn’t name her at first as I wanted to get to know more about her personality. Only a few days later “Joy” seemed appropriate. This was my serious period, so a counter point of joy seemed necessary, and she certainly fit he bill. Joy was a happy pup and a quick learner. I was determined to properly train her, so she would be a good companion. I studied the books on dog training and worked hard at creating a “good” dog. Joy just enjoyed everything. After a passage of time, I do not remember exactly, but just when she was really making excellent progress. When she was well on her way to becoming a well mannered animal, being well schooled, she somehow got loose during the day. She ran into the path of a school maintenance vehicle and was killed. That was depressing. The situation remained unresolved. I went back to the pound and the vet, and came home with Joy Two. Unfortunately, it was a repeat of the story with Joy. Just as Joy Two was reaching close to being properly schooled, she also somehow got off her lead and ran onto the highway and was killed. This time, I thought a bit longer, and decided that I did not need a strike three. Next time, I should choose an older and wiser, car-smart animal. Back to the pound. I chose a mature female lab cross that had been feral. She had been rescued from the desert around Indio, California. She was hugely pregnant, and I didn’t have the facilities to deal with pups. At the vets, she was spayed, wormed, and given her shots. I brought her home after a couple of days and fed her the first meal. I named her Sadie, after Sadie Hawkins, from the cartoon strip. Sadie was already car wise. She avoided them. She liked riding in them. Sadie also like to eat regularly, and regular meals convinced her that she liked being around me. She was smart, gentle, loved to play ball, and rapidly became a good companion. Her linguistic skills were rather limited, but she knew when I needed to pet her head and scratch her ears. At that time, and it is perhaps still the same, agricultural development of the western Coachella valley was concentrated along the highway south. This left a wide strip of unfarmed desert lands in their original condition stretching up into the outwash valleys and arroyos of the San Jacinto mountains. There was and is a lot of wildlife in those mountains: deer, big horn sheep, bear, and especially coyotes. Coyotes were a big problem for pet owners. Pets and small livestock disappeared with alarming regularity. The coyotes were hungry and thought that meals of domesticated sheep, goats, rabbits, chickens, house cats, and family dogs to be quite tasty and certainly easy pickings. Sadie, despite her own desert experiences before her capture by the humane officer, did not know about coyotes. My neighbor’s dog, Jezebel, a medium sized Doberman, did. I watched Jezebel’s lesson the day she taught my dog, Sadie, about coyote pack hunting tactics. Coyote pack meal gathering tactics called for a lure, a bait. A small female coyote, in heat if possible, would approach a home with a pet dog. The territorial dog, or a scent enticed dog, would venture forth, probably at high speed, rushing toward the lure. Seconds before the target could be reached, the rest of the pack would spring from their ambush positions, and the invitation to dinner would be extended to an unwilling recipient. It would be over quickly. Many, many families lost pets in this way. I just happened to be there the day that Sadie was baited out. Jezebel was there too. She saw, and recognized what was happening. She ran in from behind, passed Sadie, turned and knocked Sadie off her feet with a full body block. She then stood between the coyote and Sadie and would not allow my dog to go closer. Jezebel had an impressive set of teeth and a growl that could get your attention. After a few minutes, the pack saw that their chance for an easy meal was lost, and suddenly from under the scattered tumble weeds of that area, the pack of six additional wild hunters appeared. The coyotes trotted off toward the mountains looking for another, easier meal. Jezebel sat and watched them go. When Jezebel sat, Sadie sat. She, too, watched the departing coyotes. The lesson must have been learned. Sadie lived in that location for several years and did not again succumb to coyote bait. One set of experiences that Sadie had learned from being abandoned in the desert was the ability to hunt for her food. She successfully hunted the small desert lizards that constantly scurry about. Her method was to move about to flush out a lizard, and watch to see where the lizard went into hiding. This was quite commonly under, and in the shade of, a desert bush. In our area these were most commonly weeds and especially tumbleweeds. No thorns. There were also woody bushes of several types. Once a particular bush was thus identified as the location of a reasonable mouthful, Sadie would move closer to optimum distance. There she stopped, crouched low to try to look into the shadow, then leaped high in an arc to come pouncing down, crashing through to capture under her claws and pads a wiggling, scale covered, uncooked morsel. Commonly she used two feet, but sometimes she used all four to maximize the spread of her capture zone. Success came frequently enough that Sadie kept doing this “hunting” even though she was getting regular meals from me. I always felt that she was keeping her hand in, retaining a valuable skill, or she was just having “fun”. That, or she had simply acquired a taste for “lizard a tartar” One time, at least, she found more waiting in the bush than a leggy morsel of raw lizard. One of our small desert sidewinders must have been surprised and irritated by Sadie’s sudden noisy appearance in the middle of “his” bush. Her crash landing in his shady retreat got her snakebit. The strike was to her chest right between her front legs. Of course, she didn’t say anything to me. It might have even been embarrassing. I noticed that she wasn’t her usual perky self, and was not interested in food. Those two things together are always a sure clue about a dog that something is wrong. I found the swelling and the puncture wounds where she had been licking herself. I called the vet and was told to bring her in. Examination, injections, and pills came first, followed some good advice. “Let her alone. No matter how bad it looks, let her alone. She can reach the site, and she will keep it clean. Feed her the pills, and let her alone.” What I couldn’t do was watch her and meet the required schedule for her medications. I called my mother in LA. She agreed that Sadie could convalesce there. At one point the necrotic flesh had been licked away and an opening appeared into the lung cavity. Under her own attentive medical care and some help from pills from the vet, Sadie healed up just fine. When she came home, however, I noticed that her interest in raw lizard was considerably reduced. Sadie was a big dog of about 60 pounds. When I took her on camping trips with my Scout Troop, providing her with meals, and especially water, was heavy work on long hikes. I decided that she needed to carry her own load. I designed and created her very own carrying vest. I laced her into to it, and in its pouches, Sadie carried individually wrapped, semi-dry dog food burgers, and two quarts of water in flexible pouches. It worked great for a lot of trips. Sadie was an accomplished hiker and desert dweller. In my experiences with her, she had exactly two encounters with Cholla cactus. This plant is called the “jumping cactus”. It does not jump, but the slightest touch will do two things: one - a touch will break off one or more “pods”; and two - the pod, or pods, will be sticking to you by way of the enveloping cloud of long, sharp, hooked needle-shaped thorns. The thorns (needles) come in two general lengths: long, and short. If you are lucky only the long thorns will get close enough to your flesh to penetrate. This will hurt as the needles are pulled out with long-nosed pliers, and the punctures easily become infected, and they itch, as well. [I know very well, and very personally.] If you are unlucky, and most people are unlucky with their first experiences with Cholla, you will get close enough to a pod, or pods, to also gather a generous supply of unwanted, short, fine, needle sharp and shaped thorns in your flesh between the other long thorns. Generous supply means hundreds of the little guys. [I know very well, and very personally.] The long needles are removed with needle-nosed pliers. The short ones are removed with tweezers, and hopefully a magnifying glass. Bleeding is not too bad. Use lots of alcohol. Sadie’s first experience with Cholla was very limited. She came walking up to me with a pod stuck to her upper leg. She somehow knew not to bite at the pod. She was patient, and waited without struggling while I removed the pod, and pulled out a minor forest of the longer variety of thorns. I think she had seen me perform this operation with the boys. I carried the required pliers on all trips. She didn’t like the alcohol bath on the area. The second time, Sadie came to me with a pod of Cholla stuck to the end of her nose with a single needle. She hadn’t tried to remove it with a paw, as she might be expected to do. She just came to me with a second gray-green nose for help, and sat and waited. At about this time, I met my future bride, and shortly thereafter, Marilyn and I were married. A few years later we moved to Washington state. Eventually, we moved to a country place, our very own little hole in the big woods. Sadie loved the big woods. She loved chasing everything that moved. From squirrels and other rodents to low flying birds. She even had a limited experience with a porcupine. I believe that as far as she was concerned, a porcupine was just a large walking Cholla cactus. She came home only one time with irrefutable evidence that she had had a conversation with a porcupine. She came home with one, exactly one, porcupine quill stuck in the end of her nose. She came straight to me to have it removed. She never bothered another porcupine while we lived there, and died quietly one night in her sleep, suddenly, of old age. I buried her under the rhododendron bush where she liked to rest out of the heat of the day.
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
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