Just a Dog.

Go here for parts one, two, and three.

A whole gallon of water.

My dad would go out to the wood sale almost every day, his health permitting. Besides a broken back, he suffered health problems from a diet of meat and potatoes and a lifelong smoking habit. During the week, he’d cut enough wood to fill up the back of his truck plus a little more. On the weekend, I would go out with and load the truck while he cut. On one of his weekday trips in late winter, he found One Gallon, or more accurately, that One Gallon found him. The dog wandered into where my father was cutting, and he had just settled down to have some lunch and sharpen the teeth on his chainsaw. The dog was skinny, malnourished collie, and had not seen a person in ages, which was even more apparent, considering that there were no sheep in the area and hadn’t been for months.

Dad went to the truck and pulled out the gallon of water he always took with him. He’d only drank a small amount that day and poured it into an old pan he had in the pickup. The dog drank the water to the bottom, so he filled it again. The dog drank it. He filled it again, and again, till the jug was empty. The dog drank it all. He shared a bit of his sandwich with the dog and went back to work. By the end of the day, the dog stuck around, and Dad loaded him up in the truck and brought him back to the house. My dad named him One Gallon.

Guardian Angel

One Gallon was a sweet, gentle dog. He never barred his teeth or growled at the grandkids. He loved pets and belly rubs. He was also insanely loyal to my dad. During this period, dad’s health declined. I hesitate to give a year, but I believe it was 1990 or 1991. One gallon would stay at my dad’s bedside whenever he was sick, and the winter after my dad found him, Dad grew ill. His crippled back and chronic smoking made any cold or flu a cruel punishment, and for nearly two weeks, my father could barely get out of bed. One Gallon stayed at his bedside the entire time. He would only leave to use the bathroom and get a drink and a bite of food. My mother called him my Dad’s guardian angel.

Once Dad was back to health a month later, he resumed his activities with One Gallon in tow. He’d take the dog with him to cut wood, irrigate the fields, and ride on the tractor with him when he cut hay. He had sold the cattle off years before, sadly, so the dog didn’t have any work he was born for to do, but you could see the cattle dog instinct in him as he chased through the fields or ran in the pasture behind the house.

Boy, he did love to run. We live in a very rural area, and though it’s more populated than it was when One Gallon was with us (and we no longer own the property), there is still a lot of wide-open space for dogs to run and explore, which is both wonderful and a downfall. One Gallon loved to explore and run, and when he wasn’t with my dad, he’d go on brief adventures in the pastures and fields around near the house. That would be his downfall.

He vanished.

I never witnessed one of my dogs being hit by a car, thank goodness, but being rural, dogs can go missing. One Gallon was the first. One day he just disappeared. My father searched for him to no avail. It devastated my mother and me. After a week or two of looking, we gave up. My father hoped that he had found somebody else to be their guardian angel. It was nearly a year later when my Dad cleared out some overgrowth in the canal about half a mile behind the house he found him. He’d gone down into the canal to sniff something and became entangled by the roots and vegetation and couldn’t escape the water when the headgate opened. The dog drowned in a canal just over a thousand feet from where my father would have been. I remember when Dad told me about finding him when a dog I had gone missing. There was a sadness in his voice. He loved that dog.

One Gallon was a rarity. He turned up like a miracle. He stayed and watched over my father and our family like a guardian angel for a year and a half. He was the first dog that made me realize just how amazing dogs could be.

Click here for parts one, two, and three.