Go Dog, Go!  (Part II)

Last week we discussed a fraction of the numerous ways in which thoughts of man’s best friend – the dog – have embedded themselves into our everyday language.  Today’s column relays two of the best canine stories your compiler has ever heard.

The first came from the late Lewis Grizzard (1946-1994), the Muse of Moreland.  He told that his Uncle Grover raised bird dogs and ran a vegetable stand in Moreland.  One day a Yankee came through on his way home from Florida, and stopped to stretch. 

As things turned out, he had some time to spare, and Uncle Grover offered to take him duck hunting on a nearby pond.  Uncle Grover’s dog, retrieving the downed birds and bringing them back to the men ever so gently, mightily impressed the Yankee, and he said, “I must get a good duck-hunting dog like this; my friends in Jersey will be amazed.”

Uncle Grover told him he didn’t have a bitch with puppies at the moment, but that his friend, Dorsey, just down the road did.  “But listen,” Uncle Grover told the Yankee,  “if you want a good duck-hunting dog, you have to pull up his tail and check his hiney-hole. If it’s tightly puckered, that’ll make a good duck dog.  But if it’s wide open, that dog will run in the water, fill up through his open hiney-hole, sink, and drown.”   

So the Yankee sets off to see Dorsey, who shows him a beautiful male pup who is bounding around the Yankee with excitement. The Yankee pulls up the tail for inspection.  “Sorry,” he says, “but I can’t take this dog.  He has a big, wide hiney-hole, and will fill up and drown if I train him to go into the water.”

Dorsey said, “Just a minute,” and reached under the puppy, squeezed his most private and sensitive body parts, and gave about a half turn.   The dog’s little hiney-hole puckered up so tightly not a drop of water could enter.  “There you go,” said Dorsey to the Yankee.   “I had him set for quail.”

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The next story is true, and was told by the late Dr. Ferrol Sams (1922-2013) of Fayetteville – the Bard of Beauregard Boulevard.  It was about a man named Mutt (apparently for a dog) who lived in Fayetteville in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

Mutt was an eccentric – the only Republican in Fayette County – and had no friends besides his wife and dog, the latter of which was a little male terrier.  When the dog died, Mutt had it embalmed and stored it in an airtight container in his shed, instructing his wife that the dog was to be buried with Mutt when his own day came.

Mutt’s day arrived in the summer of 1958, and his wife chose to have his funeral service at Fayetteville Methodist Church – not because she or Mutt had ever darkened its doors, but because it was hot as blue blazes and the congregation had just installed central air conditioning.  She also ordered a closed casket.

The Methodist preacher, new to town, got wind of the rumor that the dog was to be buried with Mutt, and did his best to find out whether it was true or not.  The funeral director and the wife would neither one say.  The preacher sought out his lay leader, a wise old man in the church, and cried, “I can’t preach my first funeral in town over a dog – I’ll be laughed out of here!”

The lay leader replied calmly, “If you can settle down, you’ll see that you have within your grasp the opportunity to make ecclesiastical history.”

“What do you mean?” asked the preacher.

“I mean that for likely the first time in human history, you can stand in your pulpit, and in perfectly proper English, without being accused of cursing, say, “Brothers and sisters of the household of faith, today I want to talk to you about the little son-of-a bitch in this casket.”Dog-gone!  Your compiler would have given dearly to have been at that funeral!