I just saw

the movie "My Dog Skip," and without giving

away the plot that just might happen to include tire

tread marks and/or a little furry terrier (Just

kidding... no, really) it was a really great movie.

It reminded me of our old

dog whose name I cannot put in print because even though

at the time it was cute and naive, now it would be

considered dirty and politically incorrect.

Though my dog story is

nothing like that of "My Dog Skip," (no,

really) it had a great relationship between a stern

father and an often misunderstood son. I can relate to

that. In the movie there is a scene where the father, who

has lost a leg in the Spanish Civil War, and son are

walking through the woods and they hear a gun shot. The

father says, "Hunters!," and tells his son to

take a knee and get low. Hearing barely their breathing

the son asks, "Is this what war was like?"

The expression alone of

Kevin Bacon, playing the father, should earn him an

academy award nomination next year. In his face you could

see the terror he himself endured in war, and his equal

desire to protect his son from even the knowledge of such

terror. In that moment, I wondered why I never asked my

father about his war experiences.

I felt sad that I had never

asked before he died a few years ago what it was like to

be in Germany, on the ground during World War II. In some

ways I felt glad that in not asking I spared him the

terror of remembering being so far away from home and

family, being so scared of dying and mostly not being

able to share those feelings with anyone around you. That

had to be the true bravery.

Anyway, concerning my dog

story which should be called "Fatal Traction,"

my dad one day when I was about 12 got into the family

car, our "Rambler American," slapped it into

reverse and proceeded to back over the family pet, the

aforementioned, but not-named pooch. The dog started

yelping as it lay on the ground paralyzed.

My dad, hating to see an

animal suffer, took the situation in hand... literally.

He (a carpenter by trade after the war) reached into the

trunk of the car and pulled out a ballpeen hammer. He

swung all four pounds of it and put our dog out of her

misery.

None of us kids were awake

yet and my father was late for work. So, he laid the pet

across the road in the ditch. His plan was to tell us

when he got home from work. Only, sometime during the

day, while everyone was gone, she woke up! The ballpeen

hammer must have acted as an anesthetic, allowing the dog

to recover painlessly (no, really) from 1,000 pounds of

rolling, trampling steel.

Again, we kids had no idea

concerning the events of the morning. My dad arrived

home, worrying all day about how he was going to explain

his homicide of our hound! Only, as he drove up, the

doggie came out to greet him just as she had done all the

years before.

He was shocked. And the

mutt? She was fine; a little fearful of cars and a lot

more fearful of hammers, but fine. And my dad in living

all day with his secret, not sharing those feelings with

anyone around him, that had to be true bravery.