Mineral Point (Part 9)

That Spring we also had a new litter of Jack Russell puppies that I took care of, puppies we sold. In addition to Sterling, the alpha Jack Russell that we bought as a puppy in the Summer of 1991, we had two female Jack Russells: Nell and also that spring had bought Tuck. Nell had the puppies about a week before I arrived and Susan set up a little fenced in area in the lower floor of the barn. Nell could jump over the fence but the puppies couldn't go anywhere. Jack Russells, popularly known at the time as the kind of dog on the television show Frasier, are small, short haired hunting dogs that are known for 'going to ground,' meaning, digging wildly into the ground looking/hunting for ground-dwelling cuties such as badgers and gophers and dens of foxes. Sterling was good natured, a friend to all, dogs included, and literally rippled with muscle. His balls and raw masculinity were always present, his studliness. He was not a dog that one could pick up and hold. He'd squirm out of your arms and didn't seem to care much about being cuddled. But he was sociable, attentive, always ready to engage but also always receptive to what we asked him to do. Andy, the Airedale, who was about three times the size of Sterling always deferred to his alphaness. Andy was his larger and stupider sidekick and companion for further adventures around the farm. 

The newborn puppies were about the size of guinea pigs. It took a couple weeks for them to open their eyes. Near the end of my stay, when the puppies had gotten a bit bigger, had grown legs enough to waddle around I took them out with my dad for pictures one day, sitting in the sun in the grass. 

In the first picture you can see the top of Sterling just above my dad's right thigh, Andy looming in the background. In the second, Nell making sure her brood is being handled appropriately. Not too long after I left the farm, maybe a year, Nell disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to her, but disappearance is one of the dangers for farm dogs. Pros and cons: farm dogs can always go outside and do their thing. They can roam without limits (though of course one has to train them a bit when young to not go too far) and live a bit closer to their working dog roots than a dog can in the city. However, sometimes they get into trouble, exploring places they shouldn't. Susan speculated that maybe some coyotes got Nell, one night when she wandered off. Or maybe she wandered down the to road and was hit by a car. There's no way to know. She just disappeared. 

Tuck (not pictured) was an all white Jack Russell with a light coat of thin curly hair that gave her a bit of an aura. She was a too young to have puppies when I was there, not too far removed from being a puppy herself. I don't have any digital pictures of her but she was a joy, my favorite of the dogs. Running and playing and letting herself be held. Nell was a dog I didn't know, a dog that my dad got when I got into college. Andy and Sterling though were my old friends. When Susan sold the farm and moved to North Carolina to be closer to her children and grandchildren she took the dogs with her, Sterling, Tuck, and Andy. Because the entirely of our relationship with Susan ruptured over the sale of the farm and the court case, my sister suing Susan to gain guardianship of my father and his estate; once Susan left Wisconsin we didn't hear from her until my father's death in 2014. Still the emissary of us kids, now adults, I was tasked with calling Susan and telling her about the plans for the memorial. We chatted for a bit. I'm not entirely sure about what, but I asked her about the dogs, what happened to them. I wondered about this for years. She said Tuck disappeared like Nell did. But Andy and Sterling got old and died, like real dogs, my old friends. Ron Padgett, "Bluebird":

You can’t expect
the milk to be delivered
to your house
by a bluebird
from the picture book
you looked at
at the age of four:
he’s much older
now, can’t carry those
bottles ‘neath his wing,
can hardly even carry a tune
with his faded beak
that opens some nights
to leak out a cry
to the horrible god
that created him.

Don’t think I’m
the bluebird, or that
you are. Let him get
old on his own and
die like a real bluebird
that sat on a branch
in a book, turned his head
toward you, and radiated.