Mitzi
Mitzi was loyal to her nose first. Everything else came after. This frequently got her into trouble. She was not the dog my sister wanted, having begged endlessly for a small, snuggly dog like a miniature schnauzer or a bichon, one that would be a furry companion to keep her company and perhaps quell a bit of the loneliness caused by the miserable, pug-faced girl at school who picked on her relentlessly. My dad took my sister to the pound to pick out a dog and came back with the one he liked rather than the one she wanted. And so, they arrived home with Mitzi, a name befitting the type of dog my sister had hoped for, but not befitting this medium-sized hound with her white body, cow-like spots and long, soft, brown ears.
Why we even got a dog is a mystery to me. My mother wanted no dog and had refused to participate in the choosing, raising, or otherwise caring for the animal. She held to her word. My father was away during the week, working on getting his PhD, and while we had a myriad of other animals on our small farm (horses, goats, chickens, among others) it seemed that the tasks related to having a dog were primarily to fall on my grandfather, who lived with my memory-challenged grandmother in an apartment attached to our log house. Mitzi was not to be allowed in the house. Her bed was the doormat in the mudroom. I suppose in that regard, we never should have expected her to become docile. She was treated more as a farm animal than best friend.
In the mornings, she would stand on the big orange trunk full of mittens and hats, yelping with excitement at seeing people, ready for her ears to be scratched. Then she would be let out for the day into the several acres of wooded land abutting my aunt’s property on one side. Upon her morning release, she accompanied my father or grandfather to do the farm chores, and then roamed free, tracking scents through the woods, digging holes in the yard, chasing cars (including ours) on the country road that ran by our house. My grandfather once clocked her speed at 35 mph. At night she would return, emerging like a fog from deep in the woods, finally heeding our beckoning calls and whistles.
She quickly became a neighborhood nuisance, getting into people’s trash, chasing their cars, incessantly barking. I can only assume that there were complaints. My father installed a dog run between two trees, but Mitzi was an escape artist. She would be tied there when I left for school in the morning, pacing back and forth as the line whizzed overhead. When I would get off the school bus in the afternoon, Mitzi would be sitting by the road, waiting for me. In the yard, the collar would be suspended midair, still attached to the run, like the noose she probably felt it was. My father constructed a kennel, with sturdy, six-foot-high chain link fencing. He even built a Snoopy-like doghouse. Mitzi simply dug a hole underneath the fence and burrowed out. Houdini had nothing on this dog. My dad then tried tying her to a rope tied to a tree inside the kennel. The coup de gras, was arriving home to find her sitting outside of the kennel, next to the tunnel she had dug, still attached to the rope which was still attached to the tree inside the kennel. The look on her face suggested she was kindly flipping us the bird. There didn’t seem much sense in enclosing her, after that. The kennel filled with weeds and was eventually taken down when a garage was built.
She would have been an extraordinary hunting dog. With proper training, it’s doubtful she could have been matched. Though somehow, she inherently knew to never bother the farm animals, she tracked and occasionally caught all kinds of wild animals and would alert with a different bark for each. I could tell the difference between her rabbit yelp and her skunk bark, her deer howl versus her cat yap. She would also point in the direction of a scent. Our house frequently smelled of skunk, thanks to her superior tracking skills, though it was probably for the best, as it forced the rare occasion she was given a bath. She never did learn to stay away from porcupines, and I remember the gut-wrenching yelps and whining that accompanied my dad removing the quills with pliers. Her intestinal fortitude was tested by her proclivity for getting into trash on garbage day. For some reason, she would swallow the entire trash bag, whole. Eventually it would pass, but it was a slow process, and visible for several days as it made its way out of her body, miraculously not twisting her intestines in the process. It never seemed to bother her, but I can only imagine what the neighbors thought as our dog trotted through the neighborhood with the better part of a garbage bag hanging out of her rear end.
The only thing more impressive than Mitzi’s ability to extricate herself from restraints, was her ability to recover from maladies. Mitzi had two near-death experiences. The first, was poison of some sort. She lay in the mudroom for days, blind and unable to stand. After nearly a week, she stubbornly struggled to her feet, indicated the need to go out, and while she staggered over to pee, caught the scent of a rabbit and blindly took off into the woods, gaining strength as she went, narrowly avoiding trees as she pressed her nose to the ground, knowing if she stayed with the scent that she would be safe from obstructions. At that moment, I knew she was going to be okay.
Her second brush with the grim reaper came at the hands of a large beast- either a bear or bobcat or the mountain lion that locals claimed to see from time to time. Poor Mitzi limped home with a ten-inch slash from her jaw to her shoulder, her chest laid open, a gash so deep, it had missed her jugular by mere centimeters. She had to be sewn up, and then kept still until the wound had healed enough to protect her vulnerable blood vessels. Even this did not slow her.
Though she wasn’t a dog that lived for pleasing her people, we loved her just the same. Eventually we moved to a house across the river, one where my grandparents had their own little house on the property, and for the first time, Mitzi became a house dog. My grandfather was an animal whisperer, and if Mitzi could belong to anyone, it was to him. They had a special relationship, and I imagine his constancy gave her the life she deserved as the rest of us went about our busy lives.
Though her speed waned, and her desire to chase lessened, Mitzi continued her duties as farm dog and overseer of morning chores. She befriended a stallion, and they chased each other around the yard. One day my grandfather opened his front door and Mitzi streaked past him into the house. Much to my grandfather’s surprise, following closely behind was the stallion. He slammed the door shut just in time, and the horse came to a screeching halt, the steam from his nostrils fogging the window as he peered inside, waiting for his playmate to reemerge.
There was a new batch of chickens, and with them, a very nasty rooster, who charged after anyone or anything that came within ten feet of him. One day I arrived home from my high school job to find my grandfather, sitting on a bench outside, beer in hand, tears streaming down his face, Mitzi at his feet. I rushed to see what was wrong, and soon realized he was laughing.
“Your sister,” he said, “just ran across the lawn like a bat out of hell!” He wheezed. “That little rooster chased her all the way into the house! She’s a grown woman, afraid of that little rooster! She was screaming for her life!” His laughter overtook him again as my sister peeked out of the house.
“Is it gone?” she asked. This only provoked further laughter.
A few days later, my grandfather observed through his window as Mitzi appeared from the direction of the barn, a large prize in her mouth. He went outside and quietly followed her. He watched her dig a hole, bury the item, and fully cover it with dirt, tamping down the top layer with her nose. After she finished, he went and dug up the hole, and recovered the rooster. Much to his surprise, it was unharmed. It shook the dirt off its feathers, and strutted away, with perhaps a bit less pomp and circumstance than he’d had before. Mitzi had taught him a lesson.
My father called me at college to tell me when Mitzi had to be put down. She’d lived a long life for a dog, despite her adventurous spirit and brushes with death, and she’d largely lived it on her own terms. Perhaps there could have been a better home for her somewhere, one that put her talents to good use, one where she would have been spoiled rotten, though I like to think that her free spirit was well-suited to our strange arrangement, and maybe she had the best of both worlds: the freedom to follow her wild instincts and the comfort of a warm room and a full belly at the end of the day, with plenty of ear scratches and belly rubs to see her through.