DOG TALES

My grandfather Robert would wax nostalgic about the best dog he ever owned. Sport was a lab-sheperd-collie-person mix of a mutt, but what a dog!
The farm my grandfather owned was set off the highway about a quarter mile, so retrieving the mail became a daily chore, a perfect job for his dog Sport. Grandfather would say ‘Sport, go get the mail’, and Sport went and did just that, crossing two lanes of highway traffic twice, both coming and going, and returning without dropping any envelopes along the way, even if he crossed paths with a rabbit, the job came first. He stayed focused, what a dog!
On days when grandfather was working in the field, grandmother would fix him a sack lunch, usually consisting of a meat sandwich, donut, pie wedge and a cookie or two placed inside a brown paper bag. Grandmother would say ‘Sport, bring this to mister’. He’d then gently take the bag in his mouth that smelled so delicious, and denying himself of the goodies inside would deliver it to his master out in the grain field. Grandmother always included a treat for Sport that grandfather gave him for a job well done. He forever stayed focused, what a dog!
At times when he wasn’t working, Sport managed to strike up a friendship with Tubby, the barnyard pig. They became best of friends with Sport oftentimes bedding down beside Tubby during the heat of day.
Well, the fateful day came when it was time to butcher the pig. The local butcher (who’d been to the farm on numerous occasions) completed the task and went home. However, Sport associated the day the butcher arrived with the disappearance of his best friend Tubby. When the butcher was summoned back to the farm a month or two later, Sport would not let him get out of his truck! He went ‘Cujo’ on him, as they say, and the butcher was no longer a welcome face at the farm as far as Sport was concerned. He never forgot, what a dog!
From then on grandfather was forced to do the butchering, and Sport was kept inside the house on those days, lest he see too much.
One day when Sport went for the mail he was hit by a passing car. Injured badly, he crawled the quarter mile up the driveway and into the yard, but his injuries proved fatal. A neighbor stopped by to inform grandfather that he had witnessed the tragic event, and that another neighbor had swirved into the dog intentionally targeting him.
Sport was so intelligent as to be almost part human. In the end, it was man who became animalistic.