Album of Dogs
Page 5
MANY PUREBREDS MAKE THE MONGREL
AT THE EDGE OF A swamp touching the waters of Green Bay, Wisconsin, there is a warm and cozy dog pound where pups without pedigrees are welcome as jonquils in spring.
It was not always so. Once, the old gray building was a shambles. Snow and wind and rain blew in through the cracks. Once, it housed but a handful of orphaned pups and bedraggled strays. Night and day they howled their misery. It was as if they knew that just across the road a great black furnace stood waiting to eat them up; that is, if they were not adopted.
The boy, Larry, who lived nearby, hated the furnace. On his way to fish in the marsh he hurried past it, scarce breathing, scarce looking. To him it was an evil monster, licking its chops, awaiting its prey.
But some days, without his willing it, Larry’s eye was drawn to the wide, jawlike door and to the red licks of fire showing through the airholes. On those days his fishing spree was only half fun, for as he fished he watched the wild birds flying free, and he heard the prisoners crying in the pound. Then he gathered up his own dog, hugging him close.
The black furnace worried Larry, and at night he dreamed about the caged-up dogs. Always in his dream he strode into the pound in seven-league boots. Quickly pulling one off, he filled it to overflowing with dogs, dogs, dogs. Then he spirited them away to Never-Never Land, where eager children claimed them all.
One bleak November day Larry’s dream practically came true. His father was appointed master of the pound! Suddenly a whole new world opened out for Larry. He was no longer a boy who just fished and played in the swamp. He became man-grown overnight.
There was so much to do! The dogs needed help quickly. One had a rasping cough; one, a mere pup, wheezed like some old man. And the others were so poor and starved that Larry’s father shook his fist at the owners who had deserted them. “Heartless idiots!” he spoke in a rage. “They be the curs, not these helpless ones!”
The boy, listening, felt a surge of pride in his father. “Pa,” he said, “even if no one claims them, we don’t have to put them to death; do we, Pa?”
The father set his lips in a line. “That we don’t! To my way, every dog is entitled to a home. We’ll cure their ills and fatten ’em up. Then you’ll see! Somebody will want them.”
With a fierce crusading spirit, man and boy went to work. They scrubbed and scoured the cages. They stuffed gunny sacks around the window frames. They built a fire in the old pot-bellied stove and put kettles of water on top to boil. The steam filled every corner of the room, and the pup with the wheeze began to breathe quietly. As for the dog with the cough, he made a furry ball of himself and soon dropped off to sleep.
Every morning now Larry was up before daylight—stirring a big batch of gruel, filling the water pans, feeding the dogs, and then letting them out of their cages to romp in the big room. This play period was his own idea. “If children need a recess,” he argued with himself, “why don’t animals?”
But one little moppet was a problem dog. She refused to come out and play. She refused even to eat. Whenever food was offered, her lip curled up over her fangs and the growl in her throat was deep and menacing.
Larry did not laugh at the big noise coming from so small a creature. He felt a kind of hurt that anyone could mistrust him. He named the unfriendly pup “Muggs” and determined to win her for a pet.
For days he brought her choice morsels from his own plate. For days he talked softly to her whenever he went by her cage. “Oh, you’re the ugly one,” he would say, his voice gentle with reproof. “But we’re going to change that. You’ve got Terrier blood, which shows you’re smart. And you’ve got a Bulldog jaw for spunk. Why, you’ve got lots of purebred blood. Anyone can see that!”
One evening after school Larry brought Muggs a pair of toy mice, and for a long time she held them in her mouth, with only the tails sticking out. Who could growl with a mouthful of mice? Not Muggs.
It was months, though, before she ventured out of her cage at recess. When at last she did, she found it such fun that she didn’t want to go back. Cunningly, she figured a way to make the time last longer. When the hour of play was up, she ran to the pan of drinking water. But her tongue barely touched it. She wasn’t drinking at all, just pretending so that Larry would swoop her up and carry her to the cage like some helpless child. Shyly at first, she dabbed at his check with her tongue; then her tail did a little tattoo against his ribs.
“You rascal!” he laughed at her. “You were just stalling.”
There was a kind of magic in the way Muggs blossomed. She soon became a “trusty” with all manner of special privileges.
Now when Larry makes his rounds of the restaurants to collect scraps, Muggs leaps onto his bicycle and goes along. Balancing herself on the handlebars, she likes to let the wind stream past her face. It tickles her nose with the scent of the huge joints of beef in the basket. But never will she touch one until Larry gives the signal.
Today Muggs is the pet of the pound, smart and obedient as any circus dog. She climbs ladders. She dances like a ballerina. She jumps through hoops. And she will perch for long minutes on the rooftree of her house until told to come down.
But the magic does not end with Muggs. The whole pound has been transformed! Now when the wind howls around the gray building, the big room is a friendly place—the teakettles singing, the father’s pencil scratching at his reports, the boy building new kennels, and the dogs snoozing or just listening to the radio.
To Larry’s great delight the cages are filling up. Instead of just a handful of dogs, there are dozens. Some days the phone rings again and again:
“Come get a mangy mutt running loose on Shawano Avenue.”
“Come get a slinking cur hanging around my meat market.”
“Come get a mother dog and her assorted pups from under our porch.”
All these are made welcome at the pound. Even the runtiest. Somebody will want him, Larry and his father insist. And somebody always does. Half-pint, an undersized pup, lived a whole year at the pound before someone recognized the goodness in his homely little face and tucked him into a child’s Christmas stocking. In his adopted home Half-pint soon lost his sad-eyed look and became an active partner in raising a small child.
Larry’s father is very firm in this matter of adoption. Always he follows up to see that the dog is happy. And if the dog is mistreated, he is promptly brought back. Then there is such a tail-wagging of joy that the returning fellow is apt to become another of Larry’s personal pets. “We need some old-timers, don’t we, Pa, to help train the new and frightened ones?”
And the father smiles, secretly happy because the boy understands. “You’re right, Larry. Each life—man or dog—has a purpose in this big old world. Here we’ve got herders and hunters, burrowers and retrievers, and just plain foot warmers.”
“Yes, Pa. Everything but pedigreed dogs.”
The father’s eye fondles the dogs in the nearest cages. “Remember, son, it takes many purebreds to make a mongrel. And each mongrel is the only one of its kind. That’s why I like ’em.”
“Me, too, Pa.”
“Does the Red Cross worry about the ancestry of its dogs? Does the Army Medical Corps? Do circus trainers? . . . No!” the father barks, sounding for all the world like one of his own dogs. Then his voice quiets. “After all, mongrels with their mixed-up backgrounds are good Americans. Loyal, that’s what they are, and anxious to please. You know that!”
“Sure!” agrees Larry.
And there, in happy proof, is Muggs looking up at him with love and with asking eyes: “Shall I climb the ladder? Jump through the hoop? What will it be? Just you name it, Larry.”
FOR THEIR HELP THE AUTHOR AND ARTIST ARE GRATEFUL TO:
A. D. ALEXANDER, secretary
Collie Club of America, Inc.
MRS. NATHAN R. ALLEN, president
Poodle Club of America
MISS EMMELINE ANDRUSKEVICZ, adviser
MRS. L. W. BON
NEY, secretary
Dalmatian Club of America
WILLIAM F. BROWN, editor
The American Field
HOWES BURTON, secretary
Labrador Retriever Club, Inc.
MRS. L. E. CAFFALL, chairman of Information and Publicity
Poodle Club of America
I. W. CARREL, editor
Hounds and Hunting
MISS FRANCES J. CARTER
Pomeranian and Pekingese fancier
MRS. WALTER P. CHRYSLER
Chihuahua fancier
MISS BARBARA CORY
Pomeranian fancier
MRS. JOHN W. CROSS, JR., secretary
Dachshund Club of America
MRS. NICHOLAS A. DEMIDOFF
Husky breeder and racer
Monadnock Kennels
MAJOR CLARK DENNY
United States Air Force
RUDY DOCKY, clown
Pollack Brothers Shrine Circus
RALPH B. HENRY, mentor
GEORGE M. HOWARD, president
American Boxer Club, Inc.
C. K. HUNTER, secretary
English Springer Spaniel Club of the Central States
ROBERT CAPRON HUNTER, JR.
Springer Spaniel fancier
MRS. DOROTHY E. HUSTED, secretary
American Pomeranian Club, Inc.
REV. RUSSELL E. KAUFFMAN, first vice-president
The Chihuahua Club of America
MISS MILDRED G. LATHROP, reference librarian
E. PERKINS MCGUIRE, secretary
American Boxer Club, Inc.
EUGENE J. RIORDAN, secretary
Boston Terrier Club of America, Inc.
MRS. EDNA R. SECOR, secretary
Bulldog Club of America
CURTICE W. SLOAN, president
Doberman Pinscher Club of America
WILLIAM I. SHEARER III, secretary
Siberian Husky Club of America
MISS MAUREEN SMITH Maur-Ray
German Shepherd Kennels
MRS. GRANT L. SUTTON, adviser
CLARENCE and LARRY VERHEYDEN
Mongrel fanciers
MRS. EARL VOGT
Scotch Terrier fancier
LESTER E. WALLACK
American Spaniel Club
ANTHONY WELLING
Cleveland Mounted Police
MISS IDA G. WILSON, librarian
For the “Naughty Chair” incident we are indebted to Miss Violet Stefanich and to the publication, Our Dumb Animals.
MARGUERITE HENRY was the beloved author of such classic horse stories as King of the Wind, Misty of Chincoteague, and Justin Morgan Had a Horse. By the time she died in 1997, she had written fifty-eight books about animals, especially horses.
WESLEY DENNIS was best known for his illustrations in collaboration with author Marguerite Henry. They published fifteen books together.
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This Aladdin hardcover edition November 2015
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Copyright © 1955 by Rand McNally & Company
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Jacket designed by Laura Lyn DiSiena
Jacket illustrations by Wesley Dennis
Jacket illustrations copyright © 1955 by Rand McNally & Company
Interior designed by Jacquelynne Hudson
The text of this book was set in Adobe Garamond Pro.
Library of Congress Control Number 55-8890
ISBN 978-1-4814-4257-2 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-4300-5 (eBook)