Penny (10 page)

I came in for a cold drink, decided to quit raking, and Barbara and I went out to sit on the porch and watch evening come. Penny had hidden the cap somewhere and came and joined us. And a few minutes later the cows started for home and the milking barn. They were Albert's cows. His farm borders ours and he leased our pastures. The cows had been on the grass since the tenth of May, the day Albert insists is the time to put cows out to pasture, no matter whether the season is early or late. It's a kind of personal tradition. Those cows had been here and had gone home to be milked every day at five o'clock. After milking they would come back, to drink spring water at the old Salisbury kettle, to lie in the grass and chew their cuds, maybe to sleep. They were big black and white Holsteins, and there were fifty-odd of them.

Penny had seen those cows every day, had watched them graze, drink, lie and chew their cuds, go home to be milked, come back for the night. She hadn't so much as sniffed at them. But for some reason, that evening she took special notice of them. She watched as they started their leisurely walk down the pasture toward home. And then, before I knew what was happening, she went down off the porch the way she had gone after that old red rubber ball. Off the porch, across the lawn, around the house into the pasture, barking furiously. The cows heard her and turned to look, possibly wondering what that little bit of a dog was making so much noise about. They stood and watched as she dashed at them. The nearest one turned and trotted away. Penny was at her heels in an instant, barking and nipping. The cow broke into an awkward lope. The others hurried after her. Penny was almost hysterical. She had put the whole herd to flight.

Play is play, and maybe it started as play, though I have my doubts. But when a dog starts chasing milk cows it is not amusing. Not in dairy country. I went after Penny, across the back yard and through the gate into the pasture. I called to her, got no response. I ordered her to come back, still got no response. The cows continued to run. Penny continued to chase them. I chased Penny.

I don't know how long I chased her, more angry every minute. She didn't stop, but finally I got close enough to make a flying leap and catch her by one hind leg. Luckily, I had brought the leash. I got it on her and told her firmly that we were going home. She insisted she was going to continue chasing those big black and white cows. I was bigger than she was. We went home, Penny holding back and complaining almost every foot of the way.

I tethered her to a ring on the front porch and sat down to catch my breath. If I had half the stamina of that dog I could build an Egyptian pyramid single-handed.

“Well,” Barbara said, “you two had a nice little jog, didn't you? Do that every day and—”

“And you will be a widow.”

“What do we do now?”

“Lock her up for the night.”

“And tomorrow?”

“I can't think that far ahead.”

“Maybe she'll have forgotten all about the cows by tomorrow.”

“Want to bet? When it comes to deviltry, that dog has a memory that makes an elephant look absent-minded.”

As soon as I stopped puffing I took Penny to her house and locked her in, two hours early. She didn't like it. But she must have known she wasn't in high favor, because her heart really wasn't in her complaints. She yowled for twenty minutes, then shut up.

The next morning she seemed to be her usual self, greeted me happily when I let her out, ate her breakfast, went out for a little while, came back in, a model of good behavior. When I came up to my study she came along and lay here for an hour while I worked at the typewriter, then went downstairs in midmorning and went outside and lay on the front steps. The cows were in the pasture, and soon after she went outdoors they came to the watering trough to drink. I watched and saw Penny give them one uninterested look, then pay no more attention. She seemed to be thinking,
Cows? So what?
And I wondered if what happened the evening before had been just one of those things, a sudden impulse that wouldn't be repeated.

I went back to work. Nothing happened. The day passed peacefully. Late afternoon and we were on the porch again, and at five o'clock the cows began lining out for home and milking. Penny saw them, watched for a minute, got to her feet.

“Penny,” I warned.

She glanced at me and turned toward the steps.

“Penny, come back here!”

I grabbed at her, but too late. She scuttled down the steps and raced across the yard toward the pasture. I picked up the leash and ran after her. The cows saw her coming and turned and loped away. Penny yelped in high triumph and took off after them. I crawled through the wire fence and followed.

It didn't take quite as long to catch her that time. The cows didn't run quite as fast. I kept hoping one of them would give Penny a kick that would send her sprawling, but it didn't happen. It might have made her all the more determined, though. I finally caught her, snapped the leash on her collar and headed for home. She didn't make half the struggle that she had the evening before. I took her home and locked her up and let her yowl. An hour later I took a can of dog food out there and gave her her supper in jail. She didn't appreciate it.

While Barbara and I ate our supper we discussed the problem.

“There must be some way,” Barbara said, “to break her of chasing cows. You can break a dog of chasing cars, can't you?”

“Some dogs. Some are slow learners. They get killed.”

“Penny is bright.”

“Too bright for her own good.”

“She should be a quick learner.”

“Want to try teaching her?”

“I wouldn't know where to start.”

“Well, first you learn to talk dog.”

“Umm-hm. Second?”

“Get Penny to listen while you talk to her.”

Barbara thought for a long moment. “Any other bright ideas?”

“Learn to talk cow.”

“Yes?”

“And tell a couple of those old milkers to stop running from Penny. Tell them to kick the stuffing out of her, though I'm not sure that would do much good.”

“It wouldn't. It would just make Penny mad. Now it's just a game with her, like chasing a ball. If a cow kicked her it would turn into a feud.”

We let it go at that. But half an hour later Barbara called the basset owner up in Massachusetts who had given the basic advice about caring for Penny even before she came to live with us. Barbara told her about the cow problem.

“The obvious solution,” Sybil said, “is to get rid of the cows.”

“Yes. But what is the sensible solution. We don't even own the cows, so we can't sell them, even to please Penny.”

“Well, why not put her on a leash and take her out among the cows and show her that they don't have to be chased?”

“But she doesn't chase them any other time of day. Just in the evening. She doesn't pay any attention to them in the morning. They come up here every morning and she couldn't care less.”

“She sounds neurotic, to me.”

“Do you know a good dog psychiatrist?”

“Look,” Sybil said at last, “why don't you bring her up here to me, if she won't handle. We haven't any cows. Maybe that's the solution.”

“You'd be surprised if we took you up on that.”

“No, I mean it. I can find her a good home.”

“We'll have to think about it.” And Barbara hung up.

Nine

The next day Penny left the cows strictly alone. We stayed at home and watched her, just to see what she did. She was a model dog, came when called, ate her food, didn't chase cows and went to bed without protest. The same the next day, and the next.

Barbara said, “She's settling down, at last.”

And when this exemplary behavior continued for a week I said, “Well, life may be dull around here, but it's worth living again.”

“After what we've been through with that dog,” Barbara said, “I could do with weeks and weeks of this kind of dullness.”

Penny was on her best behavior right through the second week, ebullient, lively, but starting no uproars. Maybe, I thought, she had finally got all that out of her system. Barbara and I both began to relax.

Looking back later, we wondered why we were surprised that it didn't last. Some dogs, like some people, simply can't abide a quiet life. Life isn't life for them unless things are happening. Maybe they have a heightened sense of drama and adventure. Maybe they actually need dragons at every turn in the road. Penny had her dragons out there in the pasture at five o'clock in the afternoon, for a few days. Then they stopped being dragons and were just plain cows. But there had to be other dragons somewhere.

It started like another normal, quiet day. Penny was her gay, happy self when I let her out of her house, frolicking and romping in the dewy grass, dashing to the back door to be let in, eating her breakfast with gusto, then going outdoors for fifteen minutes. She came back in, greeted Barbara, came up to my study with me and napped for an hour, then went down to lie on the front steps and watch the morning. All routine. Before lunch we would go for a walk, all three of us, and maybe Penny would chase a rabbit.

I was at work at my desk when a highway truck came up the road about nine-thirty. The town highway department was going to sweep our secondary blacktop road, prepare it for a coat of road oil. The highway crew is a group of men we know, men who patch the chuckholes in the spring, mow the roadsides in the summer, plow the snow in the winter. Friends. They knew us. They knew Penny, at least by sight.

The truck came up the road, and I heard Penny bark. Then a frenzy of barking. Then men's laughter.

I went downstairs, and there Penny was, out in the road, disputing the way with that big red highway truck. The driver had stopped, not wanting to run her down, and he and the two other men with him were trying to talk her into reason, laughing loudly all the while. Penny would back away, they would start the truck, and she would dart in front of it again and they would stop.

I went out, gave sharp orders, finally caught Penny by the collar and hauled her aside so the truck could go on up the road. I carefully explained to her that these men were friends, that they had business on this road and that she should shut up and lie down or she would be in trouble. She seemed to listen. She lay down on the porch steps as though ready to take a nap, and I went back to my typewriter.

Ten minutes later here came the sweeper, a big, unlikely looking vehicle with revolving brushes three feet in diameter, which sweeps the loose sand into a windrow at the edge of the road. It came slowly up the road, grumbling and swishing, and I knew there was going to be trouble even before I heard Penny's first excited yelp. I was halfway downstairs when she charged across the front yard and challenged that rumbling monster. She rushed it, barking madly, threatening to chew it into little tiny pieces.

I got out onto the porch just as the sweeper's driver brought it to a halt in front of the house. He sat there, high on its back, and laughed as Penny danced wildly about the machine, yelping, threatening, almost hysterical. I shouted at her, but it was no use. She couldn't hear me, even if she had listened, above her own noise. I picked up the leash and started across the yard, hoping to catch her before she knew I was there. Just then the big truck came back down the road, and for a moment Penny gave it her attention. The sweeper's driver started up again, and she returned to that engagement. The sweeper's driver stopped. “Go ahead!” I shouted. “Run her down if she doesn't get out of the way!”

He shook his head and shouted back, “If she gets too close, this thing will pick her right up, probably tear her to pieces.”

I chased her. She ran around the sweeper. I ran after her. The truck driver stopped, and he and his helpers joined me in the chase. We thought we had her cornered, but she scooted between one man's legs. I followed her back toward the house, thinking we had won, even without a capture. The men returned to their truck. But at the porch Penny turned, darted away from me and returned to her attack on the sweeper.

“I'll be right back,” I shouted, and came into the house, got a length of nylon clothesline, made a loop and returned to the road with a makeshift lasso. It was like lassoing a snake, she was so quick and so sinuous, but I finally got the loop on her and dragged her away. The road men shouted their thanks and went about their business.

I brought Penny upstairs to my study and closed the door. She whined and whimpered, threatened and entreated, for maybe ten minutes. Then she gave up and lay down. I heard the road truck come up the road again, and she lifted her head, perked her ears and growled. But after that she relaxed, lay back and napped. I finished my morning's work and took her downstairs with me. She seemed to have quieted down completely, but I put a leash on her and hooked it to the ring on the front porch. She lay down on the front steps as though nothing had happened.

We had lunch, and I decided that Penny had her world well in place again. I took off the leash, left her there on the front porch, and within ten minutes the uproar started again. I thought at first that the sweeper had come back, but this time it was a horse, a horse and a big white dog. Cathy, a teen-ager from down the road, had ridden up to discuss a job with Barbara, and her old white collie had come with her.

Penny had seen that horse, Cathy on him, and that old collie at least a dozen times. Never before had she so much as yipped at them. Now she yammered almost the way she had at the sweeper. The horse paid little attention. Cathy laughed and said, “Oh, Penny, what's the matter with you? You know me.” The old collie tried to ignore Penny, finally looked down his long nose at her as though saying, What a noisy little snippet you are. But the ruckus had to be stopped, so I went out and collared Penny, put her on the leash again and tethered her at the porch. Fifteen minutes later Cathy rode back down the road and Penny didn't even look up.