A few days ago, we were visiting our middle son, Randy, and we got to talking about dogs. He is one of those people who has a detailed memory about almost anything. It’s kind of funny, but every time we’re trying to remember something, his dad, David, says, “Call Randy and ask him.”
Well, today they touched on the topic of dogs. Most of us who grew up in the country had a dog that we thought was the best of all. Our family had mostly hunting dogs, raccoon hounds like Old Lightfoot, Minnie, Ribs, Mutley, etc.
Then we had some family dogs like Tip and Ole Ring. They each have their own story, like the time one of their favorites, Mutley, went missing during a night hunt. They searched frantically for a couple of weeks and sadly had given up hope. Then one day our youngest son, Eric, heard a distant bark. Our two nephews, Matt and Mike Bode, were with him. They tracked him down and found that Mutley was trapped in a cave.
Eric made his cousins stay while he ran home, probably a mile or two through the woods, to get shovels, a hoe, and some sausages to encourage Mutley to try to get out. She dug her up and she was fine. It must have been a miracle! I can’t even bear to think or hear about being trapped in a cave, unable to move, without food or water, etc.
Mutley lived and went on to enjoy many more years of hunting with the boys and their dad. I can’t help but think of a gospel song sung by Doyle Lawson’s band, one of my favorite bands. He says in the song: “Help won’t come tomorrow, if you give up today, wait a little longer, help is on the way.” I should write another story about Mutley!
Also, we had a dog named Ribs. That dog would climb a tree after a raccoon. I debated which image for the story, and thought it would be better to put the image of our treecreeper, since it is so amazing. This is Ribs, our treecreeper in the picture, but today the focus is on my family’s dog, Twiggy.
This is how Randy told the story.
Randy said, “I was thinking about my Grandpa George and Grandma Dorothy’s dog, Twiggy.
“Although they had other dogs when I was little, like Old Chief, then they got the most amazing little dog I’ve ever seen. His name was Twiggy. Now Twiggy was kind of a Shorthaired Terrier, and she was the best dog ever.” hunt of all time. He understood it very well. If he said, ‘Let’s go get a rabbit,’ he’d run right into the brush pile, where the rabbits were hiding, and go in and chase a rabbit. But if he said, ‘Let’s look for a squirrel’, would take off excitedly and go right through the brush piles, headed for the trees, looking for a squirrel. Hard to believe but true, and then catch a squirrel in the blink of an eye. Eye. She was a good bitch out of the trees, and we even used it to train our raccoon hounds. I remember the first raccoon we had was with Lightfoot, our black and tan hound, and it was with Twiggy in the lead.
“He was also kind of a snake dog. We grew up in the country in NN, south of Fulton, and there were copperheads and rattlesnakes. But if one ever came into the yard, Twiggy would look at it and handle it. could have been bitten, she wasn’t afraid.
“I remember the time when my brother Daniel and I were little, she helped protect us from a huge rattlesnake that was on the edge of Grandpa and Grandma’s yard. I came within an inch of stepping on it, but Twiggy kept it at bay.” until Grandpa shot him with his 12-gauge! I can still hear those jingle bells singing and Twiggy barking, while Grandma was yelling, ‘George, watch out!’
“That was 50 years ago, and like all good dogs, Twiggy got old and died. But I’ll always remember what a wonderful little dog she was. Some have their Old Shep or Old Yeller, but we had Twiggy, and she was such a wonderful dog. good and left us many good memories”.
Thank you Randy, for helping to keep the memories of Mom, Dad, and those days alive.
there should be a logo like this in the fulton library; please use it with column.