What a Pal!

I am not enamored with the practice of breeding dogs. If everyone who wants a dog would adopt from the local animal shelter, or would otherwise go out and fined a stray and adopt it, there would still be plenty of dogs left to adopt. A more loyal and loving friend will not be found apart from one of those among the cast-offs who languish around the world, forgotten and nameless in some animal shelter.

Alas, the breeding and puppy mills proliferate. Yet even there among the pedigree exist the unwanted. Such was the case in one of the backwoods puppy mills of one of our southern states. Because of his large eyes and the white blaze on his forehead, one such waif was deemed not to meet the standards of pedigree, so he was eventually sold as a “pet-quality only” dog.

Howard bought the dog, and although no pedigree of high repute was established, the dog, whom he named “Pal,” was adopted.

The original owner was to be disappointed. Pal had bad habits. For one thing Pal had an incessant habit of barking. Now barking is something that dogs do, and virtually all dogs do bark, and most of the time the barking is not necessarily annoying; but Pal wouldn’t stop barking. Pal would bark at anything and anyone he did not recognize. Pal would bark into and through the night, causing himself to become a major nuisance to the neighbors.

Another of Pal’s annoyances was chasing motor vehicles. When Pal was not annoying the neighbors with his loud and boisterous barking he was making a nuisance of himself by chasing people and cars and just about anything that came near his owner’s premises.

Eventually Pal’s owner would have enough. Pal would get a new owner. Pal’s new owner had a bit more experience with dogs and undertook to teach Pal to not be so obtrusive. Barking and chasing are natural things for a dog, and many an animal trainer has had a difficult time breaking their canine protégés of these habits. In the case of Pal, the new owner saw some sliver of hope and persisted in working with Pal until he managed to get some of Pal’s bad habits under control.

Still, barking and chasing are in a dog’s nature, and for the duration of his life Pal would never be completely cured. Pal was born somewhere around 1940, and although motor vehicles had been invented half a decade earlier, they were still a new item. The din of noisy internal-combustion engines was bad enough, but now the irritation of man’s best friend chasing these noise-makers just further detracted from Pal’s reputation, the last bad habit that could not be cured. Alas, Pal’s new owner had had enough, so Pal was once again given away.

By now it was not certain that Pal would land with anyone who would love and appreciate Pal enough to show him the love and attention that dogs only crave. But the person to whom Pal had now been given would finally appreciate Pal’s worth. Pal’s new owner, it turns out, was a professional dog trainer, and although his owner would not be able to cure Pal of his incessant barking, Frank would be able to break Pal of the untenable practice of chasing everyone who drove by in a motorcar. Under Frank’s tutelage, Pal would develop into one well-trained canine, being taught to obey on command, while learning many useful tricks.

And so another story of one of God’s precious creatures has a happy ending. In his lifetime, Pal would go on to serve mankind in a way that until then not many canines had yet found. Oh, it is not easy to measure the amount of real service that Pal performed. After all, Pal did not become a rescue dog or anything like that. He did not serve in the Red Cross; and so far as is known Pal did not rescue anyone from some nefarious fate.

Well, not really. Pal’s new owner entered him into a contest – one in which the winner would be awarded with a new career. Pal did win that contest, and he was rewarded with a new and winning career and a new “owner.” Although Pal was much more obedient that he had been in the beginning he still felt the tug on his instinct to emit the occasional bark and chase the occasional motor vehicle.

Pal’s new owner, whose name was Tim, found ways to keep Pal so occupied that he rarely found time to chase cars and motorcycles. Pal kept himself busy by keeping Tim company and out of trouble. Quite often Tim would find himself in one scrape or another, and Pal would have to go to his rescue. Oh, besides being given a new companion, Pal was given a new name.

For some reason Tim didn’t think “Pal” befitted the now gregarious and precocious nature of his dog, so he renamed him. Furthermore, Tim was not good at determining the right gender of a dog. Had he cared to inspect closely, Tim would have seen that Pal was indeed a male dog. However, Tim never took notice, as he gave Pal a name that only a female dog should have.

Yes, and we all know what that name was, and still is, as Pal, the wonder dog with whom many of my generation grew up, and who thrilled us and fulfilled our need for courage and bravery – the once unwanted and unloved “pet-quality” only dog who was always running to rescue his proud owner Timmy had his name changed to:

Lassie.