This was Petwarmer's yesterday. If this could happen to all people who hurt animals there would be alot less animal abuse.
JUSTICE SERVED
Most German Shepherds are pretty smart, but
George was dumber than a
box of rocks.
That dog was actually too dumb to come in out
of the rain. If he
happened to be out in the yard when the lightning
flashed and the thunder
rolled, he would bark and cry until I came out of
the house with his leash
and led him onto the porch or into the garage. Or,
into the house if he
wasn't too wet by that time.
What George lacked in intelligence, he more
than made up for in
affection for the neighbors.
Every morning, he would go to the back door of
all the neighbor's
houses around the block, bark softly and wait
patiently until someone
opened the door and said, "Good morning, George," or
gave him a pat on the
head. George loved children, and if any came out of
the house, he was in
ecstasy, and would play with them joyfully for a few
minutes, then move on
to the next house.
George loved everyone, and everyone loved
George -- everyone, that is,
except old man Cotter.
C.V. Cotter was a crusty old curmudgeon who
lived alone in a little
brick house across the back quadrangle almost
directly across from where
Bob and Gwendola had lived many years before.
C.V. didn't like anybody -- he didn't like the
neighbors, he didn't
like me, and most of all he didn't like George, and
would sometimes yell
and throw coals from the fireplace at him.
As dumb as George was, he finally learned to
skip C.V.'s house in his
daily quest to give and receive a little love.
One morning, I got up early and went to the
kitchen window to see how
much snow had fallen. There was George, sitting in
the snow licking his
paw, and there was blood in the snow all around him.
I dressed hurriedly, ran out and examined his
paw. There was a
semi-circular cut just above the first joint.
A steel trap!
I bound up the wound the best I could with a
clean rag from the garage
and rushed George to the Vet at Mt. Vernon. Dr.
Davis examined the wound
and gave me the good news that the bone and tendons
were intact, and George
would be OK, but I would have to leave him there a
couple of days. He was
amazed, however, that George had been able to pull
out of the trap --
wolves have been known to chew a leg off to escape
from the diabolical and
cruel steel trap.
I drove home, becoming angrier with every mile.
It had been years
since I had felt the flush of extreme anger in my
neck and face that way,
but this morning I was incensed! How could anyone
do that to a sweet, dumb
loving dog?
When I drove into the garage, my eyes fell upon
a 16 pound post maul
-- a sledge hammer that swings over one's shoulder
and drives posts into
the ground. I picked it up.
It was easy to follow the trail of blood to its
origin. After all,
there was snow on the ground. The bright red trail
led just where I
expected -- right back to C.V. Cotter's house.
C.V. had just built a new concrete porch, had
imbedded a foot scraper
in one corner of it, and had chained a steel trap to
that. The trap now
lay on the ground, baited with hamburger and covered
with George's blood
and brown hair.
I set the trap up on the corner of the porch,
swung the huge sledge
hammer over my shoulder and down onto the trap with
all my strength. The
trap shattered into pieces, and wonder of wonders,
so did a corner of the
porch.
I backed off and looked at that and it's a
wonder that the grin that
crossed my face didn't stay plastered there forever.
"Well, now," I said to myself, "It seems C.V.'s
porch is no longer
symmetrical. I'd better fix it."
So I went to the other corner, swung the sledge
hammer again, and that
corner disappeared too! Comparing the two corners,
I realized that I had
taken a bit too much off the second corner, so it
was back to the first
corner to remove some more concrete and even things
up a bit. Now the pace
picked up, and within a few minutes, I had reduced
the entire porch to a
pile of gravel. Once, out of the corner of my eye,
I saw old man Cotter
peek through the kitchen curtains, but he closed
them again quickly.
I casually walked back to the house, put the
sledge in the garage,
went inside and put on a pot of coffee. I sat down
at the kitchen table to
wait for the Sheriff. Surely Cotter had called him
-- I had, after all,
destroyed his property.
By the time I heard the knock at the door, I
had just finished the
second cup of coffee.
"Come in, Mike," I yelled, getting up to get
another cup from the
cupboard. When I told the Sheriff the story, he
laughed so hard he spilled
coffee on himself. When he recovered, he said, "You
know I'm gonna have to
make an arrest, don't you?"
"I know, Mike," I said, "Wait till I get my
coat."
"Oh, no, not you, Joe Lee," Mike said. "I'm
gonna arrest old man
Cotter. Them steel traps are illegal in Missouri,
and bein' in the city
limits, Judge Swadley'll throw the book at him.
It'll cost him five
hundred dollars, anyways."
I watched through the back porch window as the
Sheriff pulled up in
front of C.V. Cotter's house, and shortly led him
out in handcuffs.
Two days later, as George and I were driving
home from the vet, his
muzzle in my lap, I patted him and said, "Well,
George, you may still be
the dumbest dog I've ever known, but you won this
one."
George thumped his tail.
-- Joe Edwards
____________________________________________
We loved Joe's stories and this happened to be our
favorite Petwarmer from
him. He narrated this story, and others, on the Pet
Tales CD. We will
miss him.
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