I was driving to work today and had a revelation. Before I go further, I want to make something clear. There was no shaft of light from above. I was not knocked from a donkey and blinded by a brilliant light. Any burning bushes I might have seen were strictly of forest fire origin. The revelation was this … there are NO stray dogs in Vermont.
When I was a child, I relied on stray dogs. They comprised the available pet pool. Around home, dogs were just dogs. Unless, of course, they were hunting dogs. Even a poor man would pay $300-$400 for a good hunting dog. Paying good money for a pet was unheard of … at least in my circle. Fortunately for me, I lived just outside the town limits. Every year, when the dog tags were due, miraculously, dogs would appear in our neighborhood. Great dogs, of mysterious ancestry. They would ramble into our yard with delineated rib cages, begging for scraps. Yes, they did turn over the trash barrel on occasion. I loved them all. My dad, however, did not share my universal acceptance of them. His instructions were not to feed them (which we did) and rock them to chase them away (which we did not). They did not stay for long … a few days … but for that brief time, they were mine. Understand, in my world a stray dog was an endangered specie. Stray dogs that turned over the trash barrel in their search for food got 120 volts on their second trip (Dad and the neighbor were both electricians). There was a particular mutt once that I really got attached to and begged Dad to let me keep it. Dad was walking out of the woods with his rifle at the time. He just smiled and told me that if it came back to the house again, I could keep it. It didn’t and I did not figure it out until I was much older.
Here’s my revelation. There are no stray dogs in Vermont because of the animal rights people and the animal-lovers. No such thing as the wild and care free life on the road for a dog here. You will never see a dog hopping a freight and there no hobo dog encampments under the bridges. Were a dog to strike out here, minutes later, he would be pounced upon by hoards of animal rescuers. Before he could learn to spit tobacco, the dog would be warm, fed and lounging in front of someone’s fireplace. He might even be wearing a new jacket. It is the demise of the Huckleberry Finn’s of the dog world. Greyhounds probably have it worse. People can’t wait to snatch them from the clutches of the dog tracks. Ironically, I have never seen a rescued greyhound running. It must be a no-no in the rescued world. Locally, the people raised about $250,000 to build a new facility for the ASPCA. Even in winter, people sleep under the bridge in Brattleboro and the homeless shelters overflow. Whoever said that every dog has his day must have lived in Brattleboro at some point..
As far as I am concerned, Brattleboro has gone to the dogs
