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Post by Old Dragon (Al) on Mar 1, 2005 15:27:31 GMT 1
Several people have asked me to post episodes of this story on the board, even though many have read it before, so here it is...
Bruin the Bear
It was during the early 70s and I'd just lost a little working border collie bitch in a tragic accident and needed to get another. A friend had just bought one from a local farmer and mentioned that he'd several more for sale.
By the time I'd finished work it was dark - very dark - but I drove to the farm and it was one of those that still did not have electricity etc. Out came the old farmer with a hurricane lamp and a pack of working dogs of all shapes and sizes.
"Aye," says he, when I enquired after a bitch pup, "there be one bitch left... Born under the shed, they were, and to me feisty old bitch... but work? Oh aye, she can do that a'right!"
I followed him across his overgrown yard to a ramshackle shed, near which he put down the lamp and got down on his hands and knees. Reaching under the shed he first pulled out what he felt to be a dog pup. Back under the shed he went, groping around in the dark and to the sounds of something resembling a distant rumbling train. After much cussing, puffing, sweating and more ominous sounds coming from under the shed, the old man finally emerged and ordered me to take off my coat - QUICK!
This I did, and the farmer bundled whatever he was holding into the coat, thrust it back at me and began shaking blood off his hand.
"Must've cut it on a bit of old wire," he said, and in the same breath, demanded a fiver off me.
Now, remember it was pitch black out there - and especially so as the farmer grabbed his cash and his hurricane lamp and disappeared rapidly into his house to, presumably, clean his wound? Well, I'd no chance to look at my nice little 'border collie' bitch, so bundled her in the car and still wrapped up in my coat, and headed home.
Ever had that nagging feeling that things weren't entirely right? I sure got it that night, for that bundle never stopped rumbling all the way home and, come to think of it, surely it was a bit big and hard and not quite the right shape for a 12 weeks old BC?
Back home I scooped the bundle out of the car and headed for the kitchen and one HELL of a shock as I put the bundle down on the floor. What scooted backwards out from under the coat, ran backwards across the floor and then reared up with its back wedged in a corner and snarling fit to bust was surely NOT a dog... or was it? Never have I seen anything other than a black bear that so resembled one and right down to the white patch on the chest!
About the only thing resembling what I was looking for was its sex!
Whereas my friend's little bitch had been all wriggles and waggy tail, this creature was all taut muscle and mean eyed snarl! I won't tell you here what I actually said to it. Suffice to say I determined to return it from whence it came first thing in the morning - and to hell with my fiver!
It never once took its eyes off me and continued to threaten as I put food and water down on the kitchen floor and a few newspapers and then, skirting widely around it, went to bed, innocently thinking that it might have calmed down a bit by morning.
Fat chance! By morning it had scoffed anything and everything edible within its reach, including from inside the cupboards, drunk all the water, done unmentionable things everywhere bar on the papers and even spread that up the cupboard doors as it had explored and hunted for food and had finally taken up residence under a far corner unit, from whence it left me in little doubt as to what it would do if anyone ventured within striking distance!
*****
(More soon...)
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Post by Old Dragon (Al) on Mar 1, 2005 15:30:37 GMT 1
Bruin the Bear 2
The cottage where I lived when I first got the Bear went with my job as manager of a riding establishment that was spread out over some five properties in the area. In the course of a day it was necessary to visit most of those besides providing tea and toast for various other staff members. Not much chance of safely doing that with a monster lurking under the units, eh? Indeed, the moment anyone entered the kitchen the rumbling started - and got louder the nearer one got to its lair.
Needless to say no one else fancied making the tea or toast, or even entering the kitchen, so I reckoned the best thing to do was just get on with the normal routine regardless and ignore the critter until I could figure out a way to capture it and keep all my fingers. I hadn't figured on just how long that might take though. A week went by and by that time all I knew about the monster was that it was getting bigger! It had to be, the amount it was eating, and it was a regular thing to lie in bed and hear things like the bread bin hitting the kitchen floor. Besides a generous portion of dog meat and biscuits, the contents of the bread bin, fruit bowl and biscuit barrel, it helped itself to ad-lib potatoes from a sack in the corner and even learned to open the fridge. Boy, did that critter have a taste for bacon, eggs and cheese! It would also hide any wrappers under the units and getting them out with the broom was an art in itself, and she took the head of the broom clean off on one occasion when I tried to do that.
By that time I was getting some strange looks and comments in the local shop and down the pub. Seemed like that old farmer had spread the word far and wide about my new 'working dog'! Indeed, word had it that his feisty old bitch's last litter had been sired by two fathers - one a working border collie, the other a notorious local poacher's rather ornery old wolfhound greyhound cross. It made sense! What's more, I'd seen that dog and it was HUGE! A great menacing creature that was well feared locally and had been known to tackle a full grown stag and take it down on its own. Of course, stories like that were fed to me and probably well exaggerated in the telling, and as often as folk politely enquired as to how I was getting along with my new dog.
"Oh, she's coming along just fine," I'd reply. Well, what else could I say? To have told them the truth and that I'd barely set eyes on her since her arrival, surely beggared belief?
However, I was beginning to see a bit more of her, for all that. Usually a black nose and a pair of eyes that followed my every move and remained fixed on me without blinking when I sat down to eat. Tossing food in her direction but just out of reach wouldn't tempt her to emerge when I was around though.
Goodness knows how long this would have continued but for me making what could have proved a serious mistake one night - I failed to shut the kitchen door securely on her when I went to bed.
Has anyone else ever suddenly woken up in the middle of the night and sensing something or someone is prowling their bedroom? Well, I did that night, but it wasn't prowling, it was standing staring at me, its face level with mine, and not three feet away. With the curtains open and enough moonlight to see it there, was like something out of a horror movie. All I could think to do was to roll over very slowly and pull the blankets up over my head for some protection if things got nasty.
They didn't. Instead I listened for a while to her exploring my room and, as dawn began to break, chanced a look to where I thought she was. She'd settled down in the furthest corner from me and was curled up there; not exactly sleeping, as her eyes were only half closed and she was keeping them on me.
When I decided that I simply had to move, she was up and holding her ground. When I went downstairs she followed, but at a distance.
When I went out to start work for the day she was again locked in the kitchen. However, at the end of the day she was no longer under the units but was always as far from me as the room would allow. As I ate, I tossed biscuits at her, which, after sniffing the first few suspiciously, she decided to eat and then snatch from the air and wolf down. That night I deliberately left the kitchen door open and the following morning she was again in the corner of my bedroom.
At least when I was next asked how my new dog was doing I could tell the truth; she really was coming along just fine. Mind you, I had grave doubts about her ever making a working sheepdog! Indeed, I had visions of her putting the fear of the almighty Baa Lamb into any sheep that she came into contact with.
(More soon.)
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Post by Old Dragon (Al) on Mar 1, 2005 15:34:37 GMT 1
Bruin the Bear 3
In the normal course of events, of course, the new puppy arrived, gets presented with a suitable collar and lead, various inoculations and its training follows along a fairly well-established route according to its purpose in life. Not so with the Bear. From deciding to follow me around the house and choosing to sleep in my bedroom, further progress came exceedingly slowly.
Canine psychology was not a subject I’d studied, and for anyone reading this who has, there can be little doubt that you’ll spot the many errors I made along the way. In the matter of setting boundaries and claiming personal ‘space’ for example, the Bear clearly came out on top. Hers was a minimum of about six to eight feet from me, and if I ventured close to that limit her lips would curl back, exposing her teeth, and the warning growls would erupt. For such a young dog, she had quite a vocabulary too. She, on the other hand, was confident enough to foray into my space and to within about three feet of me – as long as I was either standing with my back to her or lying in bed! I have little doubt that, when sleeping, she came closer still, and more than once I was certainly aware of her sniffing the bedclothes and inspecting items of clothing and shoes left beside the bed, but I never actually saw her doing so.
Up until around that time, I’d not properly named her, simply using the term ‘girl’ or ‘little bear’ or even ‘bear cub’ when speaking to her and attempting to convey things to here by tone of voice. Of course, with all that in mind, there really could be only one proper name for her – Bruin! However, having chosen that, I still continued to use a number of variations. Bru, Bru Bear, Bruin Bear, and so on, but each in a slightly different tone ranging from the excitable “Hungry, Bru? Want something to eat?” to the disapproving “Bruin Bear, what have you done?” when she chose to leave her mark other than on the papers in the kitchen or had emptied the contents of the fridge and scattered their remains throughout the house in my absence. Alas, yes, it had taken her no time at all to discover how to operate door handles!
Being unable to handle her presented quite a problem when it came to the matter of house training her. There was no fenced garden to the cottage, simply a sparse hedge to one side and that bounding a lane, and a wooden post and rail to the other side where a muddy track gave access into a number of paddocks where the riding school horses and ponies grazed. The back door opened straight onto the stable yard and to venture outside without having some type of physical restraint on the Bear at that stage was surely asking for trouble? However, without what promised to be something of a very bloody battle and that would likely destroy what small measure of progress had been achieved, there seemed little choice than to risk it.
With weekends being an extremely busy time at the stables, what with clients, extra staff and goodness knows who around, it was necessary to wait until a Monday, when we could have the place entirely to ourselves. Armed with a pocketful of her favourite treats, I headed off down the yard and leaving the back door wide open. It’s impossible to tell you if she hesitated before following me outside, but within only a few yards I could hear her toenails on the concrete and padding along some six feet behind me.
You might think that, after some two weeks of confinement, she’d have been ready to explode and race around like any typical pup, but not the Bear. For the next several weeks she simply loped along in my wake, and if she paused for calls of nature or to examine some smell amongst the bushes, the lope accelerated just enough to enable her to regain her position behind me before I moved out of sight. If I turned to retrace my steps, she would swing wide around me and resume her place.
During this period, and at every opportunity, I did my best to familiarise her with the locality, walking from property to property across the fields, checking on the horses, feeding what had to be fed or administering to any sick or injured ones. There were sheep too, rotating with the horses as they grazed the various fields and paddocks, and it was with great relief that I realised the Bear to be steady when it came to livestock. Indeed, and despite her not displaying those natural actions and attitudes of the working collie, it was obvious that there was something of her mother in her. Why, she almost looked as if she was simply waiting for me to tell her what to do and when I, half jokingly said, “Get away on,” for an instant she almost did just that.
Something, somewhere was wrong, and clearly that had to be with me and in the way I was attempting to communicate and build a relationship with her. Was I trying to run before I could walk? Yes, but perhaps also – and this far more likely the main reason – to dominate her in the order of the pack and before I’d earned that right in her eyes? One thing was certain, the critter trailing me was anything but an ordinary young dog.
(More soon.)
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Post by Old Dragon (Al) on Mar 1, 2005 15:43:31 GMT 1
Bruin the Bear 4
Myxomatosis struck almost without warning.
I saw the first case in the car headlights on my way home from the pub one evening. It was bumbling around in the centre of the lane and, at first thinking it must have been hit by another car and was injured, pulled up and went to investigate. That rabbit wasn’t even full grown but its hugely swollen head and pus-filled eyes brought a sickening, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I’ve always hated having to kill an animal. It is bad enough making that final decision for a much-loved pet and to end its suffering at the vet’s, but to take a life with one’s own bare hands, however necessary, always sickens me. Having done so as quickly and painlessly as possible, I laid the tiny body in the hedgerow in the knowledge that nature would soon reclaim that which was hers, and drove home.
On our rounds the following morning it was hardly surprising that there were more - and the Bear was quicker than me to spot them. I’d stopped to haul a bale of hay from one of the buildings ready to barrow over to a rack for the youngstock when, pausing in the doorway, I saw the Bear saunter over to investigate a movement in some long grass near the field gate. It was over in a split second and that poor rabbit couldn’t have known what bowled it over, but it was dead for all that. There had been no excitement or fuss on the pup's part. It was simply as if she was doing what had to be done – and it did well, too.
Over and over again during the next few weeks that young pup despatched blind and diseased rabbit after rabbit to the rainbow warren in the sky. Unlike me, she had no qualms whatsoever, and if I spotted one before her on our travels, I confess to delegating the task by ensuring she knew where it was. This action was probably the first real ‘command’ that I gave the Bear with any guarantee of 100% obedience - or perhaps that should read success? A simple point and a hiss in the general direction of the sufferer was all it took. Okay, so I didn’t really need to tell her what to do at all, as she’d have done so without my prompting, but I was by then clutching at straws in an attempt to further progress with her.
By that time my confidence had risen sufficiently to know she was safe around the livestock and that, if she followed me out on my rounds, she would follow me back home again. However, in her hunt for the sick rabbits, she was ranging greater and greater distances from me, and this invariably behind my back. Sometimes she’d be out of sight for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time and it was only by calling her name (yes, she’d learnt that in no time at all) that I could be sure she was still around. What’s more, with all the carrion that was about at that time, and however disapproving I might sound when witnessing her filling her belly of it, she was no longer reliant on me for her meals. House-training too, had been conquered, and I’d come to recognise her signs that she needed to go outside for that reason and would accompany her into the yard but, of course, a predominantly black dog at night is far from easy to keep track of and especially not when it has no wish to be tracked and much prefers to be the tracker to boot!
Many was the time I’d go in search of her late at night only to discover sooner or later that she was in her usual place a few yards behind and invisible in the darkness.
“So how’s the bitch coming along?” the men in the pub would ask, or perhaps it would be, “Saw you out with that shadow of yours… You’ll never make a working dog out of her!” and they’d laugh into their pints or suggest I turned to poaching.
There was something about the way they’d say that. As if they knew far more than they were letting on - and yet had nothing to do with the Bear’s reputed sire. It was easy to imagine them pausing in their hedging or ditching to watch as those poor rabbits were sent on their way to the rainbow warren. As it emerged later, I was way off the mark and they certainly did know far more than they were letting on.
****
More soon.
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