Skidboot 'The Smartest Dog In The World' (2 page)

There in the outback three of her puppies lived and mated, and it was good. Their puppies lived and it was also good. As each succeeding generation sprang forth, they proved more able, agile and cooperative than the former, and it became ever better. The breed allowed marginal dirt farmers to profit at round-up time because one dog equaled at least two men, and the dogs cost a lot less. The Australian Cattle dog stands as the unofficial mascot for the Australian beef industry. And on it went, a canine genealogy that finally found its way to Texas, where a pup was born that nearly bridged the symbiotic animal-to-human gap, with the potential to become a canine soul mate as well as a work engine, a furry phenomenon.

This dog showed supersensory powers that outstripped ordinary dogs, who only possess the ability to detect cancers, announce earthquakes, and howl at barometric pressure changes. Avid as a three-year-old, this dog could understand a glance, a word, a gesture, and act accordingly.

This dog would be the canine manifestation of Einstein's theory of a unified field, where everything, even species, interact with eerie prescience and are part of life's great interconnectedness. A dog born to bond, he needed someone empathic, a lover of animals, who could tune himself to "listen" as well as to instruct. Someone who lived as a cowboy rancher on a plot of land in Quinlan, Texas--David Hartwig.

CHAPTER TWO

Rodeo Life

A hot Texas sun blazed over the arena, and already the rodeo fans were guzzling beer, trying to cool off. The Mesquite, Texas rodeo arena was no different than a hundred others, a semicircle of wooden benches facing a gladiatorial ring where men battled beasts and each other, winner take all.

David Hartwig was striving to be that winner. He felt the win inside him, like a fist. He'd always had this special knowledge about himself when it came to two things: sports and animals. You might say, he possessed animal spirits, an energy that pushed him through championship swimming right into the roping arena.

Nerves jumping, he fingered the rope like a rosary, seeking help, wanting that prize.
Sometimes I pray myself from one side to the other,
he thought, knowing that energy and faith could propel him right through this boot heel existence, straight into a national roping championship. Today he was riding in the Mesquite, Texas Pro Rodeo outside of Dallas, a homespun little operation that would someday draw crowds and celebrities, but was now, still, just a local show. He'd turned down a swimming scholarship to Southern Methodist University to be here, or at least, to be a world champion.

I'm still in the holding pen
, he thought. No championship, no scholarship. Just that pervasive inner voice that assured him,
it's ok.
And he knew it
was
ok. A hard-headed man, he never backed down. Even as a skinny kid who looked like a walking bully magnet, if anyone even touched him, they'd end up on the ground so fast that not even David knew what happened.
I was never a fighter,
he thought. Not consciously. All he knew was that he never backed down.

He turned to locate Barbara in the crowd, then remembered their little argument. Nothing serious, but she'd huffed off and he knew he'd ride without her support today. They both believed that she brought him luck, and if she was in the stands, then all would go well. Well, he'd ride without her then, so much for lucky charms.

Eyes narrowed, he watched the calf bolt into the arena. Another flash brought in Randy Coyle, resident champion calf roper and personal nemesis, a cocky 30-year-old whose relatives ran the rodeo. Nepotism never hurt a man's chances of raking in prizes, David thought. No sir.

Stomach churning, David watched Coyle sail his rope neatly over the calf, shoot off the saddle and slam himself into it, upending the calf so fast it forgot to bawl. With three loops of piggin' string, Coyle bound up the calf's legs, stiff as firewood. Then he flung himself away, strutted toward his horse, and swung himself easily into the saddle with the same jaunty insolence he'd shown ten minutes earlier. He'd seen David in the john, hurling over the cracked toilet.

"Sick again, Hartwig?" He'd winked, laughed, and slammed the door shut on a man's private anxiety. David tried to get over the embarrassment. He couldn't understand himself: if he knew he could win, why get so nervous? Calves, dusty and tag-eared, shuffled through the chute toward the spring-loaded doors. One squeezed in and the door slammed behind it. His calf.

"Welcome David Hartwig!" The announcer lobbed his microphone around like a magic wand, predicting a
special feelin'
about
this up'n'comer from Quinlan Texas!
David felt the same way.

Settling down, he turned stone cold. Determined.
That's the stuff, what he'd been waiting for.

He nodded for the calf. Minutes exploded into seconds. The gate banged open, the calf shot out, and David felt Hank lunge under him. The rope sailed overhead, looping the calf's neck as Hank braked to a shuddering halt, his skid boots trailing dust. Skid boots are a protective sleeve around the horse's heel, reinforcing Hank's heels and shanks as his skidding hooves dragged through the hard-packed caliche soil of the rodeo arena. The calf sailed through the air, landing with a thud.

David flung himself off, sprinted to the brawling animal and flipped it upend. Gnawing at the piggin' string between his teeth, he clutched its legs, feeling the weight of a fifty-pound calf pull against him as he roped the legs together, shouting
two wraps and a hooey!
Hank held the rope taut, moving steadily backwards. David signaled "time." He strained to hear the count.

"One one thousand, two one thousand…we got a tie!"

Roars, music, confusion. Tension gripped them. Yells of support, bets placed, animosity rampant. Hank, trained to release the calf rather than drag it pitifully around the way some did, slackened the rope. David glared at Randy. Randy glared back. David scanned the bleachers to see Barbara. Instead, he caught Russell's eye and waved as the eleven-year-old jumped up and waved his hat, shouting, "Way to go, you got it!"

What a good kid. His stepson, his fan. He needed the support, and he knew the deck was stacked. The loudspeaker blared like a tornado warning, "the judges have spoken, the 1991 Mesquite calf-roping winner is Randy Coyle!" Naw, David thought, the uncle has spoken. It was pure hooey, Texas style.

As if mind-reading, Coyle thrust at him, chin out. "You got a problem, boy?"

David's anger surged. All those years, now come to this. Effort and opportunities given away like coupons, so that somebody's uncle could tilt the deck. He spat on the ground, fists tight at his sides. Then he saw Barbara in the stands.
She'd come, after all.

"You cheat!" Russell had run down from the stands and blurted out, looking surprised as he did it.

"Hey, that boy of yours at least is man enough to speak up. Maybe he should do the ropin," Coyle guffawed, his barely sprouted moustache jiggling. He flirted up from under his wide hat, looking for others to join in.

David moved toward him, then felt Barbara grab his arm. He knew it wasn't worth it. Jealousy was the trademark of a small mind—so said Mark Twain--and he was not small-minded. Coyle was a bitterness to him, but he'd get over it.

"Maybe you better give it up, Hartwig. It'd be better on your con-sti-tution!" Coyle bent over, laughing, while Russell flushed, stared at David, then back at the cowboy. David grabbed his stepson and they hustled after Barbara, back to the safety of his 30-acres in Quinlan, Texas.

CHAPTER THREE

Quinlan, Texas

If a Dingo-bred dog chose a new home outside ancestral Australia, it would be Texas. If unlucky, it would end up West Texas, needled by cactus, dodging rattlers, pining for a better terrain, even though the hills rolled gently, and Spring brought a carpet of green and more bluebirds than a Disney film. North Texas, Hunt County, close to Quinlan, suffered great heat yet also the relief of rain, given the right time of year. Such rain kept the Sabine river rushing toward its historic outflow in Mexico, bringing with it flowing memories, history, and tales of a Caddoan tribe, the Tawakoni, that sheltered near its banks, fought the Comanche, Apache, and the Osage, and later "molested" any nearby Spanish, as well as later unfortunate U.S. settlers. Finally forced onto a reservation in 1837, all that remains of the tribe today is Tawakoni Lake, the word meaning "River Bend Among Red Sand Hills," but which might also mean, "river built by backhoe and cement mixer." The town of Quinlan naps close by, its lakeside condos offering worry-free lakefront living just a shout away from Burgers & Fries, a popular dining spot. A nearby oil pipeline continues to uphold a clean safety record, a record in itself.

First settled in the 16th century by the Spanish, generations of farmers, ranchers, and buckaroos rolled through the area, followed generations later by David Hartwig, who craved open space as far away from Dallas as he could find. Groomed suburbs depressed him. Cosmopolitan life bored him. In his mind lay the cowboy idyll of free range, wild horses, rodeos, dogs, and adventure. His father, Rudy Hartwig, taught high school math and science, his mother Pat worked as a secretary, and the family lived an orderly if noisy life of four sons and countless dogs, which his father kept in steady supply from the local pound.

Long and lanky, David swam the freestyle as State Champion for two years running, even if he didn't particularly like swimming. But faced with
any
sport, the same kick-start determination he'd had at the rodeo would overwhelm him, dark and aggressive, ready to spring out and
win
. Despite a gawky frame, poor choices, and feeling trapped as a house pet, he knew things about himself that made him both restless and oddly confident. So confident that he turned down college, choosing a profession straight out of the middle ages, a farrier.

"A what?" Some friends were astonished, others, mostly his long-time friends, knew why horseshoeing prevailed over a full swimming scholarship from SMU. A true maverick, David had turned down this bastion of Texas excellence to follow the rodeo, shoe horses, and win the state championship calf roping title. His parents got it, even if they didn't agree.

They'd seen his excitement in the 11th grade, in that Vocational Ag class, when he managed to get a job on a 60-acre ranch and then broke his first horse. How? He'd just had this
feeling
that when he walked his 200-lb. calf around the field, which he had to do to keep it healthy, that if he walked the unbroken mare along with the calf and kept it to the calf's left, they'd socialize. And slowly, the cow would
teach
the mare how to be a roping horse.

"It's stupid. Why walk the calf around every day by itself when you could be getting them used to each other?" His father could only agree, wondering if the boy could figure out a way to go commercial with such insights.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Christmas Puppy

Christmas was not going well. Like some twisted Dickens plot, Barbara teetered on losing her job, David was broke, Quinlan Power and Gas had docked their electricity and he was flat out of gas money. He sighed. About the only stable thing these days was his stepson, who seemed more starry-eyed about David with every passing failure, a weird father complex syndrome that he'd never seen in animals because, well, animals had more sense. Russell did
not
lack brains, in fact he was an excellent student, until he somehow crossed neural paths with David and emerged as a half cowboy, all honor student. The half cowboy part irked Barbara, whose glance seemed to say
one cowpoke in the family is enough.

David accepted his role in this. If he put away the rodeo dream, maybe they'd have more than a scrawny Christmas tree, cheap presents, and that bucket in the middle of the floor full of rain water. Even their rusting doublewide felt broken, and mountain of bills on the kitchen counter grew like mold. Their electricity blinked on and off like a crazy thing. They struggled, with no way to catch up.

He felt like a country western version of himself, a cowboy so
downtrodden, so busted and oh so ashamed.
He wondered if feeling special really meant
specially broke.

And Russell, well. The boy wore his hat high and his jeans low, and school kids teased him about his rodeo dad. If he bragged about David, they jeered at him, which drove him to a fury. David's occasional roping shortfalls were turning out to be his stepson's burden.

The phone rang, a good sign, because it meant it was still paid for. The shrill jangle bounced off the metal walls, sharp as an axe. Butch Jones' voice gruffed over the line, and yes, David could come right away to shoe his horse. He'd run into Butch one night, an embarrassing deal at the EZ Mart gas station, when he and Russell had found themselves out of gas, with a check in hand but post dated until after Christmas. Russell loved to cheer his David up, and made a game out of finding' spare coins to "help" with the budget, deep-diving in the dusty truck for orphan nickels, random dimes, hopeful pennies.
Look
, he'd yell, bringing up a sticky quarter pried from the floor mat. Or
here we go
as he tried to unstick two dimes from the wad of gum.
Still wasn't enough for gas,
David realized. Russell tried to distract him.

"You ever hear why the little strawberry was so upset?

"No."

"She was in a jam!" David grinned at the familiar punch line. They both laughed.

The handful of sticky coins might just get them home. The youngster tending counter sniggered at Russell's flushed face. Both boys went to school together, and David could already hear the taunts his boy would have to suffer. Suddenly, a hand slapped down a $20 bill on the counter. "Take this, boys," and David recognized the gruff voice of his neighbor, Butch Jones.