OL

DAVENPORT
-A Man’s Best Friend-
Friend-
A Tale Of Joy & Loss
By: Dr. Jeff Higgason
I am up late night with boring gar-
It was a wet, foggy, early morning
bage typing keeping me company. I am try-
standoff on Monroe Avenue. Ultimately, the rac-
ing by leaps and bounds to get and keep
coon let out a hiss and jumped off the cans and
busy. Recently being bestowed with a totally
took off down the street. I uttered a quick, “After
unaffordable termination from my job – ace
him Davenport!” The ol hound chased that rac-
male secretary and filing jockey at a local
coon about a block and a half down. I hollered,
senior’s home. The truth is I was caught
“Davenport, come back boy!” He did one of
stealing adult diapers from the supply closet.
those amazing canine zero radius turn arounds.
I was taking them home to housetrain our
Returned to where I was standing and let me
family’s new dog - Davenport.
pick up his leash. He walked back inside the
He sort of showed up one day and we
warm house pompous, a proud puppy. He had
took him in. Guessing him to be about 5 to 6
served his master well. He was the only one
months old he is a heavy mongrel hound. Al-
home to hang out with me these past few weeks.
most a “kneehigher”, he appears to be of
So you can imagine my horror of return-
some sort of golden retriever and some sort
ing home one morning from fetching milk and
of husky mix. Luckily at the time of my dis-
donuts and finding poor Davenport dead, in the
charging he was already house broken.
road in front of our house. My wife said she saw
I noticed him to be a faithful, trusting,
the garbage truck flatten the dog and the truck
and a loyal sort of sluggish dog. Very protec-
operators acted as though they really did not
tive. The general rule with this dog is simple-
even notice that they had hit an animal or maybe
-Davenport does not attack, he defends! He
a person! Dutifully, they snatched up our gar-
has a keen intellect that gives him that inher- bage bags and headed down the street. I could
ent “coolness”. One morning during his early
tell by the way she was shaking that she was
morning walk we both caught a rotund rac-
physically in shock. She told me that she had
coon rummaging through the garbage. We all waited for me to get back before she went out
froze. Ol’ Davenport sat at my side staring at and collected the dog, lest the children see it.
the loathsome creature on top of the trash
can.
Apparently, a few more cars had come by in
that time and with every deft roll over Dav-
enport they rubbed in the fact that he was
becoming a popular speed bump that morn-
ing. I was stunned, at first mostly by the
irony. Just the sheer fact that he died in the
instant our garbage was threatened; he was
killed in the line of protecting our stuff. Our
stuff. He knows that some of the cans are in
fact, dog food cans. It’s officially our stuff.
HE knows the dog food smell makes me
vomit and he appreciates the fact he gets to
eat the gruesome stuff.
He was in fact, a good dog. So as my
wife turned around to go inside the warm
house and give the kids some of the donuts
and milk. I solemnly walked out to the street
in front of our house to pick up old Daven-
port.
I remember one summer back home
our neighbors across the street had gotten a
new little yappy dog, Zippy. One of those
small wire-haired breeds with a temperament
maximized by its ultra-hyper state of mind.
He would run at you barking and charging.
Snarling and biting when you casually
kicked him aside.
They found him after the snow and ice
had melted. He was part of the rut that ran
underneath our row of mailboxes. It was a
deep mud hole, splashed down and gouged
into the earth into a permanent indentation.
Apparently it was my dad that had discov-
ered the remains of the dog on the ground in
front of the mailboxes. And the little mutt
endured a winter of continuously being run
over by the mailman and the huge school
buses that could barely stop at the spot at the
bottom of the hill. Those big yellow mon-
sters were helpless on the snow and ice.
You’d see the bus clearing the top of the
hill and then in an instant it was slipping
and sliding recklessly to the bus stop and
would slowly halt as the radiator was hiss-
ing and steaming inches from your nose.
My father went and told the neighbor
that he had found their little rat weasel shit dog
in “the dip in the road” and offered the advice
that a spade or shovel would come in handy in
extricating the putrid, squished, preserved by
the winter time road salt body of their former
canine. The plan was to remove the dog
quickly. You know, “lest the children find it”.
The fact is the old man had started to
notice the arrival of the springtime bringing to
life the rotten odor of the animal. And he had
to face it everyday with that walk out to the
mailbox. That decaying, road kill stink. They
pulled the dog from the rut and he had been
squished to the point his body had conformed
permanently to the shape of the dip in the road.
They pulled it free and buried it. The kids
watched as they stuffed him into a lawn bag.
So I found a big garbage bag and put
poor Davenport in it. He was sort of frozen so
luckily it wasn’t too bad.
I loaded the dog into the rear of the
van and I searched town looking for places
were the people had their trash out. I found a
house with pile of garbage, toasters, TVs, com-
puter parts, a stool that was broken and various
other things.
As I quickly pulled up to the spot, the
rear hatch was slowly, hissing open. I grabbed
the bag quickly out of the van and selected a
nice spot to rest him by, and then propped him
up against a toaster oven and an old micro-
wave. I had wondered if the resident’s of the
house had simply given up on appliances or
maybe decided on a whole new selection dur-
ing an afternoon at Sears. So there sat the dog.
I couldn’t really see him as I drove away. Paul
Harvey was on. I know Davenport was proud
to go out with the trash. Eternally standing
guard. And all I had to tell the kids was that the
dog just ran away one morning.
The part of Davenport was played by
“Humphrey” and myself as “me”.