Sixty-Five Years of Four-Legged Friends

By Robert G. Smith

I have tried many things in my working years: steel worker, sweeper sales, campground
owner, auto salvage yard operator, owner of an air compressor sales and service company, and
owner of a miscellaneous metals center. I retired and sold everything. A year into retirement I
volunteered to help with a project at church and found myself agreeing to take on the church
maintenance, which lasted for four years.
I have always had a more than passing interest in the arts. Over the years Ive worked with
wood, copper, iron, steel, and in my spare time I painted, mostly outdoor scenes with
acrylics. Then I discovered glass etching.
In my early years, the everyday work of providing for and raising a family didnt leave a lot
of time for serious commitment to my artworks, but since my second retirement I have been
able to fl y.
Ive etched sixteen windows for St. Anthony Catholic Church, Brooksville, FL; ten windows
for The Florida Medical Center, Springhill, FL; six doors for St. Thomas Catholic Church,
Homosassa, FL. I have works in restaurants, attorneys offi ces and many homes including
that of Architect Hal Lenox.
My artworks can be viewed on my web site in completed custom projects and gallery at,
www.artworksbyrobertgsmith.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453555347

Book preview

Contents

Fluffy

Ornery

Laddie

Lindy

Duchess

Duke

Queen

Prince

Tippy

Tish-Tash

Big Sam

Beck’n

Misty Kitty

Bruno

Julie 4th

Sheba

Mimi

Domino

Sparky

Star

Jo-Jo

Cappy

Leo and the Girls

Peewee

Brutes, Bimbo, and Bess

Spitz

Katy

(Beck’n’s Duplicate)

Dontos

Princess

Merrily

Midnight

Steffany

Boomer

Sassy and Bumper

Bumper

Fuzzy Kitty

Daffy Duck

Fluffy

fluffy.JPG

was six years old when my first four-legged friend came to live with us. She was a four-week-old spitz puppy. She was a little white ball of fur in my father’s large hand as he knelt down to show me. Today I can still feel the excitement of that day and how soft she was to the touch.

We named her Fluffy, and as we both grew, we became inseparable. Summer days, if I was weeding in the garden on my hands and knees, she would lie behind me as I moved down the row and would jump up to move with me, then lie down again over and over.

Where we lived, a railroad freight line ran past the front of our house on the other side of the road. A creek meandered south on the other side of the railroad. Just south of our house, the creek veered away and the railroad crossed the road.

My boyhood friends, Bob and Tom, lived there in the V where the creek and railroad parted company. The train, pulling no more than six cars, would crawl south every morning with its deliveries, then back every evening with the empty cars it found that day.

I was eight or nine years old, and the three of us and Fluffy were playing on the tracks, throwing the railroad slag to see who could throw the farthest. Fluffy was searching the side of the tracks nose to the ground, identifying all the different scents of unknown visitors.

Old Misery, as everyone called the train because of its slow sluggish passage, was coming from the south. The engineer always blew the train horn for us, if we were on the tracks or not. We would wave, and he would toot the horn and wave back as he passed.

That day, the three of us stepped off the tracks and stood there, waving to the engineer, when we heard Fluffy scream. We looked to the sound to see her rolling down the bank with blood flying everywhere. We rushed to her and found her left rear leg and half of her beautiful tail missing.

She must have suddenly realized that we were on the other side of the train and had run around the front of the slow-moving train. I’ve always maintained the idea that she was checking on us. She made it except for that leg and half that flag waver of a tail.

Bob and Tom’s father was home, and Bob ran to get him. When he came, he looked at her and said she needed to be put out of her misery. Faced with three bawling kids, he agreed to carry her up to our house and call my dad. Dad hurried home while my mother tended Fluffy as best she could. Her thighbone was shattered.

He loaded her in the car and rushed her to the vet. By now, Fluffy was a limp little body. We left her with the vet, and that night, I cried myself to sleep. My mother tried, but I couldn’t be comforted.

The next morning, the vet called. Fluffy had made it through the night. He cleaned the wound, removed the splintered bone, and now it was up to her. She would be there for two weeks, recovering. The next day, dad took me to see her; when we walked to her kennel cage, I called to her with a break in my voice. She opened her eyes, and the stump of a tail the train left went thump, thump. I heard the vet tell my dad That dog certainly loves that boy.

We visited her every other day during her recovery, and at the end of the two weeks when we went to pick her up, the vet offered to keep her in lieu of the four-hundred-dollar bill. I was horrified, and the tears began to flow before my dad refused. As the years have gone by, I’ve wondered how long it took him to pay that bill. He never mentioned it around me.

Fluffy, for her part, accepted her fate almost as if it hadn’t happened. She resumed her routine at my side. With three legs, she never missed a step. The hip with the missing leg moved the same as if the leg was there, and the other leg made a hop.

Every year, my dad raised and butchered four pigs. One day, my stepmother went to feed them. Dad kept the dry pig food in a fifty-five-gallon drum. When she reached into the drum to scoop out some feed, she felt something furry. Thinking one of the cats had had kittens, she picked it up. When she held it up, she found that she was holding a rat.

With a scream, she flung the thing over her shoulder, out into the garden. Fluffy had been sniffing around the area. As we watched the rat sail through the air, a white streak progressed in the same direction. The rat and Fluffy reached the point of impact at the same time. The rat died.

Fluffy was eleven years old when I woke up one morning and she didn’t jump up and greet me. During the night, she had gone to wait for me at Rainbow Bridge just this side of heaven.

When an animal that has been especially close to someone dies, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food and water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

Animals that were ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them from days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one thing: they miss someone very special to them, the person they left behind.

All of the animals run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; his eager body quivers. Suddenly, he begins to break away from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. Happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your