A Short Journey-or Two

"Steak Dinner!?"

My mother had been calling out for the dog outside for the last 20 minutes, and I had been getting yelled at for 10 of those minutes to get outside and circle the property. "What am I going to look for, obviously he is not here. If he were home, he'd come to the door to return in the house. He has done this before, who the heck knows where he is off, its Matt's dog, send him after it." I barked.

My brother has a dog, on our family farm. The dog's name is Luke, he was a basset hound and this is how he scored steak dinners for life.

Luke had been making disappearances in infrequent, yet noticeably increasing amounts. We had no idea where he would have been going. We had suspicions, but not received calls from neighbours, shelters or police. We were begin to get worried he was heading to the back wooded area and spending time with the coyotes. We had lost a number of animals to those bandits and realistically, we were concerned of a few things that might happen.

When my brother, sister and I got home from school, the first thing we were trained to do, was to put the dogs outside to go pee. The dogs were not always locked up, because well I mean, they need to be able to run around. You need ed to keep your eyes on them though or they'd be gone. We would keep, an eye on them, usually, for me it would have been while I'm on the phone "tying up the phone line, as my parents would have put it." and for my sister, it would have been while she was starting her homework. My brother, would either tie them up or just allow my sister or I to take care of it.

We'd also take them out to the barn to let them run around while we did chores, but again-if you aren't watching them, they'll sneak off on ya. Like I mentioned before, they would not run away forever, they would always come back, just sometimes it was 3 AM, or the next morning.

Eventually my parents made the decision that we need to get a bit strict with Luke as he was the trouble maker off the lot. We'd tie him and the others would generally stay put. Oh he hated that, he howled and barked at us to take him off the chain so he could run or join us in the barn. One of the funniest things to watch and yet one of the most alarming, was when we would be in the barn just finishing up chores and my Ma would let him off the chain and we could hear bounding in the distance accompanied by the jingle of his collar. "Oh great! Ma let him off the chain again-seriously!?" His tongue would be waving in the wind and his short stubby legs clearing the uneven ground, spontaneous barks fired out as he expected geese, and ducks to make way.

One of these nights, when he disappeared, he didn't come back. There were a few times this happened, except this time he wasn't returning mucked up and smelling of ditch water from chasing musk rats. He was clean, perky looking, satisfied.

I called my Dad to let him know Luke took off before I even had a chance to chain him up, I was going to let him run for a bit, but he just took off the second I turned my back. My Dad asked me to call up the neighbours and see if he showed up there. No answer. To my surprise, we got a call a little later from the neighbours saying that they just got my message, Luke was in doors with them and they all just finished having dinner, "they all". Our neighbour was going to drive Luke back over.

I wasn't really aware of the context "all", I figured, maybe they had dinner guests or something. My Dad, Ma and I were outside talking to our neighbour, catching up and collecting Luke. My Dad thanked our neighbour and my neighbour said, "Oh it's always a delight when Luke comes over for dinner, my wife loves having him over, ever since our dog passed away. You know, its actually quite funny, she even sets a spot for him on the floor, when he doesn't come for dinner, she ends up leaving it outside-I told her she shouldn't encourage him, but he is quite a lovable little guy eh?"

The three of us looked at Luke, oh-he knew. My Ma laughed and asked, "What do you give him?"

The neighbour said, well it was steak night tonight, but generally, you know whatever. Our dog, used to eat everything."

I looked at the dog, my dad and I laughed, waved to our neighbour and went back in where I laughed even harder. My Dad blew a gasket, mostly because we used to give the neighbour a lot of grief when his dog would come over and rip apart our free range chicken stock or torment our barn cats. Embarrassed is a word, hilarious is another. My Ma was convinced that Luke was just playing the system too well, doesn't like "dog food" and table scraps so he goes over for a five star meal at Casa A Le Neighbours.

Oh Luke.