The Legend of Girl the Dog Grows...

Shreveport, La. - Many of you know my dog Girl- a black and brown fuzzy-faced mixed breed with no tail whatsoever. I am twenty six and she has been a part of my life for twelve and a half years now. I even have a picture of us playing together when I still look like a boy in my face and stature. I think back about all the life moments we’ve shared, albeit unintentionally, and I always sit back and smile a half smile. It’s a strange moment for a man when he realizes that the one person he has shared more of his life with than anybody…is actually a dog.

I guess it’s the stuff people write books about. She followed me around as a boy in the Bee House Valley, swimming and running. She followed me around in college, swimming and running. She followed me off to the Rockies, where she did some swimming and running. Then she followed me to Waring, we she did LOTS of swimming and running. Then she followed me to Tennessee, where, you guessed it, she did more swimming and running.

But things change. Now we are in Shreveport and Girl is thirteen and a half years old. She doesn’t swim anymore unless I am in the water with her and she is wearing a nifty little life vest Donna bought for her. (Technically it’s not swimming, I suppose. More like guided floating.) And she doesn’t really run like she used to. A slight jog maybe. She is for all purposes like grandma now, who is content to sit on the front porch and lift her nose to the breeze and rock slowly. But I think she likes this role because for a lifetime she has been in the middle of every adventure. Nowadays, she has a sidekick, Hart, whose job it is to stir up trouble. (He does enough running for all of us.)

But there is the hint that she still yearns for the adventure of her younger days. If you ask anyone who knows her (which at this point is probably thousands of people) Girl is a legend.

She survived two porcupine attacks by the same porcupine in the same spot a year apart—two trips to the same vet to do the same exact procedure. She had porcupine quills in her face, nose, through her tongue, her ears and her neck. And she didn’t even whine.

Once, she almost got washed over a waterfall on the Bee House Creek during a major flood. I jumped in to pull her from the tree she was clinging to. The air temperature that day was forty degrees so we were both a little cold and wet afterward.

I remember once in college, while on a walk in the desert, a rattlesnake coiled and rattled about three feet from me. Girl jumped between us and started barking crazily. She would not back away from it so I had to pull her by her back legs away from the venomous snake. That was right around the same time she appeared in a short film I did at school as one of the main characters.

When I went up to Wind River, Girl took on a substitute role as a rodeo dog at the ranch when I was a rodeo clown. She promptly fell asleep in the middle of the arena much to the delight of the crowd. Also at Wind River, Girl chased off a feisty Rocky Mountain black bear from the middle of the camp. Every single hair on her back, from her nose to where her tail should have been, stood straight up. She had hairs stand up that even she didn’t know about.

The adventures continued in Waring where she befriended the whole damn town unbeknownst to me. I only discovered it when people were saying hi to her and calling her by name- people that I didn’t even know. I soon discovered that every day Girl would leave the house after I left for work and would go the Post Office, the General Store, Vera’s House, and spend the afternoon at the local Servpro office before returning home. My friend Kelton noted Girl was the only dog he’d ever seen that “had an agenda.”

Also in Waring, Girl had a river reed that pierced her leg and required medical care, not to mention some poorly placed vomits in public places and the infamous picnic-table-tipping incident at Steaknite in which an obese woman leaned over to feed girl and the whole picnic table flipped over backward, steaks and all…which Girl ate.

That last Waring adventure was when her picture ended up in a local magazine which had a circulation of 50,000 readers.

As if those weren’t enough, there was the time she disappeared from the back of my truck en route to Shreveport from Nashville only to turn up two weeks later, FORTY miles from where she disappeared. The lady that found her said Girl was asleep with her goats in her goat barn on the banks of the Tennessee River. She weighed thirty eight pounds when she turned up. She usually weighed fifty. My good friend Pepper made a six hour roundtrip from Nashville to pick Girl up. Girl stills sleeps on the quilt that the old goat-lady gave her. She sustained some nerve damaged at some point during that adventure, and now her back feet drag a little when she walks. But the vet says it’s not a big deal.

In April, when I was in New Mexico working on a film, Girl, my sister and brother-in-law, and all their pets rode out an F-2 tornado that ripped through San Angelo and demolished a warehouse two blocks from their house. Oddly enough, this was the second time Girl had ridden out a tornado. (I have never done it.)

As if that wasn’t enough, while visiting the Bee House Creek last April, a well-intentioned neighbor spotted Girl and thought she was the wild dog that had been killing his lambs. So, yet another trip to the porcupine vet only for the vet to say “if you’re gonna get shot, that was as good a place as any.” The bullet went between her spinal chord and shoulder blade, missing both by an inch and piercing only muscle.

Girl, the Legend, walked out of the vet’s office twenty minutes after we got there.

In the month to follow, I had to lance her wound several time because it kept getting a buildup of fluid. This solidified my belief that she is one of the toughest dog’s I’ll ever meet. Every time I lanced her wound, she stood, trustingly, with no flinching, and no whining.

That brings me to last night. Just when you think the old cantankerous dog could not think of anything else to do, she pulled yet another legendary stunt—she swallowed a fish hook. Oooooooouch.

We went to the river, and near its bank, while Hart was playing his favorite game of Save the Drowning Stick, Girl nosed around as she always does. Only this time, some careless fisherman had left a fishy-smelling hook on the ground.

And Girl ate it.

I noticed right away that she was trying to hack something up. I stuck my finger waaaaaaaaaaaay back in her throat and felt the hook, stuck firmly in the very back of her throat, through her tongue.

Here we go again. We rode to the animal hospital, Girl gazing stoically at the passing scenery with a lead fishing weight hanging from her mouth. The hospital attendant briefly did not believe me because Girl was standing there acting as if nothing had happened. I quick examination proved otherwise and the nurse commented that Girl didn’t seemed to be bothered.

“She’s been through worse,” I quipped.

The other waiting room members were completely befuddled when Girl knelt down and fell asleep. I was not surprised. She was tough, and she knew exactly where she was and why she was there. She knew this song and dance.

After a brief three hour wait, and $320 later, Girl came hopping and happy out of the back. She jogged right up to me and threw her right paw against my knee as if to say “Thanks, now let’s get out of here.” The nurse gave me a litany of medicines and instructions and sent us home. Girl curled up quickly in her dog house and fell asleep. It was just another day in the legendary life of Girl the Dog.

This morning I awoke at five thirty to the sound of her barking at a squirrel perhaps, or something suspicious. I smiled and rolled over and went back to sleep. I am assured that the adventures are not over yet, and when that day comes and her adventures finally do end, she will have had no regrets and will truly be remembered, by all of us that know her, as a legend.

That's the story of my life...

A Field Guide to Surviving an Economic Crisis

Shreveport, La - Many of you are wondering what, if anything, you can do to weather the current economic crisis. The answer is simple: we as a country should practice sound economic principles. Not to digress but, if you are a principal at a school, you should also practice extremely sound principal principles as well. If you happen to teach English and you are a principal, it’s essential that you practice principal principles with your principle participles. The good news however, is that knowing principal participles is not as important.

But I digress. I am not an expert on economic matters, but my dad is, and being a good father he often instilled in me good financial principles. When I was a child, we often played games dealing with money. My favorite financial game my dad and I played was called “Uncle Sam vs. The Taxpayer.” My father would come in my room in the dark of night posing as Uncle Sam. While I slept unaware he would then take my piggy bank and leave, and when I awoke and started crying he would say, “I’m going to come back next year and take even more money.”

Those memories still make me smile.

Now, all these years later, those lessons are coming in quite handy. I was not surprised by the recent $768 ska-jillion economic bailout bill signed into law. After all, like my father taught me, there’s nothing wrong with stealing from the American people, as long as it’s legal.

You might be wondering if any plan of action exists for the average American to deal with the overwhelming crisis and avoid a possible depression. The good news is: not really. However, there are some futile things you can do to help keep our economy afloat.

1. Panic. Nothing is more American than panicking. If you have invested heavily on Wall Street, you will want to immediately sell everything and start screaming. If you have cash, trade it in for gold and then bury said gold five to seven paces from your back stoop. Train your dog to remember where you buried the gold by also burying a bone with the gold. Remember, never trust banks and if a teller ask if you want to make a deposit, laugh sardonically and then walk backward out of the bank.

2. Buy Real Estate. Immediately go buy seven new houses. Use each house as collateral against the next, that way if you cannot make the mortgage payments, your diabolic circle of houses will all foreclose on each other, leaving you completely unharmed.

3. Open a Small Business. Apply to the federal government for a small-business loan. When they ask you what size loan you need, tell them you need $700 billion. (Clarify that $240 million of that is your severance package for when you fire yourself.)

4. Call your Congressman. Then hang up the phone as soon as he answers.

5. Invest. Now is the perfect time to invest. Mainly in things like plane tickets and undisclosed foreign properties.

6. Buy a brand new car. Go out and buy the biggest car you can find and make
sure it gets really bad gas mileage. Most importantly, make sure you car payment is more than your rent. Then, when the economy gets worse, scratch your head trying to figure out why it is you can’t pay all your bills. Then blame someone else for all your problems.

As you can see, it’s easy for the average American to help prevent a financial crisis. Remember, the Chinese word for “crisis” is made up of two characters. One means “disaster.” The other means “caused by decades of unchecked American greed and corruption.”

With any luck, the bailout package will help stabilize our economy and begin the slow tedious process of getting our country back on track to the point where the average American can once again go completely boinkers with their credit and not feel guilty about it. In the meantime, continue to walk backward out of banks.

That's the story of my life...