POOCH

Dennis Swanson

I met Pooch in the summer of my 15th year. He was skinny and smaller than he should have been. He was obviously looking for a friend but he didn’t trust people and so was completely on his own. In all these things we were much alike. I was living with my parents in a small town in Northern Minnesota. It was new town, a mining town, and everybody was from somewhere else. Some had been there longer than others but we were all transplants.

A new high school was almost complete and the next school year we would be in our own school instead of being tenants in someone else’s system. For me there were things that were much more important than a new school. I had never been one of the popular kids, but neither had I been an outcast. Like Pooch I really was skinny and small for my age, and unfortunately, I was not what one would call strong for my size. Add to this my immaturity, I was about two years behind my chronological peers, and it was easy to see why I was a target for many. I had gotten used to being pushed around by the kids who liked to push other kids around; those who found it easiest to push hardest on the kids who were most defenseless. For the most part I made an effort to stay out of their way and had never suffered any real problems, just the minor stuff that all the smaller guys had to put up with. Things had changed in that regard, however, over the past two months. As I look back on it it’s obvious to me that in these matters I was my own worst enemy. I was cursed. I was small and I was smart; never a good combination. I wasn’t street smart or socially smart. I was, however, school smart and very good at putting people down with wise-ass comments. In the past few months I seemed to have lost the ability to keep those comments to myself and had taken to blurting them out without regard for the size or temperament of the butt of my smart-ass remark.

I was suffering for being so mouthy and found it much easier to get through the days avoiding social situations. I was gregarious and at first I found isolation difficult but infinitely safer. I could not, however, completely avoid all contact with my tormenters. The village government, in an

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effort to make life in this isolated and boring little place more bearable for the young people, had put together a program whereby we all had summer employment. I worked 4 hours a day, Monday through Friday, for 65 cents an hour. If you do the math you will see that I made $2.60 each day, which came to $13.00 per week. In the dollars of the time (1959) this really wasn’t too bad for a 15 year old. All I really had to spend money on was cigarettes, Cokes, candy and snacks, and the occasional hamburger. It was nice to have my own money and not have to ask my parents for money every time I went out. The work program only lasted six weeks while we were out of school for twelve weeks. I managed my meager earnings carefully and had enough for the whole summer. In this regard the program was a good deal. The down side was that I often found myself working alongside my tormentors.

You would think that I would have learned to keep my mouth shut by now. I think the problem was that I had no other way to retaliate and I was desperate to win against these morons. My put-downs were sharp, personal, and thinly disguised as humor. I paid a price for each of them. I was beginning to understand the sage advice; “Never get into a battle of wits with an unarmed man”. Most days I suffered through work and avoided my peers for the rest of the day. It was this avoidance that led to my chance meeting with Pooch.

It was a very small town and there were not many places for me to spend time, entire afternoons, sometimes, entire days, without encountering the people I was avoiding. I liked the forest and the town was surrounded by it. Hell, that part of Minnesota is comprised of only four elements; lakes, towns, mines, and forests. The lakes and the towns are, for the most part small, the mines and the forests are huge. they are also refuge. The forest began just across the street from our house and it went on forever, stopping only for the occasional lake and for the mine. I had spent many days and innumerable hours in the woods and knew all the trails and paths. Except for the abandoned potato fields at the West

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end the entire village was surrounded by the woods. There wasn’t any place in the forest that I hadn’t been. I could go anywhere I wanted to on the North, East and South sides of town and never encounter a soul.

I had a favorite place to spend my time and visited it at least three times a week. It was a place on the shores of Birch Lake close to Timber Bay Resort. To get to it I had to hike through the woods behind a couple of the streets to the road that lead to the mine. After crossing that road I would parallel it, cross Birch Lake Road and continue until I came to the power line. When I got to the power line there was a big flat rock that I liked to sit on and smoke a cigarette before walking the power line up the hill. Some days I’d spend an hour just sitting there enjoying the quiet and the safety. For me it was a place without troubles.

One day while I was enjoying myself at the smoking rock I saw movement in the brush. The woods was full of little creatures and their movements didn’t usually hold my attention for very long. This, however, was not one of the little creatures of the forest. My first thought was brush wolf, what most folk call coyote, but while they were plentiful they were seldom seen and never this close to town, and they generally avoided humans. I had never seen one, not even from a distance. The thing was the right size for a coyote but a coyote here made no sense. Then I got a better view and realized that it was just a dog. It was obvious that one of his parents was a German Shepherd. His other parent’s background was a mystery. He was watching me from behind some brush, standing motionless, wary, ready to run. I looked him in the eye and he stared back. I didn’t make any sudden moves and we must have spent two or three minutes just looking at each other. I finally spoke to him, something like “hey boy, whatcha lookin’ for?” or some such thing. I never did know the proper thing to say to a dog when you first meet him. At the sound of my voice he started backing up. I tried again, more “doggie-talk” nonsense. He backed up a few more feet, turned, and headed off into the woods.

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I, for my part, got back on my feet and headed up the hill. It took about 10 minutes to get to the top. A couple minutes further on I came to the pine plantation and swung off to my left and followed the edge of the plantation toward Birch Lake. This was always a pleasant walk. The going was easy, the pines cast shade everywhere, and there was little underbrush. It was about a mile and a half from where the plantation began to the Timber Bay property. Some days I would hike it quickly and get out to the lakeshore in about 40 minutes. Other days I would more or less wander along the trail without concern for how long the walk would take. This day was one of those wandering ones. About 20 minutes after starting along the edge of the pines I stopped to light another cigarette. So far I hadn’t covered more than a half a mile but it wasn’t important, I had all the rest of the day with no where to go and, I hoped, no people to see. As I put out my match and exhaled my first drag on the cigarette I looked back down the trail and there, about 30 yards away, was the damned dog. This time it wasn’t hiding in the bushes but was right out in the open.

The dog’s past behavior made me believe that calling to him or talking to him was going to be fruitless so I resumed my walk towards the lake without a word. I continued to wander, never hurrying but not stopping for long periods either. I saw the dog each time I glanced back down the trail, always about the same distance from me. When I got to Timber Bay I hung a left and walked down a hill to the shore. Here the forest came right up to the water and the fallen trees and occasional boulders made for comfortable seating. Most days when I came here I would sit and watch the lake until the afternoon was gone and I had to hurry back in order to be home in time for supper. It was always better to be on time for a meal than to incur the wrath and the third degree of my mother. Like most 15 year olds I considered any questions to be the third degree.

At the lake there were always loons and ducks to watch, and once in a while I would see one or two of the

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local muskrats or beavers. There were plenty of songbirds and squirrels in the trees and I would sometimes see a porcupine or a weasel. Lots of things to keep me entertained. If the animals weren’t enough entertainment there were usually fishermen on the lake. The were seldom aware that some teenaged loner was watching their efforts as they casted and cursed in an effort to entice a big walleye or an even bigger northern pike. I found a dry place to settle in for the next hour or two, lit a cigarette and looked back toward the pines. No dog. OK, no problem. I wasn’t much of a dog guy anyway. A couple of minutes later I heard a rustling behind me and turned to look but couldn’t see anything moving. I went back to watching the lake. I never felt really bad about being forced into solitude. While like most kids I was, as I said, gregarious, by now I had also found solitude to be necessary and comfortable.

I didn’t hear any more stirrings in the woods and I figured the dog had given up following me and I forgot about him. My afternoon passed quietly and when I got to the point when I knew I could just make it home in time to avoid problems I got up and started back on the trail. I don’t know what made me look back at where I had been sitting but when I did there was the dog, laying exactly where I had sat, his head resting on a leg, looking at me as I walked away. He looked kind of sad laying there but if I spent time trying to befriend him I would be late and I just didn’t want to pay the price. I turned and kept walking all the way back to the power line without stopping. At the power line I looked back and there was the dog, again about 30 yards behind me. With no time to waste I hurried on home the same way I had come and didn’t see the dog again. I made it home in time for the meal and the only inquiry from Ma was “Where have you been?” and I gave my standard answer of “In the woods.” without elaboration.

The next morning I had to go to work for my 2 dollars and 60 cents. That day I had to work at the municipal water plant with 3 guys I was not very fond of. I knew the feeling to be mutual. Some of the filters at the water plant needed

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cleaning, specifically the sand filters. This required the guy who ran the plant to shut off the water to a specific filter. There were three sand filters. Each filter housing was a steel cylinder about 7 feet high and maybe 5 feet in diameter. The sand inside was about 2 feet deep and its purpose was to filter out particulate. It didn’t purify, it simply took particles out of the water. Cleaning the filter meant that the sand and trapped particulate had to be removed and fresh, clean sand put in. In order to do this somebody had to climb into the filter tank in order to shovel the sand into a bucket and pass it out. To enter the tank you had to remove a hatch that, in order to withstand the pressure of the system, was secured by about 10 nuts on big studs. The hatch was big enough for an average size man to pass through with some difficulty and only one of three of us was too big for the hatch. I, of course, was the smallest. Guess who had to go into the filter tank.

We started at 9 am, were scheduled for a half hour lunch at 11:30 and we would be off the clock at 1:30 in the afternoon. I shoveled the sand into the bucket and passed it out while the other 3 pretty much stood around and goofed off. Nobody would spell me in the tank but it really wasn’t too bad; with no supervisor on the job when I got tired I simply stopped working and sat back and rested. Then came lunch time. As I was filling the last bucket-full the hatch opening went dark. I first thought they had to be just screwing around, teasing me into thinking they were going to lock me in the filter. Then they started putting nuts on the studs so that the hatch cover would be secured. Since I wasn’t on real good terms with any of them I didn’t expect to go to lunch with them but I never imagined they would seal me up in the filter. I figured they would just put the cover on in a way that I could push it off and climb out on my own. I was really surprised when I heard the nuts being put on. They only put three of the ten on and they didn’t tighten them with a wrench, just hand tightened them. Then they went to lunch, leaving me in the filter. I pushed on the hatch cover and it moved about an inch out but it would not fall off the studs. I spent my lunch break sitting by myself in the

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filter. My mind, of course, examined the worst case possibilities right away, and I spent the entire time terrified that the guy who ran the plant would see the hatch back on the filter, think we were done with the job and open the valve. I pretty much knew that that would not happen but it’s hard to think logically in a situation like that when you’re 15. I was thankful that the hatch was not on so tight that I was in complete darkness; that would have been hard to bear.

When my co-workers returned and removed the hatch I had a bucket of sand ready for them and resumed working without a comment about what they had done. They snickered and baited me but I ignored their comments and went about the work at hand. The guy in charge of the project showed up at about 1:15, had me get out of the filter and sealed it up. At 1:30 I walked away, knowing I was heading for the woods and some peace. I also knew my summer wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.

I had forgotten about the dog and didn’t go back to the lake trail for a couple days. When I did return it was on a Saturday morning. I told Ma I was going for a long hike and she made me a sandwich which she put in a brown paper bag along with an orange. As I left she gave me the usual admonition: “Be home on time for supper!” I simply said “ok” and left for the lake.

When I got to the smoking rock I lit up and sat down. I looked back towards Birch Lake Road and there was the dog again, standing still, staring at me. I wasn’t inclined to waste my time or breath trying to coax him to come to me so I finished my weed and got on my way. The dog followed. This time he was only a few feet behind me – kind of like we were almost together but not quite. He followed me all the way to the lake and spent the entire day there with me. When I sat he sat, close enough that we were together but far enough away that I couldn’t pet him. When I walked along the shore he walked with me, close but all the time out of reach. At the end of the day he walked with me as far as the smoking rock. There he sat down and watched me as I

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walked away. I felt kinda bad for him being all alone. While he hadn’t been a whole lot of company it had been nice to not be completely alone all day.

I had no idea how he was managing to survive nourishment-wise; he was really scrawny. I felt sorry for him, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be hungry all the time. Life in our house was not always happy or peaceful but there was always food. The grocery store was closed on Sundays in those days but on Monday after work I spent some of my hard-earned money on the dog; six cans of bargain-priced dog food – the big size. I worked my way through the woods to the smoking rock, but since I wasn’t coming from home I approached from the other direction. The dog must have heard me coming because when I stepped into the clear of the power line he was sitting there looking at me. I wondered then how he knew it was me. If it been someone else he would have disappeared. Since I came from the opposite direction from the usual, how did he know it was me? I still wonder about that.

I walked over to the smoking rock and sat down. As before he was near, but not near enough to pet. We looked at each other for a few seconds and after lighting a weed I said, “Pooch, I think your going to like what I brought for you”. I guess that’s when I named him “Pooch”. I took a can of dog food out of the bag and opened it with a knife I always carried in my pocket. It was one of those Boy Scout “kamp-king” knives; not “Swiss Army” but with a few tools including a somewhat primitive can opener. Using the knife I scooped the dog food out onto a flat rock about 8 or 10 feet away from my usual seat. Pooch watched intently. I’m pretty sure he wanted desperately to get into that mound of food but was afraid to come that close to a human. Somebody must have really hurt this dog to make him so timid. As soon as I had emptied the can I moved back to my usual place and Pooch, keeping an eye on me the whole way, moved in on dinner. He positioned himself so he could easily watch me and began eating. I had expected him to wolf it down as quickly as he could but he instead ate at a

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very normal pace. Maybe he wasn’t as hungry as I thought, maybe he was just naturally skinny like me? I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case and that the truth was that the dog had learned to control his eating, probably at someone’s unnecessarily harsh hand.

It took Pooch a few minutes to finish his meal. When he was done he sat and looked at me; he didn’t make a sound, didn’t wag his tail, nothing. He just looked at me. I got up and started up the power line trail and he fell in behind me, again close but out of petting range. We spent the whole day on the lake shore and when we returned to the smoking rock I opened another can of food for him and watched as he ate it. Same routine as earlier. I stayed for a few minutes, I had timed it so I could linger a little and still get home in time for supper. When I left he was sitting by his food rock, watching me leave. While he was eating I had stowed the remaining four cans of dog food in the brush just off the clearing. This was easier than taking it home and being queried about why I spending my money on dog food.

Over the next couple weeks I spent quite a few days with Pooch. I bought more food for him and he was putting some meat on his bones. He looked healthier and had more energy. His behavior began to change as his health improved. He gained confidence both in himself and in my trustworthiness. He walked right alongside me when we hiked and when I sat he found a place within inches of me. At some point he began to allow me to pet him, but it was obvious that he was uncomfortable with my hands and was only tolerating, not enjoying, so I stopped. He seemed happy with that decision.

One day, toward the end of the summer, after I sat down and lit a cigarette at the lake he came closer to me than usual. He laid down and put his head on my outstretched leg. He looked up at me for a few moments, then closed his eyes and went to sleep. I guess I had finally earned his trust.

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Pooch was my one success for the entire summer. Working with guys who made no bones about not liking me made at least part of every day difficult. Over the course of the 12 week school vacation I got into 4 fights. In the first one I got a bloody nose and a fat lip. The lesson learned in this fight was that I couldn’t fight. This lesson came in handy in the following three fights. In those, rather than trying to inflict damage on my opponent I settled for protecting myself from injury for as long as it took to wear my adversary out. I found that if you get real close to someone who is trying to punch you, he can’t get anything on the punch and the blows are all superficial. Protecting my face from the first couple of blows, I would move in, lock my arms around the guy with my head cheek to cheek with him. My opponents were generally only a little bigger and not too much stronger than me. If I held on they couldn’t punch me anywhere that could hurt me and they couldn’t head butt me. I was vulnerable to a knee in the groin but since it was all I had to worry about I was always way ahead of any attempt. Sooner or later my opponent would declare himself the victor and the fight would end. I didn’t care about winning, I cared about getting hurt or not. The bigger guys generally didn’t fight with smaller guys. They bullied, pushed, teased, and made life miserable but there were lines they didn’t cross. It was a small town, everybody knew everything that happened, and nobody wanted a reputation for picking fights with kids who were not his own size.

I continued to feed Pooch through the summer. He and I had a routine and it varied little. He got a can of food at the smoking and eating rock while I had a cigarette. We walked up to the pines and headed out to the lake. He walked alongside me but not real close. He never got in my way, never tripped me up, never whined, never barked, and over the entire summer I only heard him growl once. At the lake one day an unknown animal that he thought was a danger walked by pretty close to us. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a bear – most of the time when a bear is real close you can smell it. I could hear whatever it was but since it wasn’t a bear I wasn’t worried about it. Pooch, on the other hand,

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really didn’t like this animal and got between me and the rustling sounds and began growling. Whatever it was it didn’t want to tangle with Pooch and changed course away from our sitting area. I figured based on his behavior that Pooch and I were now best friends. At the end of each day the routine took us back to the smoking and eating rock for another can of food and another cigarette. I had to remember to leave the lake a few minutes earlier than needed for getting home in time so I could stop for a time while he ate. I didn’t mind, he seemed to appreciate the grub.

One day a couple of weeks after school had resumed I went to the smoking rock to take a walk with Pooch. For the first time in weeks he didn’t show. I walked to the lake and went through my usual routine but the dog never appeared. There was no point in calling him, he didn’t know his name was Pooch – I had, because of his reaction the day we met, never talked to him; I had spoken so seldom around him I’m sure he didn’t even know the sound of my voice. I walked that trail many times over the next few weeks, all without seeing Pooch. When deer hunting season came I stayed out of the forest; you weren’t allowed in the woods without red clothing so that you were distinguishable from a deer. I often wondered if I looked like a deer when I wasn’t clad in red. By the time I got back to the lake trail there was four or five inches of snow on the ground.

I liked the woods in the winter, but it could be bitter cold even if there wasn’t a lot of snow and I had to walk a little more carefully. If you slipped and fell and somehow hurt yourself you might not be found for a quite while and when it’s below freezing you can be in danger in a short time. Still, it was a beautiful walk, the pine plantation was probably the most serene place I had ever been. I’m sure I wouldn’t have called it “serene” in those days, it wasn’t a word a 15 year old miner’s kid used, but that doesn’t change the fact of its serenity. I walked that trail whenever I had the time. I couldn’t go there after school because that far North it gets dark too early to be climbing snow-covered rocky

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hills. I went to the lake trail on weekends, sometimes both days. Pooch was never there.

When Christmas vacation came I could be in the woods every day. One day I went to the lake trail right after lunch. The snow was still not very deep and it was a nice day – sunny and in the 30s. When I got to my smoking rock I saw that an animal had been there recently. I couldn’t tell exactly when but it seemed to me that it couldn’t have been long ago. The tracks, as best I could tell, where that of a dog. It had milled around my smoking rock and around Pooch’s eating rock. It had actually lain on my smoking rock right in the place I liked to sit. It had lain there for some time, long enough to melt the snow on the rock so that part of the impression it had left was down to bare rock. From the rock the tracks led up the power line hill. I probably would have followed them in any direction but since they were going my way there wasn’t even a decision to make. The tracks followed my usual route all the way to the lake. When I got to the lake and to my favorite sitting place there was Pooch, laying right where I would sit. He was watching me approach. He hadn’t changed his way of doing things since I had seen him last. He didn’t wag his tail and didn’t make a sound. When I got to him he stood up to let me sit down in my place. Then he lay back down and rested his head on my leg, looking up at me. He closed his eyes and napped for about 15 minutes. During that time he didn’t move a muscle. When he awakened he slowly stood up, his face now at the same height as mine. He looked at me for a moment, surprised the hell out me by licking my face once, then he turned and walked away; not retracing our trail tracks but making new tracks, heading West along the shore, toward the several year-round homes that had been built on the lake about two miles away. As I watched him go I hoped he had found a family to share life with, somebody who wouldn’t demand playfulness and, even more importantly, someone that he could protect from the rustlings in the woods.

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