In Honor of National Dog Day
Snake, the Dog
When I was a little girl, we were given a German Shepherd pup named Droopy. I don’t remember who gave us the big, sweet mutt, because we only had him a few days before he got distemper and died a horrible, puking death.
That’s when Snakeman entered the family. I was only five, and Mom said she was just plain ignorant. We didn’t know distemper lived in the soil for up to six months after an infected animal has been there.
The Snake was six months old when my stepdad, Bull, brought him home. Snake was a big reddish-brown dog, half boxer, half pit-bull, and when he was happy, he smiled and wiggled from the top of his broad, black nose to the tip of his short, stub tail.
Bull named him Simon, but the dog wiggled so much, as most boxers do, that Bull often commented, “that silly dog has hips like a snake.” So in the course of a few days, he went from being called Simon to being called Snakehips, then Snakeman, and later just Snake, or The Snake.
He got distemper immediately. It made Mama furious. The vet hadn’t told her about the germ living on in the soil, and he hadn’t been able to save Droopy, so she took it upon herself to save The Snake.
She rubbed his chest with Vicks VapoRub, gave him baby aspirin for the fever, and force fed him chicken noodle soup to rehydrate him after he began throwing up the same way poor Droop had done. I don’t remember what she did for the diarrhea, but I’m sure he had that, too.
In addition to the VapoRub and soup, Mama wrapped Snake in a blanket and slept with him on the couch. She also informed him that he was not allowed to die because there was no way she was going through that again, so he’d better get it in his head that he was going to live. It took about three days of Vicks, baby aspirin, and chicken noodle soup, but he pulled through. And brother, let me tell you, that dog knew he was part of the family by the time he’d knocked on Heaven’s door and no one answered. He would have laid down his life for Mama, or for any one of us. I like to believe we would have done the same for him. In short, that old Snake was “some dog.”
©AnnSwann
If you would like to read more about Snakeman, here is a link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1535056681/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i15
Oh, my goodness – one used copy in paperback.
The photo on the back of TAKERS (the cover below) is the fictionalized version of Snake. He is also in that novel. I dearly love his judgmental expression. www.authorAnnSwann.com
