A Dog Named Crash (standard:Creative non-fiction, 26098 words)
Author: Lenny Chambers	Added: Sep 24 2016	Views/Reads: 2979/1810	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
This is not your standard cute doggy story. Rather, it is a brief memoir of my life and how a Lab helped change it. There are snapshots of life including: childhood on a small farm, a Marine grunt in The Nam, a "Gypsy" fruit picker, a father, e

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plating shop for about a year until the city began to resemble a sad 
movie I had seen too many times.  I felt compelled to leave, and once 
again found myself rambling around the West for the better part of that 
summer.  I returned to Oregon determined to find a place I could call 
home.  Before leaving, I visited my dad Leo, who was still reeling from 
the death of my mother Almay earlier that year.  I thought he needed to 
get away for a while and he agreed to join me on my search.  The 
adventure took about three weeks and Dad gradually drew out of his 
shell enough to enjoy eating good food again, and he regained his 
innate curiosity about what was over the next hill or the next setting 
sun.  He took the opportunity in the warm summer evenings to reveal new 
details about his harsh childhood on a farm and as an Army sergeant in 
World War II.  It turned out to be his last road trip because a year 
later, a series of short strokes left him in a wheelchair. 

At first, we headed south on Interstate 5, looking at listings in Salem,
Roseburg, and Grants Pass.  Later, we followed the two-lane blue 
highways to little towns with names like Drain, Riddle, Umpqua, and 
Glide.  At almost every stop, I met travelers who were newly smitten by 
the beauty and utter charm of rural Oregon.  I grinned to myself, 
knowing that many others before them had become equally captivated and 
wasted little time in abandoning their old home and embracing a new 
life in Oregon.  My own sense of identity as an Oregonian was deeply 
confirmed on that journey.  We ended up in tiny Canyonville (pop. 
1,500) in southern Oregon where I bought a brown and white two-bedroom 
bungalow on a dead-end road, hard against a densely forested mountain.  
It featured a guest house, a shop, and a fenced yard which the realtor 
noted was “big enough for a dog.”  I filled the house with all the 
stuff humans seem to think they need, but it still seemed empty. 

I walked to the Rusty Nail Tavern nearby several times for the first few
weeks, but few of the locals were willing to rub elbows much with a 
long-haired stranger. So, I began to drive to the big, new, and glitzy 
Seven Feathers Casino just outside Canyonville and joined the crowd who 
were as determined as I was to either win a bundle or to meet their 
true love on the crowded dance floor.  Of course, like most, I usually 
ended up broke and alone at the end of the night. 

Canyonville was much closer to California (100 miles from the border)
compared to any place I had lived before, so I decided to reach out to 
my friends who lived there.   My first phone call was to Pat McCoy, an 
old high school buddy, who lived some three-hundred miles away in 
Hayfork, an old mill town which had evolved into a marijuana growing 
haven, in the mountains above Redding.  I told him about my new place 
and invited him to bring his family to visit, but he explained that 
they couldn't travel because their dog, an Australian Shepard and Black 
Labrador mix named Alicia, recently had a litter of nine puppies.  He 
went on to explain that for several weeks, his family had been forced 
to take turns pulling pups away from the exhausted mom's teats because 
not only was it a large litter, but every pup was also unusually big.   
Then he said, “Hold on!  I think that one of these dogs would be great 
for you. You said you have a big backyard, and I know you like big 
dogs. The sire is a huge, purebred, Black Lab—maybe a hundred-thirty or 
so.” 

I thought about his offer for a moment as my gaze drifted to an old
picture on the wall of my grinning thirteen-year-old son embracing his 
beloved dog Flash (a handsome black and white German shorthair mix).  
For a moment, I even thought I heard his familiar bark.  I suddenly 
realized that maybe God was trying to send me another four-legged 
friend.   I had never sought a dog in the classifieds or the pound. 
Instead, dogs seemed to find me.  Some ran to my side for protection 
from man or beast.  Occasionally, a couple of dogs would follow me for 
a mile or so, ignoring all manner of other dogs and people until I 
yelled “Git!”  So, I told Pat, who was well aware of my long connection 
with dogs, “OK, buddy, it's a done deal, just don't give ‘em all away 
till I get there.” 

A couple of weeks later I found myself sitting in Pat's double-wide
trailer in the small mill town in the mountains above Redding.  Pat had 
lost most of the long blonde hair he sported in the late sixties and he 
was much thinner, but he still was living a hippie life style.  His 
wife and two kids had gone somewhere for the day but I told Pat I 
couldn't wait for their return. (I had to return to work the next day.) 
  Alicia, who seemed to like me, followed us when we went outside the 
trailer to a small shed which had a small chicken wire enclosure just 
outside the closed door.             Inside the shed the four remaining 
fat puppies had just polished off a bowl of puppy chow.  Alicia watched 
me closely, but showed little concern as I drew closer to the litter.  
I said, “Pat, let them all out in the yard for a bit. Leave me alone 
for a while, but keep the door open.”   At first, the puppies quickly 
surrounded me in a briefly chaotic moment, but were soon running all 
over the yard.  Only one, a male, repeatedly left his boisterous litter 
mates to come back into the shed and ran in circles at my feet. 
Eventually, he stopped and sat calmly beside me. Finally, he yipped at 
me and put his surprisingly large paw on my foot repeatedly.  I picked 
him up and he just looked at me with those soft Lab eyes and I was 
hooked.  When Pat returned, I said “I know you don't want any money for 
him, but I brought a fifth of Irish whiskey, would you take that?”  He 
agreed and after a few drinks, I headed back down the long and winding 
mountain road. 

The puppy seemed happy enough, but as we reached Interstate 5, he began
puking and it became apparent that he had a belly full of worms.  I 
cleaned the seats as best I could with some rags and water, opened the 
window wide and drove to Redding where I hosed off the car and him. 
Later, I fed him meatballs stuffed with worm meds.  I bathed him again 
as soon as I got home, where he seemed wildly happy, checking out all 
corners of the yard and house. 

He filled the house with his energy; it no longer seemed empty. As I
began to take him on walks, people would take the time to comment on 
the “cute puppy” and chat with me. Soon, a few people came to visit me, 
often with their own dog in tow. For me, another period of lonely 
isolation had ended.  At first I didn't give him a name, calling him 
bonehead or dummy mostly.  I decided to call him Crash because of his 
striking ability to stumble, resulting in crash scenes with doors, 
chairs, food bowls, and anything small enough to stub his big paws. 

Labs are notorious for having a prolonged childhood.  Crash was no
exception. When he was about a year old, he had grown to about eighty 
pounds with long legs and boundless energy.  He seemed unable to stay 
still for long.  He also often ignored commands he had responded to 
quite well to just a couple months earlier (another Lab trait).  I kept 
him on a long, woven wire line in the back yard because I was afraid he 
would run off.  I also thought the line would discourage his occasional 
efforts to jump over the five-foot fence, an impossible height to clear 
for most dogs. 

I was in the kitchen one day when I heard what sounded like muffled
whimpers in the back yard.  I opened the back door but Crash was not in 
sight.  I quickly opened the back gate and spotted Crash who was 
hanging off the top of the fence by his tether and choke chain which 
had drawn tight. The claws on his feet were trying to get traction in 
the cedar fence.  I lifted him and quickly released the chain.  He fell 
to the ground wheezing a bit, but he soon recovered. Apparently, he had 
somehow used a wooden box near the base of the fence as a means to 
catapult over the top.  He never tried scaling the fence again. 

On another occasion, my neighbor Jimmy, who was normally a pleasant guy,
angrily confronted me in my front yard. Jimmy was a member of the Cow 
Creek Tribe and was easily the biggest Indian I had ever seen.  He was 
not one to ignore and I was alarmed when he said, “We've got a problem. 
Ya better come with me. I wanna show ya what your damn dog did when we 
were gone last week.”  I followed him to his back yard a few blocks 
away and I was amazed at the damage done. Crash was guilty because his 
delinquent adventure had been witnessed by a few locals who ran him 
off.  Jimmy had put in a koi pond, an eight-foot, metal weather vane 
and numerous flowers that circled the roughly four-hundred-square-feet 
area.  Crash had somehow managed to tip over the weather vane, toss 
five or six koi onto the grass, and dig up most of the flowers, roots 
and all.  I had to write a four-hundred-dollar check that day.  I knew 
dogs do not understand bad behavior unless they are confronted as soon 
as the act is committed, but I still took Crash over to the scene of 
his crime and stuck his nose in the dead fish and kicked his butt and 
repeatedly called him “bad”; a word which I knew he understood.  
Veterinarians had told me it was common for people to give up keeping 
their Lab because of such behavior. They always counseled folks that if 
they remained patient for a couple years, they would be rewarded with a 
calm, obedient, and loving dog who would become a dear friend.  They 
also noted that Labrador Retrievers have been America's favorite breed 
for thirty years. 

I grew up on a three hundred-acre farm where we had four or five dairy
cattle, an occasional pig, a few dozen chickens, and maybe six rabbits 
at any given time. It was nestled in a high valley about four miles 
from Morton, Washington (population 1,200) in the shadow of Mount 
Rainier.  Our Chambers family farm was pretty remote. At the time there 
was no interstate highway. We had to use a series of two-lane roads to 
travel sixty miles to Tacoma, which was the nearest big city.  The old, 
twisting road to our farm was tricky to drive on in the snowy winters. 
Some of our neighbors were not seen often because they chose not to go 
to town unless they needed supplies. Early on, we began to realize they 
were odd bunch. Town folk laughed at them sometimes. There was an 
albino family with scary pink eyes. Down the road apiece, the Coleman 
family had been making lip-burning moonshine for generations. Three 
miles away, the two sons of the Sanderson family had a history of 
driving drunk and winning games of billiards.  One ended up driving his 
car over a cliff and the other blew his head off with a shotgun beneath 
the only traffic light in Morton. 

Visitors were few, so every dog we had always barked loudly at the sound
of a car entering the gravel driveway to our two-story farmhouse.  The 
dogs also barked when they became aware of something happening 
elsewhere on the farm. They often chased deer out of our big garden.  
And when they heard the frantic cackles of hens being terrorized by a 
coyote trying to steal an egg, or a chicken, they were quick to 
respond. They were never brave enough to attack the invader(s), but 
their loud barks were usually enough to chase them off. Some of our 
dogs were not beyond trying to sneak an egg or two either, but we 
curbed that urge by carefully injecting red hot sauce inside the eggs, 
causing them to howl and search frantically for water. 

People often nurture a heroic “Lassie” image of farm dogs that (at least
on TV) can do such things as save a drowning child, attack a bad guy or 
free the horses from a burning barn.  Our dogs were not that heroic.  
They did do a few chores, such as retrieving the few ring necked 
pheasants my brother and I shot, helping to herd the cows to the barn, 
or attacking the possums who were constantly eating our fruit and 
vegetables.  However, for my brother, sister and me, their true value 
lay in their dedication to play with us.  They were always ready to 
join us as we romped through the fields, swam in the old mill pond or 
rode our broom horses into the sunset. 

I remember one of our dogs, a white German Shepherd named King, who
periodically tried to get at skunks hiding under our porch.  Each time 
he had another run-in with a skunk under the porch, my mother was 
forced to wash all our clothes.  We could not go to school for a day or 
two before the smell dissipated.  King would then be soaked in tomato 
juice and given a soapy bath. Often, he was ostracized to an old tool 
shed far from the house where he was chained and given only water as 
part of his punishment.  However, we were so grateful for our brief 
“vacation” we snuck snacks from the kitchen to give to him whenever we 
could sneak away from the house. 

We had another dog called Tippy, a medium-size, brown mutt, who somehow
became buddies with a fat, young, white pig we named Joey. I can't 
remember why Joey was not penned up like others before him, but he took 
the opportunity to hang out with Tippy. They slept together and 
occasionally disappeared into the deep woods for a few hours.  They had 
a polished begging act which consisted of a weird merger of barks and 
oinks that we usually rewarded with bones for Tippy and fruit for Joey. 
 They also knew exactly when the school bus would arrive each afternoon 
and would sit beside each other patiently waiting to greet us. It was a 
ritual that always delighted the other kids as well as the bus driver. 

When my wife Sue and I began raising our own family many years later, we
always made sure we had a dog, not only for protection and 
entertainment, but also as a means for our kids (Jack and May) to learn 
about responsibility. It was their job to feed and water their 
four-legged buddies.  In return, they learned that dogs were capable of 
loving them unconditionally. 

Crash descended from an Australian Shepherd bitch and a huge black
Labrador Retriever. At 115 pounds, he never became as heavy (130 
pounds) as his sire, but he did grow a bit taller, measuring thirty 
inches tall. From a distance, he looked like a classic black Labrador 
Retriever, but his unusual height, lightly brindled legs and two tiny 
white spots (one on his chest, another on his butt) indicated he was 
not a pure bred. But he did have many of the breed's characteristics 
including a thick, water-resistant coat, a big head with a prominent 
ridge, silky ears, webbed feet, and an oh-so-sweet disposition.  He was 
also pretty full of himself. He would prance and swagger wherever and 
whenever dogs or humans approached him. 

While I had many dogs before, Crash was the only one who became at once
my roommate, protector, comedian and confidant.  Because there was 
often no one else in my home for years, Crash became intensely aware of 
what I feared, hated, and loved.  Often I sensed that an intruder was 
observing me as I was watching TV.  Invariably, the source of my 
paranoia turned out to be Crash, sitting quietly on his haunches, 
staring at me with his ears straight up and head cocked as he tried so 
hard to understand why I would react to a show with tears, anger, or 
loud laughter. 

My big dog always had shown a respectful curiosity about all people,
nature and critters.  Of course, his curiosity got him into trouble 
sometimes, but as he grew older and well known, it became obvious that 
he had developed into a creature with serious charisma.  There were 
times when people who were complete strangers (to me) would call out 
something like, “Hi, Crash.  What's up?”  And young boys, who seem to 
bond so easily with dogs, would shout “Hey mister—co-o-o-o-l dog!” 

Crash knew my family well and they realized how much my dog meant to me.
My dear mom did not have much chance to interact with Crash because her 
dialysis treatments consumed much of her later years. However, because 
my brother Lee and Dad had often visited me in Canyonville, they were 
able to watch Crash grow from a goofy puppy into a big dog who always 
kept them laughing.  For my sister Louise, Crash invoked nostalgic 
memories of the two successive black Labs who were a big part of her 
life as she and her husband Ed raised their three daughters in rural 
Lewis County.  She would kneel and hug him tightly like he was an old 
friend who had finally found his way home. 

Crash and I tried to visit them all when we came to Morton, but we
always started with my dad who stayed in the Assisted Living portion of 
the Morton Hospital. We never asked about the hospital's pet policy and 
went straight to Dad's room, where he was usually lying in his bed 
while watching TV or reading.  Crash would carefully get up on his 
hospital bed and lie quietly as my father's normally expressionless 
face broke into a broad grin as he stroked his luxurious coat.  Often, 
Dad would tell stories about Old Shep, the Border Collie his uncle had 
given him when he arrived on the dairy farm soon after he became a 
ten-year-old orphan.  Crash so thoroughly charmed the nurses that they 
eventually pressed him into service as an unofficial “Comfort Dog.”  
When they looked into his soft, brown eyes, and petted his thick, black 
coat, many smiling old folks spoke wistfully about dogs they had long 
ago. 

We would then cross town to see my older brother Lee at his apartment,
one of four in a brick building he owned.  When I stayed overnight, Lee 
let Crash stay inside, a privilege no other dog (except his own) had 
ever been granted. Lee's legs were turning dark from a lack of blood 
flow (a heart murmur developed when he was about eleven.)  He could not 
move around well and his legs would weep fluids (mostly water).  Crash 
took note of his condition immediately. For the rest of the stay he 
would remain faithfully at the foot of Lee's recliner, close enough for 
Lee to pat his head. Crash tended to ignore me during those visits.  He 
made no effort to come with me as I ran errands or visited friends. His 
focus remained on Lee until we had to return home. 

Their bond was forged when Lee and Dad came to visit me in Canyonville,
usually after an overnight stay in Sutherlin, where many years earlier, 
Lee and I had been partners in a second-hand and antique store named 
“Two Brothers Trading Post”.  Lee liked to throw big chunks of wood 
into the raging Umpqua River near Canyonville for Crash to retrieve.  
He also marveled at how he was able to stand his ground as the fast 
winter current broke against his broad chest. 

He also came to see me when I moved to St. Helens, but Dad did not
because he was unable to drive or travel anymore. Lee was changing, 
too. His heart was having a hard time pumping blood to his 
six-foot-tall, two-hundred and seventy-pound frame. Nevertheless, he 
was always ready to play with Crash, who eagerly awaited their 
inevitable wrestling matches on the carpet or the lawn. Lee was still 
amazingly strong and could have easily picked Crash up and thrown him, 
and Crash had a big set of teeth that could have ripped into Lee's 
body.  They would nip, hit, and push each other just hard enough to 
create a mock battle. Finally, we would arrive at my sister Louise's 
place by the Tilton River, where I had swam as a boy.  She had visited 
my homes less often than Lee and Dad, but Crash still seemed to 
remember her well.   Louise would not let Crash in her tidy house 
because her male Chihuahua mix would go berserk.    Crash was left 
outside to wander, but we knew he would not venture far from me.  
Before I left, she always hugged Crash tightly like he was an old 
friend who had finally found his way home. 

My two kids, Jack and May, had met Crash a few times over the years, but
they couldn't visit often because May lived in Amsterdam with her Dutch 
husband and Jack had an Air Force career which took him all over the 
world. His wife and family of four joined him sometimes at various 
American bases but they were always far from Oregon. 

In addition to helping me combat loneliness, Crash also helped me deal
with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and understanding the nature 
of death. 

Death was nothing new to me, of course.  I still remember my initial
shock after witnessing the quick and sometimes brutal death of 
chickens, rabbits, hogs, and an occasional cow while growing up on the 
farm.  However, that harsh reality soon evolved in to a routine 
acceptance of animal slaughter as a necessary means to support our 
family.  Even the loss of a pet pig (Joey) or a pet rooster (Randy) 
eventually became acceptable.   Of course, the death of relatives was 
not easy to bear, but they usually died after a long illness or from 
old age, so even as a child, you could see it coming.  So, I did not 
really experience grief until years later, after I spent a tour as a 
Marine grunt in a place we called “The Nam.” 

War makes warriors hypocritical of death.  After I saw yet another
twisted and bloody body, I either responded with intense grief (because 
he was a buddy) or banal indifference (because he was a “gook”).  It 
was only after I came home that I realized all the dead were loved and 
mourned.  I also knew why our leaders always portrayed the enemy as 
evil; killing them becomes easier. That intellectual awareness and the 
passage of time provided some cover for my feelings of guilt.  Time 
stayed frozen in my dreams, however.  For years, those forever young 
and impossibly brave buddies would visit me at night and I would awake 
sweating and scared as hell. 

Apparently, my dreams had also become noisy.  The sounds from my bedroom
would alarm him.  He would then jump down from “his” couch, run into my 
room, and bark loudly until I was awake and coherent enough to pet him 
repeatedly.  Then he would simply lay beside me in the dark quietly 
watching me for any new scream or yell.  I knew he was there because at 
times I would awaken to see his eyes glowing from the moonlight shining 
through my window.  The nightmares never went away completely but they 
occurred less often and with less intensity.  His presence seemed to 
give me great comfort. God, how I loved him for that! 

Death drew close again when members of my family (Chambers) began to
die.  First, my mother, Almay, died at age eighty-three at our family 
farm when her kidneys failed her.  Then, my dad Leo died a few years 
later at the age of ninety-two in a local nursery home.  Two years 
later, my red-headed brother Lee, who was a year older than me, died in 
his apartment in Morton when his weary heart finally failed.  They died 
in such close succession that I was not able to fully mourn them 
separately.  Each time I attended a funeral, Crash insisted on staying 
close to me.  Somehow, he sensed that funerals were a sad affair that 
hurt me.  He would patiently wait for me just outside the church doors, 
ignoring the mourners as they filed in.  But, when he rode with me to 
the cemetery, he was strangely content to stay in the car.   He would 
watch me closely through the window as I peered down at another casket 
beneath another grey sky.  After I slogged back to my car, he would 
lick my tears and lay his head on my lap. 

Canyonville had become much less comfortable because of the strongly
conservative populace who embraced the staunchly fundamentalist 
churches tucked away in the deep woods.  For a while, a black man named 
Mack stayed with me. Tavern patrons grew hostile when we stopped for a 
few beers, and young kids stopped and stared at him as we drove by on 
the main street because many of them had never seen black people. 

So, I moved to St. Helens in 2002 and bought a bungalow which,
coincidentally enough, was my third consecutive home on a dead-end 
street.  It was bordered by a forested gully in the back of the house 
and the front yard (with no fence) faced directly across the street 
from an elementary school which was full of laughing kids during 
recess. Crash had just turned two-years-old and really liked the kids.  
He would watch them play during recess from the porch but, when the 
afternoon bell rang, he would go to the nearby crosswalk where his 
young fans would often surround him.  Crash gleefully accepted the pets 
and hugs, but it caused a delay for the parents who had been waiting 
patiently to pick up the kids.  I eventually had to put him on a dog 
run just before the end of the school day. 

I also took him on daily walks all over town on a leash, usually ending
up on the banks of that great river of the west, the Columbia.	 We also 
walked to visit buddies who awaited Crash's arrival at their separate 
digs with treats that most dogs simply do not see, to wit: a fresh, 
bone-in, ten-pound ham, a tall pile of barbecued steak bones, a dozen 
hot dogs, as well as the occasional home delivery of an elk or deer 
leg, which he happily dragged around the back yard until I couldn't 
stand the stench anymore. 

Crash had learned the layout of the city pretty well early on, and
because he had earned my trust, I often gave him the freedom to wander, 
so consequently, he was sometimes busted as a “dog at large.” There 
always was a dog license with my phone number on his choke collar.  
After each call from the pound to come pick up my “delinquent” dog, the 
fine doubled.  When it reached a painful forty-dollar level, I was 
beginning to think I needed to tie him up or build a fence.  However, 
Crash used his jail time wisely by charming the hell out of everybody 
in sight.  The young staff and volunteers thought he was more than a 
little entertaining and spoiled him with goodies.  At some point, I 
received a phone call and was told “Mr. Chambers, don't sweat it. We 
have Crash here, but there is no fine this time and, oh, by the way, 
could he stay until we can take him for a long walk?”  When I 
eventually went to get him, Crash was hanging out in the office with 
his new found friends, oblivious to the sound of a dozen barking dogs 
as a young lady stroked his belly.  He was never picked up again.  He 
was free forever. 

His turf included Jack Ass Canyon (actually a gulch) which bordered my
back yard.  It was overgrown with ivy and blackberries, but Crash 
managed to chase the deer that used the gulch as a trail.  Jack Ass 
Trail was similar to many others that served to divide the city into 
pleasant neighborhoods. They were created by volcanic basalt flows 
originating from an eruption of Mount St. Helens thousands of years 
ago.  Crash never dragged any venison home of course, but he was happy 
to just chase them.  He would come home twenty or thirty minutes later, 
totally exhausted, his paws bleeding, tongue flopping, and jowls 
dripping with classic Labrador drool. 

Most mornings he ambled out of my front yard down a well-worn path which
began where the street ended beneath a canopy of tall firs. The long 
and narrow trail led to a neighborhood of about twenty aging 
ranch-style homes. Many of the houses sported chain link fences 
patrolled by big dogs. I never knew what he did over there, but he 
often came back with a bagel in his mouth, and I was surprised I never 
heard any loud barking coming from that area. Nor did I hear from any 
angry folks. No reports were filed with the animal enforcement office 
either.  He often came back from these morning turf patrols with a 
greasy bone or a bagel, another gift from an unknown local fan.  He 
became one of those prized pillars of small town society—the Local 
Yokel. 

My covered porch was about eight feet tall, and 35 square feet It
provided Crash with a handy perch where he could observe a wide chunk 
of his kingdom. No one approached my cottage without being loudly 
announced by Crash.  Unlike many dog owners, I never punished or 
admonished Crash for barking, because it was his job. Friends received 
only a brief bark or two and required no response from me.  But 
strangers were greeted by a very loud and deep “BOOF!!”, which briefly 
stopped many in their tracks.  He never bit or lunged at anyone, and my 
quick response (“It's OK, Crash. It's OK.”) put people at ease because 
he quit barking. 

Other dogs in the area did not fare as well as Crash.  I remember one
summer day when Crash spotted Carole, the city dog catcher, on the 
sidewalk a short distance away. They knew each other well because of 
his time spent at the pound. He came to her and sat quietly as she 
filled out a citation and handed it to a large, angry woman whose dog 
had briefly strayed from her yard. She pointed at Crash and I could her 
yell, “Why don't ya give that god damned black dog a ticket? He don't 
stay in his yard neither!” Carole said, “I will cite him in a minute, 
after I am done here.”  I called for Crash and he ran home. Carole soon 
followed. As the miffed lady stood and stared, I put a leash on Crash 
and apologized profusely. Carole whipped out her citation book and 
loudly told me about the loose dog law. Crash and I were sufficiently 
humbled by her comments. She quickly wrote a ticket and left.  The 
neighbor lady grinned with glee. I went inside my house and read the 
ticket and began to laugh because, other than a few scribbles, she had 
written only three words, “I love Crash!”  Fortunately, the mad 
neighbor moved a couple weeks later. I saw Carole at the market often, 
and she would always ask how Crash was. Sometimes she would spot us on 
a sidewalk and pull her city truck over, step out and spend a few 
minutes rubbing Crash's big bonehead.  He loved it. 

Friends often described Crash as a “man's dog” but that did not mean he
disliked women.  He liked everybody.  From a short distance away, I 
watched him as he routinely amused men and women by standing on the 
sidewalk crosswise (so no one could ignore him) and leaning heavily 
against their legs as they petted him.  He liked guys a bit more 
because he never lived with any women and men were simply around more.  
In addition, he knew that women did not play like men.  For instance, 
Crash enjoyed men because they would “attack” him by kicking at him as 
he playfully tried to get them off balance by jerking their pant legs.  
 A few fifty-year-old guys became kids again when, rain or shine, they 
engaged the black dog with lengthy wrestling matches. They always let 
Crash emerge as the victor. In addition, Crash drooled often.  The 
dripping saliva stopped when he got out of the heat or quit running. 
However, he would often sling goobers across his muzzle, thereby 
creating a big, slimy and white “X.”  That act did not endear him to 
the fair sex either. 

After I retired from my jack-of-all-master-of-none career, Crash and I
went on a number of road trips to Washington, Oregon, and California. 
While we were travelling, Crash rode in a number of rigs, but he 
preferred to be in a pickup.  His favorite ride was my vintage black 
and silver '86 GMC Caballero (similar to the more common Chevy El 
Camino). The truck was powered by a small block V8 and got some 
admiring looks from a number of guys. Crash was secured in the bed of 
the truck by a cable which ran across the bed width. He could stand and 
see over the roof. Metal stops in the cable prevented him from getting 
too close to the shallow sides. We became quite a road show for 
oncoming drivers who pointed their fingers and laughed at the sight of 
a big dog with floppy ears flying wildly in the wind while the wind 
puffed out his cheeks. I still remember when he first caught site of 
the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Oregon.  He emerged on top of a dune 
and froze in utter bewilderment at the endless panorama of sand, sea, 
and sky. He turned around and looked at me as if to ask, “Are you 
kidding me? Is this real?” He ran to the water's edge and began playing 
a hilarious game of tag with the tide.  Twenty minutes later, after a 
quick glance at me, he began swimming out into the ocean. He soon 
figured out that it was easier to paddle at an angle to the waves 
instead of directly into them. He also surfed the waves on his belly 
when he came back, prompting laughter from the people who saw him. 

At times I was afraid that he would drown as he swam almost out of
sight, but he showed little or no fatigue when he returned. Some of the 
oceanic treasure he scored for me included a lifejacket, a baby doll, 
and a nicely carved wooden cane. When he found dog paddling a bit 
boring, he would run on the beach, joyfully scattering the sea gulls 
who crossed his path. 

The ocean was not his only source of wet glee. He spent hours swimming
in creeks and rivers, even as a puppy.  He could not swim much in the 
winter but he liked to venture out on the creek ice. Sometimes his 
weight caused the ice to break and he was forced to take a quick swim 
in the frigid water. Other times, he found himself temporarily marooned 
on a slowly moving ice floe, which he rode until it floated close 
enough to the bank for him to hop off. 

In the spring, I liked to take him into the mountains. We did not try to
reach any summits, but we managed to climb high enough to get marvelous 
views of the familiar rivers and valleys beneath Mount Rainier. From 
Mount Shasta, Interstate 5 looked like a busy ant trail.  During the 
winter, we would only venture high enough out to find snow which deep 
enough for Crash to wallow in. He liked to use his chest and nose like 
a plow to create an uphill trail and then roll clumsily down it. 

In the summer, we took long trips into some of Oregon's forest
preserves. I followed Crash as he expertly led me down countless trails 
that were unknown to either of us. He instinctively ran point as well 
as the dogs we trained for patrol duty in Viet Nam. He would silently 
move ahead of me about thirty feet while alternately moving left and 
right another fifteen or twenty feet.  If I was too far behind him, he 
simply waited until I narrowed the gap.  If his nose or ears detected 
something he could not see, he would freeze, lift his ears, and point 
with his tail. He waited for me to evaluate the situation before we 
moved on. The only time he barked was if he got a quick glimpse of a 
deer, or if other hikers burst upon the scene.  Then, he would quickly 
step backwards ten feet or so but he did not turn and run. He waited 
for my command before moving. Of course, he was never challenged by a 
bear or a cougar.  Either one would have undoubtedly caused him to 
flee. His behavior was largely instinctive.  All I ever did was to give 
him a few basic commands and to provide him the opportunity to hang out 
in nature. 

His ability to judge people was also useful.  I watched him react to
various hunters and hikers who stopped for a brief chat. Those he liked 
were greeted with a wagging tail and a happy demeanor.  Those he did 
not like he sullenly backed away from even if they extended a hand to 
greet him while voicing the usual, “Good boy, nice dog...” comment. 

He was good at running point. Squirrels were the only creatures that
tempted him to abandon his position. He would return from the chase a 
bit later, panting heavily as his long tongue dripped saliva.  He also 
managed to get his coat full of “sticky weed” which stuck like Velcro 
to both of us. As far as I know, he really had no idea what to do if he 
caught up with his prey.  He just loved the chase, whether he was 
successful or not. He did come close once on a cold winter day when he 
spotted a big doe on the banks of a rain swollen creek. She jumped in 
and Crash followed her. She looked back with frightened eyes as Crash 
swam within a few feet from her. But when she reached the opposite 
bank, she bounded away gracefully. Crash tore after her, but she was 
long gone. 

Squirrels drove him crazy because they were way usually too fast on the
ground and once in a tree, they would heckle him with chirps and taunt 
him by descending the tree just out of his reach and then quickly 
retreating to higher limbs. Crash responded with vertical lunges that 
made him look stupid as he barked and whined until they disappeared 
into the canopy. Crash never tired of the game but he only scored once 
in his whole life. It happened on a hot summer day. I had slowed my 
pickup to park near a grove of one-hundred-year-old cedars. I was still 
moving when Crash jumped out and hit the ground running. He caught a 
huge red squirrel before he could reach the safety of a tree. As he 
held him in his mouth, the frantic chirping sounds gave way to sounds 
of crunching bones.  He proudly laid the poor bugger at my feet for a 
bit before he started playing with it by tossing it in the air like 
cats so often do.  I buried his trophy later so he couldn't get it. 

Crash was not a trained bird dog like so many Labs, but he seemed to
think he could grab a duck or a goose for dinner, despite numerous 
failures. But the sight of a nearby Great Blue Heron would mesmerize 
him (and me). Instead of attempting a capture by sleuth or speed, he 
would remain dead still, and stare unflinchingly at this 
four-foot-tall, ancient creature even as it lifted off with the 
rhythmic “whoosh” sound of six-foot wings. 

Near St. Helens there was a series of manmade ponds and a
seventy-five-acre park formed in 1976 as part of the overall design for 
the Trojan nuclear plant. When cracked steam tubes released radioactive 
gas in 1992, the plant was taken off line. When they removed the 
500-foot-tall cooling tower by blowing it up, millions watched on 
national TV.  What remained were a series of ponds, picnic grounds, a 
semi-hidden parking lot and several meandering paths through second 
growth fir trees.  Large flocks of Mallard and Muscovy ducks shared the 
water with about sixty White Chinese Swan Geese.  Rainbow Trout were 
planted yearly and caught mostly by youngsters. Some anglers did not 
want to eat the “planters” because they thought (wrongly) they were 
radioactive. 

The biggest draw for most people, however, was the opportunity to
photograph or to feed scraps to the waddling fowl. Crash took great 
care to sneak into the water and follow the ducks, stealthily 
approaching to within seven or eight feet of them, whereupon the ducks 
would fly a short distance away.  Crash always thought he was getting 
close enough to grab one, so he swam on. And on. And on.  I had to call 
or whistle him back after a half hour or he would swim until he was 
exhausted. 

I had to keep Crash on a leash in that area because people were afraid
he would kill some birds. However, when no one else was around, I would 
let him off his leash so he could enjoy another favorite routine; he 
would charge down the beach and send a giant gaggle of white geese into 
the blue sky, filling the air with their angry honks. No goose was ever 
harmed by him; he only wanted to prompt their flight. 

Crash's relations with other dogs were usually friendly. He was always
eager to play with bigger dogs, but he tended to ignore small dogs and 
puppies, even if they were frantic to get his attention. He thought 
they were “pests” and he often sent them scurrying with a loud “Boof!” 

In addition to using standard signals to indicate an eagerness to play
such as wagging his tail like a flag or raising his butt while resting 
his weight on his forearms, Crash would also suddenly run as fast as he 
could in a wide circle that came gradually closer to a potential buddy 
who usually joined in a game of chase. Or, he would plop a stick at the 
feet of a dog as an offering, only to try taking it back in a hilarious 
tug of war.  On rare occasions he would go so far as to lie on his 
back, showing his belly, not as a submissive gesture, but an effort to 
reduce the dog's fear level.  If that signal failed to elicit a 
response, Crash would get up and walk away as if the dog no longer 
existed. 

His sweet nature attracted the attention of two old men who separately
sought out Crash and me whenever they were at the local city park. Both 
men said that their dogs (a big German Shepherd and an unknown mix who 
looked more like a wolverine than a dog) had never socialized with any 
dogs except Crash. Apparently, they both had a history of attacking 
other dogs. Somehow, their aggressive nature simply melted in the 
presence of this playful Lab who did not show fear. For years, each man 
was glad to let his dog loose for a rare opportunity to enjoy a romp 
with Crash. Fortunately, both men never showed up with both dogs at the 
same time or it could have been a scary situation. 

Crash did have a real fear of pit bulls, however. Whenever I saw one
before he did, I quickly leashed him and held him close to my side 
until the dog was gone or I could put him inside my car. He ran to my 
side whenever one ventured close to him. Although, I have admired and 
enjoyed virtually all breeds, I shared his opinion of Pit Bulls.  My 
fear of them stemmed from a couple of earlier incidents in Eugene, 
Oregon many years earlier. One incident occurred when our neighbors, 
who lived across from us on a dead end street, got a year-old Pit Bull. 
The terrier ventured across the street into our unfenced front yard 
where Flash, my son's five-year-old, seventy-pound dog (a male German 
shorthair mix) was lying on the walk. I thought the young pit was 
merely playful as he ran in circles for a bit. Flash ignored him.  
Suddenly the younger, twenty-pound dog lunged at Flash. Because Flash 
had fought bravely and well in a number of battles, I was surprised at 
his quick retreat through the open front door of our house. I was even 
more surprised when the young dog followed Flash, who retreated under a 
bed. The white Pit dove under the bed and quickly got his teeth on the 
base of Flash's neck and began marching towards his throat with quick 
bites. I frantically hit him on his head and feet with a piece of stove 
wood. He didn't even yelp, but he reluctantly let go and bounded out 
the door. The people next door saw the last few minutes of the 
incident. They were apologetic and promised to keep the dog (who did 
not suffer any serious damage) on a tight leash. Flash had some minor 
bite wounds and my anger subsided soon enough. 

Six months later, when another neighbor, a young mother named Mary came
to visit us with her six-month-old boy cradled in her arms.  Later, as 
she walked back to her house, the white Pit, now fully grown, attacked 
them. Mary screamed in fear as she walked backwards as the dog 
repeatedly tried to jump high enough to get at the baby! He managed to 
get ahold of the baby's pink blanket just before I grabbed my splitting 
maul. I managed to get a glancing blow on his back with my first swing. 
He dropped the baby blanket from his and turned to face me.  I yelled, 
“come on, you son-of-a-bitch!”  I was mad enough to kill him but I did 
not follow him as he retreated back to his yard. I called the police 
and they interviewed all the people directly involved as well as other 
neighbors. Many spoke of their fear of the dog and the incidents he had 
provoked. Eventually the dog catcher came and took him away, but not 
before the dog tried to bite him. I do not know what eventually 
happened to the dog, but at the time the city had a no-kill policy. The 
dog's owners blamed me for “making their dog mean.” At any rate, I was 
glad when they moved a few weeks later, even though they left a nasty 
mound of trash in the back yard. 

Crash's fear of Pits stemmed from an attack on him when he was about
five years old. I was at a yard sale looking for stuff to sell on eBay, 
the big, online auction house.   There were lots of hand tools and 
kids' toys set out on five or six plywood tables. Crash was busy 
responding to the pets and greetings of a handful of men. The amiable 
chatter ended when, from about fifty feet away, everyone saw a huge, 
brindled Pit moving toward us with no master in sight. Crash was 
anxiously watching as the Pit began to run straight towards him. 
Someone yelled, “Look out!” as Crash dove under a succession of display 
tables as he tried to escape. Tools, toys, and tables flew everywhere. 
The Pit did get hold of Crash's neck, a move which, of course, has 
proved fatal to many dogs. Crash was lucky because the Pit only managed 
to bite into his classic Lab wattle (a loose stretch of skin which 
dangles from the neck), instead of his jugular vein. Crash was somehow 
able to jerk his head and pull away. I grabbed a pipe wrench and hit 
the dog, who turned and grabbed my pant leg. Then the men joined in 
with a flurry of hits on the dog with various tools. The dog never even 
yelped in pain as he hobbled off across the street and out of sight. No 
one even thought of following him. Several 911 calls were made but I 
soon left with Crash, who was bleeding from his neck, where he had lost 
a small chunk of his waddle. He was panting heavily and collapsed in 
exhaustion as he drooled a mixture of blood and saliva. I took him to a 
vet who gave him a few stitches.  It only took him a week to heal, but 
neither one of us forgot that wild day. 

I was holding Crash's choke chain as Frodo, who was restrained on a
leash, reached the final step onto the deck. The two dogs froze with 
their hackles up and teeth bared.  n a mutual burst of energy, they 
rose up simultaneously on their hind legs, breaking free of our 
grasp(s). Wayne and I were both knocked off our feet. The dogs tore 
into each other viciously.  I yelled at Wayne to pull back on Frodo's 
tail at the same time as I pulled back on Crash's tail. Instead, he 
reached in with his right hand into the snarling teeth and was bitten.  
We managed to separate them, but Wayne had a deep puncture wound that 
took a couple weeks to completely heal. He refused a rabies shot 
because he knew that both dogs were healthy. Neither dog suffered any 
major injury, but they growled at each other from their respective 
yards for a month until Frodo became primarily an inside house dog. 

Crash had a number of bitches who admired him. Some people who jogged or
walked past my house with their dogs returned to ask if their dogs 
could play with Crash.  He remained somewhat aloof but still playful 
with most dogs during these brief meetings. However, if someone showed 
up with a bitch who had just came into heat (usually without the 
owner's knowledge) Crash's behavior changed.  He would strut as if he 
was on a fashion runway, claw the grass and attempt to mount them. He 
succeeded only once. A guy had come by to look at my deck.  He had 
brought his lovely Collie who began playing with Crash.   We briefly 
forgot about the dogs until we heard a loud yelp when Crash happily 
mounted her.  I had to explain to the anxious owner that his dog would 
not get pregnant as Crash had been neutered. One bitch actually became 
obsessed with Crash. The dog, Abby, was owned by my friend Katie who 
would visit me while the dogs played in the yard. However, Crash would 
sometimes bark or nip at Abby because he had grown tired of her 
following him everywhere, and he wanted a break from her dedicated 
attention. 

For three years, Abigail successfully escaped from her yard at least
once a month and went to visit Crash. She would travel at night and had 
to cross four lanes of traffic at some point to get to my house. We 
never figured out her exact route but some people noted that her 
midnight rambles coincided with a number of tipped over garbage cans. 
Abby was sly enough to slip away if Katie let her out to pee or ignored 
her too long as she languished on the porch to cool off in the summer. 
If the garage door was left partially open, she crawled under it.    
Katie would call me and then drive to my house while looking for her 
errant pooch and then continue her search via a circuitous route back 
to her house. Or, she would just call me in the evening with a heads-up 
warning.  Apparently, Abby figured early on that she could escape the 
dog catcher and her master by travelling at night. We worried that she 
would get hit by a car or attacked by dogs. Invariably, Crash would 
awaken me by poking me with his cold nose to inform me that his 
girlfriend was at the door.  She was always tired but also very happy 
to see us. I simply could not punish her other than a few verbal 
reprimands because she was such a cute “criminal.”  Crash would move to 
block access to his food bowl on the back porch until I closed the door 
which led to his food bowl. I never fed her because I did not want to 
further encourage her nocturnal journeys. Crash largely ignored her, 
but she was content to lay down by the big guy as close as she could 
get. Come morning, I would call Katie, who would pick her up 
eventually, but sometimes Abby got to “hang” with Crash for a romp 
outside. When Katie arrived and opened her car door, Abby looked guilty 
as she hunkered down in the back seat. 

She never ended up at the dog pound despite Katie's frequent calls and
Abby became feeble not long after Crash died. She lost a lot of weight 
and began receiving insulin shots to fight diabetes. She had begun to 
go blind but she did try to escape one more time. As the sky grew dark 
late Winter, Katie's neighbors found Abby collapsed in a muddy ditch a 
few blocks from her house. Katie was convinced that the old dog was 
following her nose to find her way to Crash. 

Dogs' reactions to people can be largely predicted by human behavior. 
For instance, people who freeze in their tracks at the sight of a dog 
will prompt their immediate attention.  A sudden, quick movement of the 
hands or feet can be viewed as aggression. We have all seen how dogs 
react to someone approaching them stealthily. If they think someone is 
trying to sneak up on them, they will begin milling back and forth 
while barking loudly.   There have been numerous studies which suggest 
you should not directly meet the gaze of a strange dog because your 
stare could be considered a challenge, especially by alpha males.  Not 
all dogs are this predictable, of course. Canine size does not 
necessarily predict bravery either, hence the old expression, “In a 
dogfight, it's not the size of the dog that matters; it's the size of 
the fight in the dog.” 

Crash had an almost mystical ability to “read” people. He could decide
who was bad and who was good. The majority of my guests he calmly 
accepted. But he would also reject the soothing words or extended hands 
of some people (mostly men), even if I had welcomed them as friends for 
months. He would bark loudly and block their path. I had to yell at him 
to “Shut up and lie down!” He would then go sulk in a dark corner as I 
resumed chatting.  Despite my efforts to convince Crash to befriend 
these men, he would not.  He made a quick and lasting judgment about 
who was trustworthy. Unlike his master, Crash's judgments invariably 
proved to be spot on. It took the passage of time and public 
revelations of their brutality for me to really “see” these people whom 
I had called friends, were anything but.  Fortunately, Crash always 
forgave me for my human stupidity. 

I remember an exception to that scenario, however. When Crash was about
eight years old, we went to a late summer garden party hosted by my 
friend Frank Sargent. I parked a block away because there was no 
parking near his house.  There were about forty people there eagerly 
eating barbecued chicken and oyster shooters washed down with kegs of 
beer. I had been standing in the middle of the yard drinking beer and 
taking an occasional toke of local weed. Suddenly, I saw that Crash, 
who had been mingling with a bunch of women about ten feet away, had 
frozen in place and was staring intently at a clean cut, tall guy who 
had just arrived. I was dumbfounded as Crash bolted towards him with 
his hackles up and teeth bared.  The guy (about thirty years old) was 
backed up against the garage wall and was unable to flee from Crash who 
began barking and growling.  He did not bite him, but held him hostage 
until I was able to grab his choke chain and drag him through the 
parting crowd to my truck. I chewed Crash out and put him on his truck 
bed leash. I returned to apologize to Frank. 

I then noticed the guy had moved from the garage to the far perimeter of
the back yard where he was arguing with Frank. A circle of men 
surrounded them.  Frank yelled, “Get out of here Billy—you're an 
asshole!” and shoved him outside the fence where he quickly disappeared 
into the tree line. I still thought Crash had been way out of line, so 
I tried to apologize for his behavior again after Frank had calmed 
down. He told me, “Don't sweat it.  The bastard got out of jail today, 
and he was pretty drunk. I hired him not long ago and paid him for a 
couple days' work, but I wouldn't hire him again because he was a lazy 
fuck.”  Later an old, retired cop told me Billy was a liar, a thief, a 
sneaky coward, and a speed freak who liked to beat women.  Frank said, 
“He was trying to bum some money from me. I didn't invite him here. 
When he said ‘I outta kill that fuckin' dog', I got pissed and kicked 
him out of here. Crash did the right thing. I'll bet he smelled his 
rot. Bring Crash back to the party—he deserves some chicken.”  Crash, 
of course, had not heard any stories about the guy. Nor had he ever 
seen him before. He was simply one of those dogs who can spot assholes 
quickly, even when humans do not. 

This ability of Crash to reject some guys who I wrongly considered
friends usually came after he had observed them at my place. He rarely 
singled out people for any degree of observation outside of my 
property. He could be counted on to largely ignore people at parties. 
He could beg for goodies with considerable skill, otherwise he would 
just hang out or take a nap at my feet if he got bored. 

I had left Morton in 1971 but returned many times. Over the decades it
became apparent that the town, like so many logging towns of the 
Northwest, had begun to die. I sadly noted the vacant storefronts and 
crumbling sidewalks. I was able to recognize and talk to a number my 
aging former classmates. We would laugh and reminisce about the lives 
we had led so long ago. I began to look outside the nostalgic haze and 
found that the people who stayed here rarely left. Their conversations 
revealed they were fearful of the world outside the mountains 
surrounding them and they rarely ventured far away. I spoke of my 
travels with Crash but they simply could not understand my lifestyle. 
Crash and I were different. Not better, just different. We shared an 
intense curiosity about life beyond their tiny world. Crash and I would 
have gone completely bonkers if we had to stay there. 

As Crash entered his thirteenth year, his muzzle turned white and hip
dysplasia had begun to set in, much to his puzzlement and denial. 
Cataracts were beginning to impair his vision.  There were times when I 
was pretty convinced that his hearing had also deteriorated. He still 
was eager to go places, but he had to be lifted into my truck because 
his hips were too weak. 

His behavior began to evolve. Instead of chasing deer, he just stared at
them from our porch. He no longer “played” with the mallards or 
squirrels. Having been put down quickly by other dogs in minor 
skirmishes because his legs collapsed, he began to lose his strut, his 
pride of self. On our walks, he looked embarrassed if he had to stop 
and sit because his legs and hips hurt. He stopped awakening me each 
morning by sticking his cold nose in my neck. I arose to greet him as 
he gazed at me from his perch on the couch. I watched as he spent a 
minute or two with his front legs extended to the floor before he could 
trust his rear legs to help him down. He continued to enjoy daily walks 
and a short swim. 

When I decided to go on another trip to Costa Rica for two and a half
weeks, I was not terribly concerned about Crash's short term welfare 
because my friend Dave volunteered to take care of Crash, who was also 
his old fishing buddy, while he “house-watched” my cottage. 

I managed to convince my old buddy Jeremiah, who shared my terminally
hip lifestyle, to join me, and soon we flew to San Jose.  We stayed at 
the infamous Hotel Del Rey where we somehow managed to resist the swarm 
of prostitutes who came there from all over the world.  We spent a 
couple of days engaged in a street-level look at the charming old city. 
Then we flew to the mountainous northern border to stay at a ranch 
retreat for five days. We rented a car later and took a meandering trip 
to sandy beaches, dusty small town streets, and open air bars where we 
invariably drank too many Mojitos. 

During the last few years of his life, Crash and I had grown closer as
he reacted to my sadness over the successive deaths of my mother, my 
father, and my brother in a period of about five years.  Crash attended 
those funerals and he closely watched me from inside my car as I stood 
quietly in those invariably cold and wet cemeteries huddled with a 
bunch of kin and old friends all dressed in black.  He would lick my 
tears and put his head on my lap until I was able to go on. Crash knew 
my family because he always was with me when I visited them, but he was 
especially fond of my big (three-hundred-pound, six-footer), red-headed 
brother Lee, because he was the only one who had come to visit me 
often.  In those days, he was well enough to wrestle with Crash.  He 
would endlessly toss sticks in the creek until Crash grew tired. When I 
visited Lee, Crash was allowed to stay overnight at Lee's apartment. My 
brother's legs, which had become darkened by a failing heart for many 
years, did not allow him to be on his feet very long.  He also was in 
considerable pain often. Crash seemed to sense his pain and moved to 
lie at my brother's feet where he remained until Lee went to bed. Crash 
would faithfully resume his place beside Lee the next day. Lee liked to 
reach down and stroke his velvety ears and tell him how good of a dog 
he was. 

The day we returned Dave and Crash were not at my house.  I called him
at “The Tav” and Crash was with him.  I invited other folks to try some 
of my Ron Centanario I had lugged home.  My plan was to surprise Crash, 
so I waited till the front room was full before I snuck out of the 
bathroom and sat down in the dining room.  I could see Crash milling 
about through the legs of standing people.  I whispered “Crashhhhh!” 
His ears perked up as he spotted me across the room. He approached 
slowly, but as I reached out to pet his big head, he turned and walked 
away from me. He looked so sad and tired. He kept some distance from me 
for about fifteen long minutes before returning.  He put his big paw on 
my knee, groaned softly, and laid down at my feet.  I thought maybe he 
had felt abandoned. 

Dave took a sip of rum and haltingly told me the why Crash was acting so
weird.  He told me he was walking with Crash one morning about twenty 
feet away from a steep cliff overlooking the Columbia.  Dave had turned 
his back to pee.  Apparently, Crash's always curious nose brought him 
to the cliff edge where he lost his footing and started to slide 
backwards. Dave said, “At first he tried to dig his claws into the 
ground for traction, and then he went head over heels about sixty feet 
before he landed on his side near the river's edge. He didn't move.  I 
yelled ‘I'm coming, Crash!' and ran down the hill.  It took about ten 
minutes to get fairly close to him, but the thick brush and high tide 
kept me away.  I called for him over and over, and he finally lifted 
his head to look for me.  Then the river got rose enough that he could 
paddle over to me. I was freakin' amazed that he didn't break any bones 
or drown, and he slowly followed me home. 

The story did not end there. Dave wanted to take Crash to a vet that
afternoon but he was broke and had to wait for a friend who would loan 
him some bucks the next morning.  Dave said, “Crash seemed to be okay 
but he was stiffer than usual.” 

At first, he laid down in Dave's bedroom briefly before he puked on the
carpet.  He was taken to the kitchen where he laid down as Dave cleaned 
up. An hour or so later, he quickly stood up, shook himself wildly, and 
stiff-walked to the patio door indicating he wanted to go outside. 
Crash had gone outside many times (usually to take a dump in the weeds) 
at that house and could be trusted to return in a short while.  When he 
did not appear in about twenty minutes, Dave had walked around in an 
ever-enlarging area but could not find him. Dave said, “I called the 
pound, but they didn't have him.  I rounded up some friends to help in 
the search. We repeatedly returned to your house after driving all over 
town but it got dark and folks had to go home.  I tried for another 
hour or so with no luck.” 

Two days later, Cindy went to open her antique store (a favorite haunt
of mine), which had been closed for two days and found Crash huddled by 
the door lying on the wet concrete. He was covered in his own poop. 

Apparently, the big dog was unhurt but, “he looked sad and really
embarrassed” according to Cindy. She immediately called Dave who ended 
up hosing off the dog and the sidewalk. Now I knew why he was oddly 
miffed and remote to me when I first returned a couple days later. Some 
boys said they had seen him outside my house a couple of times, but 
they were not concerned as he was often outside. The poor dog, hurt and 
sick, had tried hard to find me and now that I had returned, he was 
more than a bit upset that I had “abandoned” him.  He forgave me soon 
enough, as all dogs do. I promised myself never to leave him again. 

Spring came early that year and I hoped the warm days would sooth
Crash's hips. My vet, who had known Crash for years, said “I can't 
perform any surgery that will help him or cure him.  Nor can I give him 
some medication that would relieve his pain for very long.  Take him 
home and hold him close. 

And so it was that Crash's daily walks changed; he walked very slow and
travelled less distance each day. He would stop and sit down 
periodically with a bemused “who me?” expression as if the situation 
was completely normal.  He would act like he was only sitting down to 
peer into the distance to look at something “important.”  I played 
along, telling him “It's alright buddy.  I will wait.” 

We took one last trip to Morton to see my sister and show off my newly
acquired white Jaguar sedan.  About an hour after we took off, Crash 
began to whine loudly in the back seat, his signal that he needed to 
relieve himself. I could not find a quick and safe place to pull over 
for a few minutes.  Consequently, for the first time since he was a 
puppy, he had dumped in my back seat.  He was visibly embarrassed; he 
had to absorb another blow to his pride. I cleaned up the dog and the 
car and for the return trip home I used a temporary rear seat cover.  I 
knew then that it was time to put this wonderful dog down.  He deserved 
to keep what dignity he had left. 

For years, I had admonished people who had asked me to put down their
dog. I often said that when the time came, it was their responsibility 
to deal with their pet's death and that it was a task others did not 
relish either. I had carefully stuck a 22 rifle in the ears of failing 
dogs in years past. I pulled the trigger on my wife's dog, Heidel, and 
my dog, Casey, on the same day. I dug two graves that day. It was hard 
ground to dig, but I remember that my sweat helped to quell my tears. 

However, this time, I could not bring myself to do “the job” for two
major reasons.  First, it was impossible to find any ground on my tiny 
lot that was not covered by a mound of basalt. Previous efforts to dig 
a hole for a fence post or plant a tree only resulted in broken tools 
and a very sore back. Then I thought I should bury him where he ran so 
free and swam so far—the Columbia River. I would have had to use a 
wheelbarrow to move his dead weight as Crash could no longer make the 
long trek himself.  Like Crash, age had snuck up on me also and I was 
physically unable to move him down the long trail and up the beach to 
an area above the flood.  Perhaps it would have been better if I had 
simply left him in the dark woods to die alone so that he could emerge 
from nature again as a bright flower or a bush of sweet berries. But I 
simply could not let him suffer anymore. So I opted for the vet's 
needle. 

For a couple weeks after his death, I found it helpful to mourn my loss
by visiting some of our old haunts. On one early rainy morning, I 
returned to trace the path in the city park that we had followed for 
years. No one was there so it was very quiet.  I stopped near the 
swollen banks of the creek and yelled, “Crash. Here!” and threw his 
favorite stick which I had stashed nearby.  Just then, I heard a 
muffled “thud” on the ground ten yards behind A Dog Named Crash I knew 
he was about to die.  He did not. What we both knew was that he didn't 
really give a damn whether he lived anymore.  My dear old friend was 
utterly exhausted.  After thirteen years, this big black Lab named 
Crash was spent from trying to endure the relentless daily pain caused 
by hip dysplasia. His bright spirit had dimmed as he tried over and 
over to be his old self and failed.  I knew I had to put him down when 
I had to drag him up the steps to my house, an act which caused him to 
hang his head in shame. 

I had no choice except to take him to the vet clinic where he had been a
number of times.  For years, he had grown leery of these folks in white 
lab coats who had labored to remove porcupine quills, to bandage a 
sliced paw or to rid him of pesky ear mites.  He never appreciated 
these efforts, of course. Like most dogs, Crash did not think vet 
clinics were a fun place to go and he had developed a rather uncanny 
ability to know when a clinic visit was imminent.  Normally, he would 
try to leave soon as soon as we entered the office.  He was never 
frantic, but he would pull against his leash, initially ignoring my 
commands to sit or lie down, and startling people and dogs alike as the 
sound of his deep bark filled the room. 

I bolted outside and ran to my little red coupe. I leaned against the
door, fighting to regain my breath and biting my lip to slow the tears. 
There were a few people in the parking lot who quickly averted their 
gaze from the sight of a sobbing, grey-haired, and balding fat man who 
was grasping an old choke chain.   It took a while before I was able to 
slowly drive back to my little blue cottage, which now seemed so 
utterly lifeless. 

In the next few days, as I reminisced about the last thirteen years I
spent with Crash, I began to realize how much I had come to depend on 
his faithful companionship to dispel my periodic bouts of loneliness 
and isolation. 

From the age of eighteen until the age of thirty, I had lived alone most
of the time.  There were some exceptions, of course.  I did have a 
number of college roommates and more than a few one night stands. 
Despite a twenty-year marriage, I have spent most of my adult life 
alone.  However, I usually had a dog at my side. In 1968, after I 
returned from Viet Nam and was discharged from the Marines, I began 
travelling with my dog Wednesday, a red Dingo mix.  She rode shotgun 
with me in my 1946 Dodge one-ton van for a year before she was shot by 
an irate cattleman near Wenatchee, Washington.  She had managed to chew 
through a temporary rope leash early one morning and slipped away to 
play with some dairy cows nearby, but the rancher clearly was not 
amused.  (I was livid at first, but I had to admit that it was my 
fault, and he was within his legal rights.) 

I was proud of that van. I had sent to Detroit for a new flathead
Tecumseh engine. I put in leather bunks, a sink, a dining area, 
tongue-and-grove knotty pine walls and red carpet. I painted it red and 
screaming yellow.  It drew the attention of other young folks who were 
living on the road in their equally well converted buses, vans, and 
commercial trucks. Eventually, I joined in with some of those young 
“Gypsies” who had formed a road family.  There were usually about 
thirty members which included some newly-minted college graduates, Viet 
Nam vets, and a few former jailbirds.  Young women comprised about a 
third of the group. Most of the young women were single; some brought 
their kids during the summer. And there were always five or six dogs 
present. We picked fruit from California to Canada until the season 
ended in the fall and then disbanded until the next year. I was no 
longer alone because of the lovely women who chose to travel with me 
from time to time. It was truly an adventure during a period of great 
change in America; a period captured in the bittersweet song lyrics of 
Simon and Garfunkel “They've all gone to look for America.” 

Nor was I lonely during the twenty years I was married and helped to
raise two kids (Jack and May).  But when they both graduated from high 
school and promptly left Eugene, Oregon (Jack joined the Air Force and 
May enrolled at Lewis and Clark University in Portland), the proverbial 
empty nest syndrome set in.   Six months later, my beautiful wife Sue, 
who I truly believed was also my best friend, decided (after 20 years) 
she wanted a divorce. 

I rented a small house in Eugene and went to work at a nasty metal
plating shop for about a year until the city began to resemble a sad 
movie I had seen too many times.  I felt compelled to leave, and once 
again found myself rambling around the West for the better part of that 
summer.  I returned to Oregon determined to find a place I could call 
home.  Before leaving, I visited my dad Leo, who was still reeling from 
the death of my mother Almay earlier that year.  I thought he needed to 
get away for a while and he agreed to join me on my search.  The 
adventure took about three weeks and Dad gradually drew out of his 
shell enough to enjoy eating good food again, and he regained his 
innate curiosity about what was over the next hill or the next setting 
sun.  He took the opportunity in the warm summer evenings to reveal new 
details about his harsh childhood on a farm and as an Army sergeant in 
World War II.  It turned out to be his last road trip because a year 
later, a series of short strokes left him in a wheelchair. 

At first, we headed south on Interstate 5, looking at listings in Salem,
Roseburg, and Grants Pass.  Later, we followed the two-lane blue 
highways to little towns with names like Drain, Riddle, Umpqua, and 
Glide.  At almost every stop, I met travelers who were newly smitten by 
the beauty and utter charm of rural Oregon.  I grinned to myself, 
knowing that many others before them had become equally captivated and 
wasted little time in abandoning their old home and embracing a new 
life in Oregon.  My own sense of identity as an Oregonian was deeply 
confirmed on that journey.  We ended up in tiny Canyonville (pop. 
1,500) in southern Oregon where I bought a brown and white two-bedroom 
bungalow on a dead-end road, hard against a densely forested mountain.  
It featured a guest house, a shop, and a fenced yard which the realtor 
noted was “big enough for a dog.”  I filled the house with all the 
stuff humans seem to think they need, but it still seemed empty. 

I walked to the Rusty Nail Tavern nearby several times for the first few
weeks, but few of the locals were willing to rub elbows much with a 
long-haired stranger. So, I began to drive to the big, new, and glitzy 
Seven Feathers Casino just outside Canyonville and joined the crowd who 
were as determined as I was to either win a bundle or to meet their 
true love on the crowded dance floor.  Of course, like most, I usually 
ended up broke and alone at the end of the night. 

Canyonville was much closer to California (100 miles from the border)
compared to any place I had lived before, so I decided to reach out to 
my friends who lived there.   My first phone call was to Pat McCoy, an 
old high school buddy, who lived some three-hundred miles away in 
Hayfork, an old mill town which had evolved into a marijuana growing 
haven, in the mountains above Redding.  I told him about my new place 
and invited him to bring his family to visit, but he explained that 
they couldn't travel because their dog, an Australian Shepard and Black 
Labrador mix named Alicia, recently had a litter of nine puppies.  He 
went on to explain that for several weeks, his family had been forced 
to take turns pulling pups away from the exhausted mom's teats because 
not only was it a large litter, but every pup was also unusually big.   
Then he said, “Hold on!  I think that one of these dogs would be great 
for you. You said you have a big backyard, and I know you like big 
dogs. The sire is a huge, purebred, Black Lab—maybe a hundred-thirty or 
so.” 

I thought about his offer for a moment as my gaze drifted to an old
picture on the wall of my grinning thirteen-year-old son embracing his 
beloved dog Flash (a handsome black and white German shorthair mix).  
For a moment, I even thought I heard his familiar bark.  I suddenly 
realized that maybe God was trying to send me another four-legged 
friend.   I had never sought a dog in the classifieds or the pound. 
Instead, dogs seemed to find me.  Some ran to my side for protection 
from man or beast.  Occasionally, a couple of dogs would follow me for 
a mile or so, ignoring all manner of other dogs and people until I 
yelled “Git!”  So, I told Pat, who was well aware of my long connection 
with dogs, “OK, buddy, it's a done deal, just don't give ‘em all away 
till I get there.” 

A couple of weeks later I found myself sitting in Pat's double-wide
trailer in the small mill town in the mountains above Redding.  Pat had 
lost most of the long blonde hair he sported in the late sixties and he 
was much thinner, but he still was living a hippie life style.  His 
wife and two kids had gone somewhere for the day but I told Pat I 
couldn't wait for their return. (I had to return to work the next day.) 
  Alicia, who seemed to like me, followed us when we went outside the 
trailer to a small shed which had a small chicken wire enclosure just 
outside the closed door.             Inside the shed the four remaining 
fat puppies had just polished off a bowl of puppy chow.  Alicia watched 
me closely, but showed little concern as I drew closer to the litter.  
I said, “Pat, let them all out in the yard for a bit. Leave me alone 
for a while, but keep the door open.”   At first, the puppies quickly 
surrounded me in a briefly chaotic moment, but were soon running all 
over the yard.  Only one, a male, repeatedly left his boisterous litter 
mates to come back into the shed and ran in circles at my feet. 
Eventually, he stopped and sat calmly beside me. Finally, he yipped at 
me and put his surprisingly large paw on my foot repeatedly.  I picked 
him up and he just looked at me with those soft Lab eyes and I was 
hooked.  When Pat returned, I said “I know you don't want any money for 
him, but I brought a fifth of Irish whiskey, would you take that?”  He 
agreed and after a few drinks, I headed back down the long and winding 
mountain road. 

The puppy seemed happy enough, but as we reached Interstate 5, he began
puking and it became apparent that he had a belly full of worms.  I 
cleaned the seats as best I could with some rags and water, opened the 
window wide and drove to Redding where I hosed off the car and him. 
Later, I fed him meatballs stuffed with worm meds.  I bathed him again 
as soon as I got home, where he seemed wildly happy, checking out all 
corners of the yard and house. 

He filled the house with his energy; it no longer seemed empty. As I
began to take him on walks, people would take the time to comment on 
the “cute puppy” and chat with me. Soon, a few people came to visit me, 
often with their own dog in tow. For me, another period of lonely 
isolation had ended.  At first I didn't give him a name, calling him 
bonehead or dummy mostly.  I decided to call him Crash because of his 
striking ability to stumble, resulting in crash scenes with doors, 
chairs, food bowls, and anything small enough to stub his big paws. 

Labs are notorious for having a prolonged childhood.  Crash was no
exception. When he was about a year old, he had grown to about eighty 
pounds with long legs and boundless energy.  He seemed unable to stay 
still for long.  He also often ignored commands he had responded to 
quite well to just a couple months earlier (another Lab trait).  I kept 
him on a long, woven wire line in the back yard because I was afraid he 
would run off.  I also thought the line would discourage his occasional 
efforts to jump over the five-foot fence, an impossible height to clear 
for most dogs. 

I was in the kitchen one day when I heard what sounded like muffled
whimpers in the back yard.  I opened the back door but Crash was not in 
sight.  I quickly opened the back gate and spotted Crash who was 
hanging off the top of the fence by his tether and choke chain which 
had drawn tight. The claws on his feet were trying to get traction in 
the cedar fence.  I lifted him and quickly released the chain.  He fell 
to the ground wheezing a bit, but he soon recovered. Apparently, he had 
somehow used a wooden box near the base of the fence as a means to 
catapult over the top.  He never tried scaling the fence again. 

On another occasion, my neighbor Jimmy, who was normally a pleasant guy,
angrily confronted me in my front yard. Jimmy was a member of the Cow 
Creek Tribe and was easily the biggest Indian I had ever seen.  He was 
not one to ignore and I was alarmed when he said, “We've got a problem. 
Ya better come with me. I wanna show ya what your damn dog did when we 
were gone last week.”  I followed him to his back yard a few blocks 
away and I was amazed at the damage done. Crash was guilty because his 
delinquent adventure had been witnessed by a few locals who ran him 
off.  Jimmy had put in a koi pond, an eight-foot, metal weather vane 
and numerous flowers that circled the roughly four-hundred-square-feet 
area.  Crash had somehow managed to tip over the weather vane, toss 
five or six koi onto the grass, and dig up most of the flowers, roots 
and all.  I had to write a four-hundred-dollar check that day.  I knew 
dogs do not understand bad behavior unless they are confronted as soon 
as the act is committed, but I still took Crash over to the scene of 
his crime and stuck his nose in the dead fish and kicked his butt and 
repeatedly called him “bad”; a word which I knew he understood.  
Veterinarians had told me it was common for people to give up keeping 
their Lab because of such behavior. They always counseled folks that if 
they remained patient for a couple years, they would be rewarded with a 
calm, obedient, and loving dog who would become a dear friend.  They 
also noted that Labrador Retrievers have been America's favorite breed 
for thirty years. 

I grew up on a three hundred-acre farm where we had four or five dairy
cattle, an occasional pig, a few dozen chickens, and maybe six rabbits 
at any given time. It was nestled in a high valley about four miles 
from Morton, Washington (population 1,200) in the shadow of Mount 
Rainier.  Our Chambers family farm was pretty remote. At the time there 
was no interstate highway. We had to use a series of two-lane roads to 
travel sixty miles to Tacoma, which was the nearest big city.  The old, 
twisting road to our farm was tricky to drive on in the snowy winters. 
Some of our neighbors were not seen often because they chose not to go 
to town unless they needed supplies. Early on, we began to realize they 
were odd bunch. Town folk laughed at them sometimes. There was an 
albino family with scary pink eyes. Down the road apiece, the Coleman 
family had been making lip-burning moonshine for generations. Three 
miles away, the two sons of the Sanderson family had a history of 
driving drunk and winning games of billiards.  One ended up driving his 
car over a cliff and the other blew his head off with a shotgun beneath 
the only traffic light in Morton. 

Visitors were few, so every dog we had always barked loudly at the sound
of a car entering the gravel driveway to our two-story farmhouse.  The 
dogs also barked when they became aware of something happening 
elsewhere on the farm. They often chased deer out of our big garden.  
And when they heard the frantic cackles of hens being terrorized by a 
coyote trying to steal an egg, or a chicken, they were quick to 
respond. They were never brave enough to attack the invader(s), but 
their loud barks were usually enough to chase them off. Some of our 
dogs were not beyond trying to sneak an egg or two either, but we 
curbed that urge by carefully injecting red hot sauce inside the eggs, 
causing them to howl and search frantically for water. 

People often nurture a heroic “Lassie” image of farm dogs that (at least
on TV) can do such things as save a drowning child, attack a bad guy or 
free the horses from a burning barn.  Our dogs were not that heroic.  
They did do a few chores, such as retrieving the few ring necked 
pheasants my brother and I shot, helping to herd the cows to the barn, 
or attacking the possums who were constantly eating our fruit and 
vegetables.  However, for my brother, sister and me, their true value 
lay in their dedication to play with us.  They were always ready to 
join us as we romped through the fields, swam in the old mill pond or 
rode our broom horses into the sunset. 

I remember one of our dogs, a white German Shepherd named King, who
periodically tried to get at skunks hiding under our porch.  Each time 
he had another run-in with a skunk under the porch, my mother was 
forced to wash all our clothes.  We could not go to school for a day or 
two before the smell dissipated.  King would then be soaked in tomato 
juice and given a soapy bath. Often, he was ostracized to an old tool 
shed far from the house where he was chained and given only water as 
part of his punishment.  However, we were so grateful for our brief 
“vacation” we snuck snacks from the kitchen to give to him whenever we 
could sneak away from the house. 

We had another dog called Tippy, a medium-size, brown mutt, who somehow
became buddies with a fat, young, white pig we named Joey. I can't 
remember why Joey was not penned up like others before him, but he took 
the opportunity to hang out with Tippy. They slept together and 
occasionally disappeared into the deep woods for a few hours.  They had 
a polished begging act which consisted of a weird merger of barks and 
oinks that we usually rewarded with bones for Tippy and fruit for Joey. 
 They also knew exactly when the school bus would arrive each afternoon 
and would sit beside each other patiently waiting to greet us. It was a 
ritual that always delighted the other kids as well as the bus driver. 

When my wife Sue and I began raising our own family many years later, we
always made sure we had a dog, not only for protection and 
entertainment, but also as a means for our kids (Jack and May) to learn 
about responsibility. It was their job to feed and water their 
four-legged buddies.  In return, they learned that dogs were capable of 
loving them unconditionally. 

Crash descended from an Australian Shepherd bitch and a huge black
Labrador Retriever. At 115 pounds, he never became as heavy (130 
pounds) as his sire, but he did grow a bit taller, measuring thirty 
inches tall. From a distance, he looked like a classic black Labrador 
Retriever, but his unusual height, lightly brindled legs and two tiny 
white spots (one on his chest, another on his butt) indicated he was 
not a pure bred. But he did have many of the breed's characteristics 
including a thick, water-resistant coat, a big head with a prominent 
ridge, silky ears, webbed feet, and an oh-so-sweet disposition.  He was 
also pretty full of himself. He would prance and swagger wherever and 
whenever dogs or humans approached him. 

While I had many dogs before, Crash was the only one who became at once
my roommate, protector, comedian and confidant.  Because there was 
often no one else in my home for years, Crash became intensely aware of 
what I feared, hated, and loved.  Often I sensed that an intruder was 
observing me as I was watching TV.  Invariably, the source of my 
paranoia turned out to be Crash, sitting quietly on his haunches, 
staring at me with his ears straight up and head cocked as he tried so 
hard to understand why I would react to a show with tears, anger, or 
loud laughter. 

My big dog always had shown a respectful curiosity about all people,
nature and critters.  Of course, his curiosity got him into trouble 
sometimes, but as he grew older and well known, it became obvious that 
he had developed into a creature with serious charisma.  There were 
times when people who were complete strangers (to me) would call out 
something like, “Hi, Crash.  What's up?”  And young boys, who seem to 
bond so easily with dogs, would shout “Hey mister—co-o-o-o-l dog!” 

Crash knew my family well and they realized how much my dog meant to me.
My dear mom did not have much chance to interact with Crash because her 
dialysis treatments consumed much of her later years. However, because 
my brother Lee and Dad had often visited me in Canyonville, they were 
able to watch Crash grow from a goofy puppy into a big dog who always 
kept them laughing.  For my sister Louise, Crash invoked nostalgic 
memories of the two successive black Labs who were a big part of her 
life as she and her husband Ed raised their three daughters in rural 
Lewis County.  She would kneel and hug him tightly like he was an old 
friend who had finally found his way home. 

Crash and I tried to visit them all when we came to Morton, but we
always started with my dad who stayed in the Assisted Living portion of 
the Morton Hospital. We never asked about the hospital's pet policy and 
went straight to Dad's room, where he was usually lying in his bed 
while watching TV or reading.  Crash would carefully get up on his 
hospital bed and lie quietly as my father's normally expressionless 
face broke into a broad grin as he stroked his luxurious coat.  Often, 
Dad would tell stories about Old Shep, the Border Collie his uncle had 
given him when he arrived on the dairy farm soon after he became a 
ten-year-old orphan.  Crash so thoroughly charmed the nurses that they 
eventually pressed him into service as an unofficial “Comfort Dog.”  
When they looked into his soft, brown eyes, and petted his thick, black 
coat, many smiling old folks spoke wistfully about dogs they had long 
ago. 

We would then cross town to see my older brother Lee at his apartment,
one of four in a brick building he owned.  When I stayed overnight, Lee 
let Crash stay inside, a privilege no other dog (except his own) had 
ever been granted. Lee's legs were turning dark from a lack of blood 
flow (a heart murmur developed when he was about eleven.)  He could not 
move around well and his legs would weep fluids (mostly water).  Crash 
took note of his condition immediately. For the rest of the stay he 
would remain faithfully at the foot of Lee's recliner, close enough for 
Lee to pat his head. Crash tended to ignore me during those visits.  He 
made no effort to come with me as I ran errands or visited friends. His 
focus remained on Lee until we had to return home. 

Their bond was forged when Lee and Dad came to visit me in Canyonville,
usually after an overnight stay in Sutherlin, where many years earlier, 
Lee and I had been partners in a second-hand and antique store named 
“Two Brothers Trading Post”.  Lee liked to throw big chunks of wood 
into the raging Umpqua River near Canyonville for Crash to retrieve.  
He also marveled at how he was able to stand his ground as the fast 
winter current broke against his broad chest. 

He also came to see me when I moved to St. Helens, but Dad did not
because he was unable to drive or travel anymore. Lee was changing, 
too. His heart was having a hard time pumping blood to his 
six-foot-tall, two-hundred and seventy-pound frame. Nevertheless, he 
was always ready to play with Crash, who eagerly awaited their 
inevitable wrestling matches on the carpet or the lawn. Lee was still 
amazingly strong and could have easily picked Crash up and thrown him, 
and Crash had a big set of teeth that could have ripped into Lee's 
body.  They would nip, hit, and push each other just hard enough to 
create a mock battle. Finally, we would arrive at my sister Louise's 
place by the Tilton River, where I had swam as a boy.  She had visited 
my homes less often than Lee and Dad, but Crash still seemed to 
remember her well.   Louise would not let Crash in her tidy house 
because her male Chihuahua mix would go berserk.    Crash was left 
outside to wander, but we knew he would not venture far from me.  
Before I left, she always hugged Crash tightly like he was an old 
friend who had finally found his way home. 

My two kids, Jack and May, had met Crash a few times over the years, but
they couldn't visit often because May lived in Amsterdam with her Dutch 
husband and Jack had an Air Force career which took him all over the 
world. His wife and family of four joined him sometimes at various 
American bases but they were always far from Oregon. 

In addition to helping me combat loneliness, Crash also helped me deal
with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and understanding the nature 
of death. 

Death was nothing new to me, of course.  I still remember my initial
shock after witnessing the quick and sometimes brutal death of 
chickens, rabbits, hogs, and an occasional cow while growing up on the 
farm.  However, that harsh reality soon evolved in to a routine 
acceptance of animal slaughter as a necessary means to support our 
family.  Even the loss of a pet pig (Joey) or a pet rooster (Randy) 
eventually became acceptable.   Of course, the death of relatives was 
not easy to bear, but they usually died after a long illness or from 
old age, so even as a child, you could see it coming.  So, I did not 
really experience grief until years later, after I spent a tour as a 
Marine grunt in a place we called “The Nam.” 

War makes warriors hypocritical of death.  After I saw yet another
twisted and bloody body, I either responded with intense grief (because 
he was a buddy) or banal indifference (because he was a “gook”).  It 
was only after I came home that I realized all the dead were loved and 
mourned.  I also knew why our leaders always portrayed the enemy as 
evil; killing them becomes easier. That intellectual awareness and the 
passage of time provided some cover for my feelings of guilt.  Time 
stayed frozen in my dreams, however.  For years, those forever young 
and impossibly brave buddies would visit me at night and I would awake 
sweating and scared as hell. 

Apparently, my dreams had also become noisy.  The sounds from my bedroom
would alarm him.  He would then jump down from “his” couch, run into my 
room, and bark loudly until I was awake and coherent enough to pet him 
repeatedly.  Then he would simply lay beside me in the dark quietly 
watching me for any new scream or yell.  I knew he was there because at 
times I would awaken to see his eyes glowing from the moonlight shining 
through my window.  The nightmares never went away completely but they 
occurred less often and with less intensity.  His presence seemed to 
give me great comfort. God, how I loved him for that! 

Death drew close again when members of my family (Chambers) began to
die.  First, my mother, Almay, died at age eighty-three at our family 
farm when her kidneys failed her.  Then, my dad Leo died a few years 
later at the age of ninety-two in a local nursery home.  Two years 
later, my red-headed brother Lee, who was a year older than me, died in 
his apartment in Morton when his weary heart finally failed.  They died 
in such close succession that I was not able to fully mourn them 
separately.  Each time I attended a funeral, Crash insisted on staying 
close to me.  Somehow, he sensed that funerals were a sad affair that 
hurt me.  He would patiently wait for me just outside the church doors, 
ignoring the mourners as they filed in.  But, when he rode with me to 
the cemetery, he was strangely content to stay in the car.   He would 
watch me closely through the window as I peered down at another casket 
beneath another grey sky.  After I slogged back to my car, he would 
lick my tears and lay his head on my lap. 

Canyonville had become much less comfortable because of the strongly
conservative populace who embraced the staunchly fundamentalist 
churches tucked away in the deep woods.  For a while, a black man named 
Mack stayed with me. Tavern patrons grew hostile when we stopped for a 
few beers, and young kids stopped and stared at him as we drove by on 
the main street because many of them had never seen black people. 

So, I moved to St. Helens in 2002 and bought a bungalow which,
coincidentally enough, was my third consecutive home on a dead-end 
street.  It was bordered by a forested gully in the back of the house 
and the front yard (with no fence) faced directly across the street 
from an elementary school which was full of laughing kids during 
recess. Crash had just turned two-years-old and really liked the kids.  
He would watch them play during recess from the porch but, when the 
afternoon bell rang, he would go to the nearby crosswalk where his 
young fans would often surround him.  Crash gleefully accepted the pets 
and hugs, but it caused a delay for the parents who had been waiting 
patiently to pick up the kids.  I eventually had to put him on a dog 
run just before the end of the school day. 

I also took him on daily walks all over town on a leash, usually ending
up on the banks of that great river of the west, the Columbia.	 We also 
walked to visit buddies who awaited Crash's arrival at their separate 
digs with treats that most dogs simply do not see, to wit: a fresh, 
bone-in, ten-pound ham, a tall pile of barbecued steak bones, a dozen 
hot dogs, as well as the occasional home delivery of an elk or deer 
leg, which he happily dragged around the back yard until I couldn't 
stand the stench anymore. 

Crash had learned the layout of the city pretty well early on, and
because he had earned my trust, I often gave him the freedom to wander, 
so consequently, he was sometimes busted as a “dog at large.” There 
always was a dog license with my phone number on his choke collar.  
After each call from the pound to come pick up my “delinquent” dog, the 
fine doubled.  When it reached a painful forty-dollar level, I was 
beginning to think I needed to tie him up or build a fence.  However, 
Crash used his jail time wisely by charming the hell out of everybody 
in sight.  The young staff and volunteers thought he was more than a 
little entertaining and spoiled him with goodies.  At some point, I 
received a phone call and was told “Mr. Chambers, don't sweat it. We 
have Crash here, but there is no fine this time and, oh, by the way, 
could he stay until we can take him for a long walk?”  When I 
eventually went to get him, Crash was hanging out in the office with 
his new found friends, oblivious to the sound of a dozen barking dogs 
as a young lady stroked his belly.  He was never picked up again.  He 
was free forever. 

His turf included Jack Ass Canyon (actually a gulch) which bordered my
back yard.  It was overgrown with ivy and blackberries, but Crash 
managed to chase the deer that used the gulch as a trail.  Jack Ass 
Trail was similar to many others that served to divide the city into 
pleasant neighborhoods. They were created by volcanic basalt flows 
originating from an eruption of Mount St. Helens thousands of years 
ago.  Crash never dragged any venison home of course, but he was happy 
to just chase them.  He would come home twenty or thirty minutes later, 
totally exhausted, his paws bleeding, tongue flopping, and jowls 
dripping with classic Labrador drool. 

Most mornings he ambled out of my front yard down a well-worn path which
began where the street ended beneath a canopy of tall firs. The long 
and narrow trail led to a neighborhood of about twenty aging 
ranch-style homes. Many of the houses sported chain link fences 
patrolled by big dogs. I never knew what he did over there, but he 
often came back with a bagel in his mouth, and I was surprised I never 
heard any loud barking coming from that area. Nor did I hear from any 
angry folks. No reports were filed with the animal enforcement office 
either.  He often came back from these morning turf patrols with a 
greasy bone or a bagel, another gift from an unknown local fan.  He 
became one of those prized pillars of small town society—the Local 
Yokel. 

My covered porch was about eight feet tall, and 35 square feet It
provided Crash with a handy perch where he could observe a wide chunk 
of his kingdom. No one approached my cottage without being loudly 
announced by Crash.  Unlike many dog owners, I never punished or 
admonished Crash for barking, because it was his job. Friends received 
only a brief bark or two and required no response from me.  But 
strangers were greeted by a very loud and deep “BOOF!!”, which briefly 
stopped many in their tracks.  He never bit or lunged at anyone, and my 
quick response (“It's OK, Crash. It's OK.”) put people at ease because 
he quit barking. 

Other dogs in the area did not fare as well as Crash.  I remember one
summer day when Crash spotted Carole, the city dog catcher, on the 
sidewalk a short distance away. They knew each other well because of 
his time spent at the pound. He came to her and sat quietly as she 
filled out a citation and handed it to a large, angry woman whose dog 
had briefly strayed from her yard. She pointed at Crash and I could her 
yell, “Why don't ya give that god damned black dog a ticket? He don't 
stay in his yard neither!” Carole said, “I will cite him in a minute, 
after I am done here.”  I called for Crash and he ran home. Carole soon 
followed. As the miffed lady stood and stared, I put a leash on Crash 
and apologized profusely. Carole whipped out her citation book and 
loudly told me about the loose dog law. Crash and I were sufficiently 
humbled by her comments. She quickly wrote a ticket and left.  The 
neighbor lady grinned with glee. I went inside my house and read the 
ticket and began to laugh because, other than a few scribbles, she had 
written only three words, “I love Crash!”  Fortunately, the mad 
neighbor moved a couple weeks later. I saw Carole at the market often, 
and she would always ask how Crash was. Sometimes she would spot us on 
a sidewalk and pull her city truck over, step out and spend a few 
minutes rubbing Crash's big bonehead.  He loved it. 

Friends often described Crash as a “man's dog” but that did not mean he
disliked women.  He liked everybody.  From a short distance away, I 
watched him as he routinely amused men and women by standing on the 
sidewalk crosswise (so no one could ignore him) and leaning heavily 
against their legs as they petted him.  He liked guys a bit more 
because he never lived with any women and men were simply around more.  
In addition, he knew that women did not play like men.  For instance, 
Crash enjoyed men because they would “attack” him by kicking at him as 
he playfully tried to get them off balance by jerking their pant legs.  
 A few fifty-year-old guys became kids again when, rain or shine, they 
engaged the black dog with lengthy wrestling matches. They always let 
Crash emerge as the victor. In addition, Crash drooled often.  The 
dripping saliva stopped when he got out of the heat or quit running. 
However, he would often sling goobers across his muzzle, thereby 
creating a big, slimy and white “X.”  That act did not endear him to 
the fair sex either. 

After I retired from my jack-of-all-master-of-none career, Crash and I
went on a number of road trips to Washington, Oregon, and California. 
While we were travelling, Crash rode in a number of rigs, but he 
preferred to be in a pickup.  His favorite ride was my vintage black 
and silver '86 GMC Caballero (similar to the more common Chevy El 
Camino). The truck was powered by a small block V8 and got some 
admiring looks from a number of guys. Crash was secured in the bed of 
the truck by a cable which ran across the bed width. He could stand and 
see over the roof. Metal stops in the cable prevented him from getting 
too close to the shallow sides. We became quite a road show for 
oncoming drivers who pointed their fingers and laughed at the sight of 
a big dog with floppy ears flying wildly in the wind while the wind 
puffed out his cheeks. I still remember when he first caught site of 
the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Oregon.  He emerged on top of a dune 
and froze in utter bewilderment at the endless panorama of sand, sea, 
and sky. He turned around and looked at me as if to ask, “Are you 
kidding me? Is this real?” He ran to the water's edge and began playing 
a hilarious game of tag with the tide.  Twenty minutes later, after a 
quick glance at me, he began swimming out into the ocean. He soon 
figured out that it was easier to paddle at an angle to the waves 
instead of directly into them. He also surfed the waves on his belly 
when he came back, prompting laughter from the people who saw him. 

At times I was afraid that he would drown as he swam almost out of
sight, but he showed little or no fatigue when he returned. Some of the 
oceanic treasure he scored for me included a lifejacket, a baby doll, 
and a nicely carved wooden cane. When he found dog paddling a bit 
boring, he would run on the beach, joyfully scattering the sea gulls 
who crossed his path. 

The ocean was not his only source of wet glee. He spent hours swimming
in creeks and rivers, even as a puppy.  He could not swim much in the 
winter but he liked to venture out on the creek ice. Sometimes his 
weight caused the ice to break and he was forced to take a quick swim 
in the frigid water. Other times, he found himself temporarily marooned 
on a slowly moving ice floe, which he rode until it floated close 
enough to the bank for him to hop off. 

In the spring, I liked to take him into the mountains. We did not try to
reach any summits, but we managed to climb high enough to get marvelous 
views of the familiar rivers and valleys beneath Mount Rainier. From 
Mount Shasta, Interstate 5 looked like a busy ant trail.  During the 
winter, we would only venture high enough out to find snow which deep 
enough for Crash to wallow in. He liked to use his chest and nose like 
a plow to create an uphill trail and then roll clumsily down it. 

In the summer, we took long trips into some of Oregon's forest
preserves. I followed Crash as he expertly led me down countless trails 
that were unknown to either of us. He instinctively ran point as well 
as the dogs we trained for patrol duty in Viet Nam. He would silently 
move ahead of me about thirty feet while alternately moving left and 
right another fifteen or twenty feet.  If I was too far behind him, he 
simply waited until I narrowed the gap.  If his nose or ears detected 
something he could not see, he would freeze, lift his ears, and point 
with his tail. He waited for me to evaluate the situation before we 
moved on. The only time he barked was if he got a quick glimpse of a 
deer, or if other hikers burst upon the scene.  Then, he would quickly 
step backwards ten feet or so but he did not turn and run. He waited 
for my command before moving. Of course, he was never challenged by a 
bear or a cougar.  Either one would have undoubtedly caused him to 
flee. His behavior was largely instinctive.  All I ever did was to give 
him a few basic commands and to provide him the opportunity to hang out 
in nature. 

His ability to judge people was also useful.  I watched him react to
various hunters and hikers who stopped for a brief chat. Those he liked 
were greeted with a wagging tail and a happy demeanor.  Those he did 
not like he sullenly backed away from even if they extended a hand to 
greet him while voicing the usual, “Good boy, nice dog...” comment. 

He was good at running point. Squirrels were the only creatures that
tempted him to abandon his position. He would return from the chase a 
bit later, panting heavily as his long tongue dripped saliva.  He also 
managed to get his coat full of “sticky weed” which stuck like Velcro 
to both of us. As far as I know, he really had no idea what to do if he 
caught up with his prey.  He just loved the chase, whether he was 
successful or not. He did come close once on a cold winter day when he 
spotted a big doe on the banks of a rain swollen creek. She jumped in 
and Crash followed her. She looked back with frightened eyes as Crash 
swam within a few feet from her. But when she reached the opposite 
bank, she bounded away gracefully. Crash tore after her, but she was 
long gone. 

Squirrels drove him crazy because they were way usually too fast on the
ground and once in a tree, they would heckle him with chirps and taunt 
him by descending the tree just out of his reach and then quickly 
retreating to higher limbs. Crash responded with vertical lunges that 
made him look stupid as he barked and whined until they disappeared 
into the canopy. Crash never tired of the game but he only scored once 
in his whole life. It happened on a hot summer day. I had slowed my 
pickup to park near a grove of one-hundred-year-old cedars. I was still 
moving when Crash jumped out and hit the ground running. He caught a 
huge red squirrel before he could reach the safety of a tree. As he 
held him in his mouth, the frantic chirping sounds gave way to sounds 
of crunching bones.  He proudly laid the poor bugger at my feet for a 
bit before he started playing with it by tossing it in the air like 
cats so often do.  I buried his trophy later so he couldn't get it. 

Crash was not a trained bird dog like so many Labs, but he seemed to
think he could grab a duck or a goose for dinner, despite numerous 
failures. But the sight of a nearby Great Blue Heron would mesmerize 
him (and me). Instead of attempting a capture by sleuth or speed, he 
would remain dead still, and stare unflinchingly at this 
four-foot-tall, ancient creature even as it lifted off with the 
rhythmic “whoosh” sound of six-foot wings. 

Near St. Helens there was a series of manmade ponds and a
seventy-five-acre park formed in 1976 as part of the overall design for 
the Trojan nuclear plant. When cracked steam tubes released radioactive 
gas in 1992, the plant was taken off line. When they removed the 
500-foot-tall cooling tower by blowing it up, millions watched on 
national TV.  What remained were a series of ponds, picnic grounds, a 
semi-hidden parking lot and several meandering paths through second 
growth fir trees.  Large flocks of Mallard and Muscovy ducks shared the 
water with about sixty White Chinese Swan Geese.  Rainbow Trout were 
planted yearly and caught mostly by youngsters. Some anglers did not 
want to eat the “planters” because they thought (wrongly) they were 
radioactive. 

The biggest draw for most people, however, was the opportunity to
photograph or to feed scraps to the waddling fowl. Crash took great 
care to sneak into the water and follow the ducks, stealthily 
approaching to within seven or eight feet of them, whereupon the ducks 
would fly a short distance away.  Crash always thought he was getting 
close enough to grab one, so he swam on. And on. And on.  I had to call 
or whistle him back after a half hour or he would swim until he was 
exhausted. 

I had to keep Crash on a leash in that area because people were afraid
he would kill some birds. However, when no one else was around, I would 
let him off his leash so he could enjoy another favorite routine; he 
would charge down the beach and send a giant gaggle of white geese into 
the blue sky, filling the air with their angry honks. No goose was ever 
harmed by him; he only wanted to prompt their flight. 

Crash's relations with other dogs were usually friendly. He was always
eager to play with bigger dogs, but he tended to ignore small dogs and 
puppies, even if they were frantic to get his attention. He thought 
they were “pests” and he often sent them scurrying with a loud “Boof!” 

In addition to using standard signals to indicate an eagerness to play
such as wagging his tail like a flag or raising his butt while resting 
his weight on his forearms, Crash would also suddenly run as fast as he 
could in a wide circle that came gradually closer to a potential buddy 
who usually joined in a game of chase. Or, he would plop a stick at the 
feet of a dog as an offering, only to try taking it back in a hilarious 
tug of war.  On rare occasions he would go so far as to lie on his 
back, showing his belly, not as a submissive gesture, but an effort to 
reduce the dog's fear level.  If that signal failed to elicit a 
response, Crash would get up and walk away as if the dog no longer 
existed. 

His sweet nature attracted the attention of two old men who separately
sought out Crash and me whenever they were at the local city park. Both 
men said that their dogs (a big German Shepherd and an unknown mix who 
looked more like a wolverine than a dog) had never socialized with any 
dogs except Crash. Apparently, they both had a history of attacking 
other dogs. Somehow, their aggressive nature simply melted in the 
presence of this playful Lab who did not show fear. For years, each man 
was glad to let his dog loose for a rare opportunity to enjoy a romp 
with Crash. Fortunately, both men never showed up with both dogs at the 
same time or it could have been a scary situation. 

Crash did have a real fear of pit bulls, however. Whenever I saw one
before he did, I quickly leashed him and held him close to my side 
until the dog was gone or I could put him inside my car. He ran to my 
side whenever one ventured close to him. Although, I have admired and 
enjoyed virtually all breeds, I shared his opinion of Pit Bulls.  My 
fear of them stemmed from a couple of earlier incidents in Eugene, 
Oregon many years earlier. One incident occurred when our neighbors, 
who lived across from us on a dead end street, got a year-old Pit Bull. 
The terrier ventured across the street into our unfenced front yard 
where Flash, my son's five-year-old, seventy-pound dog (a male German 
shorthair mix) was lying on the walk. I thought the young pit was 
merely playful as he ran in circles for a bit. Flash ignored him.  
Suddenly the younger, twenty-pound dog lunged at Flash. Because Flash 
had fought bravely and well in a number of battles, I was surprised at 
his quick retreat through the open front door of our house. I was even 
more surprised when the young dog followed Flash, who retreated under a 
bed. The white Pit dove under the bed and quickly got his teeth on the 
base of Flash's neck and began marching towards his throat with quick 
bites. I frantically hit him on his head and feet with a piece of stove 
wood. He didn't even yelp, but he reluctantly let go and bounded out 
the door. The people next door saw the last few minutes of the 
incident. They were apologetic and promised to keep the dog (who did 
not suffer any serious damage) on a tight leash. Flash had some minor 
bite wounds and my anger subsided soon enough. 

Six months later, when another neighbor, a young mother named Mary came
to visit us with her six-month-old boy cradled in her arms.  Later, as 
she walked back to her house, the white Pit, now fully grown, attacked 
them. Mary screamed in fear as she walked backwards as the dog 
repeatedly tried to jump high enough to get at the baby! He managed to 
get ahold of the baby's pink blanket just before I grabbed my splitting 
maul. I managed to get a glancing blow on his back with my first swing. 
He dropped the baby blanket from his and turned to face me.  I yelled, 
“come on, you son-of-a-bitch!”  I was mad enough to kill him but I did 
not follow him as he retreated back to his yard. I called the police 
and they interviewed all the people directly involved as well as other 
neighbors. Many spoke of their fear of the dog and the incidents he had 
provoked. Eventually the dog catcher came and took him away, but not 
before the dog tried to bite him. I do not know what eventually 
happened to the dog, but at the time the city had a no-kill policy. The 
dog's owners blamed me for “making their dog mean.” At any rate, I was 
glad when they moved a few weeks later, even though they left a nasty 
mound of trash in the back yard. 

Crash's fear of Pits stemmed from an attack on him when he was about
five years old. I was at a yard sale looking for stuff to sell on eBay, 
the big, online auction house.   There were lots of hand tools and 
kids' toys set out on five or six plywood tables. Crash was busy 
responding to the pets and greetings of a handful of men. The amiable 
chatter ended when, from about fifty feet away, everyone saw a huge, 
brindled Pit moving toward us with no master in sight. Crash was 
anxiously watching as the Pit began to run straight towards him. 
Someone yelled, “Look out!” as Crash dove under a succession of display 
tables as he tried to escape. Tools, toys, and tables flew everywhere. 
The Pit did get hold of Crash's neck, a move which, of course, has 
proved fatal to many dogs. Crash was lucky because the Pit only managed 
to bite into his classic Lab wattle (a loose stretch of skin which 
dangles from the neck), instead of his jugular vein. Crash was somehow 
able to jerk his head and pull away. I grabbed a pipe wrench and hit 
the dog, who turned and grabbed my pant leg. Then the men joined in 
with a flurry of hits on the dog with various tools. The dog never even 
yelped in pain as he hobbled off across the street and out of sight. No 
one even thought of following him. Several 911 calls were made but I 
soon left with Crash, who was bleeding from his neck, where he had lost 
a small chunk of his waddle. He was panting heavily and collapsed in 
exhaustion as he drooled a mixture of blood and saliva. I took him to a 
vet who gave him a few stitches.  It only took him a week to heal, but 
neither one of us forgot that wild day. 

I was holding Crash's choke chain as Frodo, who was restrained on a
leash, reached the final step onto the deck. The two dogs froze with 
their hackles up and teeth bared.  n a mutual burst of energy, they 
rose up simultaneously on their hind legs, breaking free of our 
grasp(s). Wayne and I were both knocked off our feet. The dogs tore 
into each other viciously.  I yelled at Wayne to pull back on Frodo's 
tail at the same time as I pulled back on Crash's tail. Instead, he 
reached in with his right hand into the snarling teeth and was bitten.  
We managed to separate them, but Wayne had a deep puncture wound that 
took a couple weeks to completely heal. He refused a rabies shot 
because he knew that both dogs were healthy. Neither dog suffered any 
major injury, but they growled at each other from their respective 
yards for a month until Frodo became primarily an inside house dog. 

Crash had a number of bitches who admired him. Some people who jogged or
walked past my house with their dogs returned to ask if their dogs 
could play with Crash.  He remained somewhat aloof but still playful 
with most dogs during these brief meetings. However, if someone showed 
up with a bitch who had just came into heat (usually without the 
owner's knowledge) Crash's behavior changed.  He would strut as if he 
was on a fashion runway, claw the grass and attempt to mount them. He 
succeeded only once. A guy had come by to look at my deck.  He had 
brought his lovely Collie who began playing with Crash.   We briefly 
forgot about the dogs until we heard a loud yelp when Crash happily 
mounted her.  I had to explain to the anxious owner that his dog would 
not get pregnant as Crash had been neutered. One bitch actually became 
obsessed with Crash. The dog, Abby, was owned by my friend Katie who 
would visit me while the dogs played in the yard. However, Crash would 
sometimes bark or nip at Abby because he had grown tired of her 
following him everywhere, and he wanted a break from her dedicated 
attention. 

For three years, Abigail successfully escaped from her yard at least
once a month and went to visit Crash. She would travel at night and had 
to cross four lanes of traffic at some point to get to my house. We 
never figured out her exact route but some people noted that her 
midnight rambles coincided with a number of tipped over garbage cans. 
Abby was sly enough to slip away if Katie let her out to pee or ignored 
her too long as she languished on the porch to cool off in the summer. 
If the garage door was left partially open, she crawled under it.    
Katie would call me and then drive to my house while looking for her 
errant pooch and then continue her search via a circuitous route back 
to her house. Or, she would just call me in the evening with a heads-up 
warning.  Apparently, Abby figured early on that she could escape the 
dog catcher and her master by travelling at night. We worried that she 
would get hit by a car or attacked by dogs. Invariably, Crash would 
awaken me by poking me with his cold nose to inform me that his 
girlfriend was at the door.  She was always tired but also very happy 
to see us. I simply could not punish her other than a few verbal 
reprimands because she was such a cute “criminal.”  Crash would move to 
block access to his food bowl on the back porch until I closed the door 
which led to his food bowl. I never fed her because I did not want to 
further encourage her nocturnal journeys. Crash largely ignored her, 
but she was content to lay down by the big guy as close as she could 
get. Come morning, I would call Katie, who would pick her up 
eventually, but sometimes Abby got to “hang” with Crash for a romp 
outside. When Katie arrived and opened her car door, Abby looked guilty 
as she hunkered down in the back seat. 

She never ended up at the dog pound despite Katie's frequent calls and
Abby became feeble not long after Crash died. She lost a lot of weight 
and began receiving insulin shots to fight diabetes. She had begun to 
go blind but she did try to escape one more time. As the sky grew dark 
late Winter, Katie's neighbors found Abby collapsed in a muddy ditch a 
few blocks from her house. Katie was convinced that the old dog was 
following her nose to find her way to Crash. 

Dogs' reactions to people can be largely predicted by human behavior. 
For instance, people who freeze in their tracks at the sight of a dog 
will prompt their immediate attention.  A sudden, quick movement of the 
hands or feet can be viewed as aggression. We have all seen how dogs 
react to someone approaching them stealthily. If they think someone is 
trying to sneak up on them, they will begin milling back and forth 
while barking loudly.   There have been numerous studies which suggest 
you should not directly meet the gaze of a strange dog because your 
stare could be considered a challenge, especially by alpha males.  Not 
all dogs are this predictable, of course. Canine size does not 
necessarily predict bravery either, hence the old expression, “In a 
dogfight, it's not the size of the dog that matters; it's the size of 
the fight in the dog.” 

Crash had an almost mystical ability to “read” people. He could decide
who was bad and who was good. The majority of my guests he calmly 
accepted. But he would also reject the soothing words or extended hands 
of some people (mostly men), even if I had welcomed them as friends for 
months. He would bark loudly and block their path. I had to yell at him 
to “Shut up and lie down!” He would then go sulk in a dark corner as I 
resumed chatting.  Despite my efforts to convince Crash to befriend 
these men, he would not.  He made a quick and lasting judgment about 
who was trustworthy. Unlike his master, Crash's judgments invariably 
proved to be spot on. It took the passage of time and public 
revelations of their brutality for me to really “see” these people whom 
I had called friends, were anything but.  Fortunately, Crash always 
forgave me for my human stupidity. 

I remember an exception to that scenario, however. When Crash was about
eight years old, we went to a late summer garden party hosted by my 
friend Frank Sargent. I parked a block away because there was no 
parking near his house.  There were about forty people there eagerly 
eating barbecued chicken and oyster shooters washed down with kegs of 
beer. I had been standing in the middle of the yard drinking beer and 
taking an occasional toke of local weed. Suddenly, I saw that Crash, 
who had been mingling with a bunch of women about ten feet away, had 
frozen in place and was staring intently at a clean cut, tall guy who 
had just arrived. I was dumbfounded as Crash bolted towards him with 
his hackles up and teeth bared.  The guy (about thirty years old) was 
backed up against the garage wall and was unable to flee from Crash who 
began barking and growling.  He did not bite him, but held him hostage 
until I was able to grab his choke chain and drag him through the 
parting crowd to my truck. I chewed Crash out and put him on his truck 
bed leash. I returned to apologize to Frank. 

I then noticed the guy had moved from the garage to the far perimeter of
the back yard where he was arguing with Frank. A circle of men 
surrounded them.  Frank yelled, “Get out of here Billy—you're an 
asshole!” and shoved him outside the fence where he quickly disappeared 
into the tree line. I still thought Crash had been way out of line, so 
I tried to apologize for his behavior again after Frank had calmed 
down. He told me, “Don't sweat it.  The bastard got out of jail today, 
and he was pretty drunk. I hired him not long ago and paid him for a 
couple days' work, but I wouldn't hire him again because he was a lazy 
fuck.”  Later an old, retired cop told me Billy was a liar, a thief, a 
sneaky coward, and a speed freak who liked to beat women.  Frank said, 
“He was trying to bum some money from me. I didn't invite him here. 
When he said ‘I outta kill that fuckin' dog', I got pissed and kicked 
him out of here. Crash did the right thing. I'll bet he smelled his 
rot. Bring Crash back to the party—he deserves some chicken.”  Crash, 
of course, had not heard any stories about the guy. Nor had he ever 
seen him before. He was simply one of those dogs who can spot assholes 
quickly, even when humans do not. 

This ability of Crash to reject some guys who I wrongly considered
friends usually came after he had observed them at my place. He rarely 
singled out people for any degree of observation outside of my 
property. He could be counted on to largely ignore people at parties. 
He could beg for goodies with considerable skill, otherwise he would 
just hang out or take a nap at my feet if he got bored. 

I had left Morton in 1971 but returned many times. Over the decades it
became apparent that the town, like so many logging towns of the 
Northwest, had begun to die. I sadly noted the vacant storefronts and 
crumbling sidewalks. I was able to recognize and talk to a number my 
aging former classmates. We would laugh and reminisce about the lives 
we had led so long ago. I began to look outside the nostalgic haze and 
found that the people who stayed here rarely left. Their conversations 
revealed they were fearful of the world outside the mountains 
surrounding them and they rarely ventured far away. I spoke of my 
travels with Crash but they simply could not understand my lifestyle. 
Crash and I were different. Not better, just different. We shared an 
intense curiosity about life beyond their tiny world. Crash and I would 
have gone completely bonkers if we had to stay there. 

As Crash entered his thirteenth year, his muzzle turned white and hip
dysplasia had begun to set in, much to his puzzlement and denial. 
Cataracts were beginning to impair his vision.  There were times when I 
was pretty convinced that his hearing had also deteriorated. He still 
was eager to go places, but he had to be lifted into my truck because 
his hips were too weak. 

His behavior began to evolve. Instead of chasing deer, he just stared at
them from our porch. He no longer “played” with the mallards or 
squirrels. Having been put down quickly by other dogs in minor 
skirmishes because his legs collapsed, he began to lose his strut, his 
pride of self. On our walks, he looked embarrassed if he had to stop 
and sit because his legs and hips hurt. He stopped awakening me each 
morning by sticking his cold nose in my neck. I arose to greet him as 
he gazed at me from his perch on the couch. I watched as he spent a 
minute or two with his front legs extended to the floor before he could 
trust his rear legs to help him down. He continued to enjoy daily walks 
and a short swim. 

When I decided to go on another trip to Costa Rica for two and a half
weeks, I was not terribly concerned about Crash's short term welfare 
because my friend Dave volunteered to take care of Crash, who was also 
his old fishing buddy, while he “house-watched” my cottage. 

I managed to convince my old buddy Jeremiah, who shared my terminally
hip lifestyle, to join me, and soon we flew to San Jose.  We stayed at 
the infamous Hotel Del Rey where we somehow managed to resist the swarm 
of prostitutes who came there from all over the world.  We spent a 
couple of days engaged in a street-level look at the charming old city. 
Then we flew to the mountainous northern border to stay at a ranch 
retreat for five days. We rented a car later and took a meandering trip 
to sandy beaches, dusty small town streets, and open air bars where we 
invariably drank too many Mojitos. 

During the last few years of his life, Crash and I had grown closer as
he reacted to my sadness over the successive deaths of my mother, my 
father, and my brother in a period of about five years.  Crash attended 
those funerals and he closely watched me from inside my car as I stood 
quietly in those invariably cold and wet cemeteries huddled with a 
bunch of kin and old friends all dressed in black.  He would lick my 
tears and put his head on my lap until I was able to go on. Crash knew 
my family because he always was with me when I visited them, but he was 
especially fond of my big (three-hundred-pound, six-footer), red-headed 
brother Lee, because he was the only one who had come to visit me 
often.  In those days, he was well enough to wrestle with Crash.  He 
would endlessly toss sticks in the creek until Crash grew tired. When I 
visited Lee, Crash was allowed to stay overnight at Lee's apartment. My 
brother's legs, which had become darkened by a failing heart for many 
years, did not allow him to be on his feet very long.  He also was in 
considerable pain often. Crash seemed to sense his pain and moved to 
lie at my brother's feet where he remained until Lee went to bed. Crash 
would faithfully resume his place beside Lee the next day. Lee liked to 
reach down and stroke his velvety ears and tell him how good of a dog 
he was. 

The day we returned Dave and Crash were not at my house.  I called him
at “The Tav” and Crash was with him.  I invited other folks to try some 
of my Ron Centanario I had lugged home.  My plan was to surprise Crash, 
so I waited till the front room was full before I snuck out of the 
bathroom and sat down in the dining room.  I could see Crash milling 
about through the legs of standing people.  I whispered “Crashhhhh!” 
His ears perked up as he spotted me across the room. He approached 
slowly, but as I reached out to pet his big head, he turned and walked 
away from me. He looked so sad and tired. He kept some distance from me 
for about fifteen long minutes before returning.  He put his big paw on 
my knee, groaned softly, and laid down at my feet.  I thought maybe he 
had felt abandoned. 

Dave took a sip of rum and haltingly told me the why Crash was acting so
weird.  He told me he was walking with Crash one morning about twenty 
feet away from a steep cliff overlooking the Columbia.  Dave had turned 
his back to pee.  Apparently, Crash's always curious nose brought him 
to the cliff edge where he lost his footing and started to slide 
backwards. Dave said, “At first he tried to dig his claws into the 
ground for traction, and then he went head over heels about sixty feet 
before he landed on his side near the river's edge. He didn't move.  I 
yelled ‘I'm coming, Crash!' and ran down the hill.  It took about ten 
minutes to get fairly close to him, but the thick brush and high tide 
kept me away.  I called for him over and over, and he finally lifted 
his head to look for me.  Then the river got rose enough that he could 
paddle over to me. I was freakin' amazed that he didn't break any bones 
or drown, and he slowly followed me home. 

The story did not end there. Dave wanted to take Crash to a vet that
afternoon but he was broke and had to wait for a friend who would loan 
him some bucks the next morning.  Dave said, “Crash seemed to be okay 
but he was stiffer than usual.” 

At first, he laid down in Dave's bedroom briefly before he puked on the
carpet.  He was taken to the kitchen where he laid down as Dave cleaned 
up. An hour or so later, he quickly stood up, shook himself wildly, and 
stiff-walked to the patio door indicating he wanted to go outside. 
Crash had gone outside many times (usually to take a dump in the weeds) 
at that house and could be trusted to return in a short while.  When he 
did not appear in about twenty minutes, Dave had walked around in an 
ever-enlarging area but could not find him. Dave said, “I called the 
pound, but they didn't have him.  I rounded up some friends to help in 
the search. We repeatedly returned to your house after driving all over 
town but it got dark and folks had to go home.  I tried for another 
hour or so with no luck.” 

Two days later, Cindy went to open her antique store (a favorite haunt
of mine), which had been closed for two days and found Crash huddled by 
the door lying on the wet concrete. He was covered in his own poop. 

Apparently, the big dog was unhurt but, “he looked sad and really
embarrassed” according to Cindy. She immediately called Dave who ended 
up hosing off the dog and the sidewalk. Now I knew why he was oddly 
miffed and remote to me when I first returned a couple days later. Some 
boys said they had seen him outside my house a couple of times, but 
they were not concerned as he was often outside. The poor dog, hurt and 
sick, had tried hard to find me and now that I had returned, he was 
more than a bit upset that I had “abandoned” him.  He forgave me soon 
enough, as all dogs do. I promised myself never to leave him again. 

Spring came early that year and I hoped the warm days would sooth
Crash's hips. My vet, who had known Crash for years, said “I can't 
perform any surgery that will help him or cure him.  Nor can I give him 
some medication that would relieve his pain for very long.  Take him 
home and hold him close. 

And so it was that Crash's daily walks changed; he walked very slow and
travelled less distance each day. He would stop and sit down 
periodically with a bemused “who me?” expression as if the situation 
was completely normal.  He would act like he was only sitting down to 
peer into the distance to look at something “important.”  I played 
along, telling him “It's alright buddy.  I will wait.” 

We took one last trip to Morton to see my sister and show off my newly
acquired white Jaguar sedan.  About an hour after we took off, Crash 
began to whine loudly in the back seat, his signal that he needed to 
relieve himself. I could not find a quick and safe place to pull over 
for a few minutes.  Consequently, for the first time since he was a 
puppy, he had dumped in my back seat.  He was visibly embarrassed; he 
had to absorb another blow to his pride. I cleaned up the dog and the 
car and for the return trip home I used a temporary rear seat cover.  I 
knew then that it was time to put this wonderful dog down.  He deserved 
to keep what dignity he had left. 

For years, I had admonished people who had asked me to put down their
dog. I often said that when the time came, it was their responsibility 
to deal with their pet's death and that it was a task others did not 
relish either. I had carefully stuck a 22 rifle in the ears of failing 
dogs in years past. I pulled the trigger on my wife's dog, Heidel, and 
my dog, Casey, on the same day. I dug two graves that day. It was hard 
ground to dig, but I remember that my sweat helped to quell my tears. 

However, this time, I could not bring myself to do “the job” for two
major reasons.  First, it was impossible to find any ground on my tiny 
lot that was not covered by a mound of basalt. Previous efforts to dig 
a hole for a fence post or plant a tree only resulted in broken tools 
and a very sore back. Then I thought I should bury him where he ran so 
free and swam so far—the Columbia River. I would have had to use a 
wheelbarrow to move his dead weight as Crash could no longer make the 
long trek himself.  Like Crash, age had snuck up on me also and I was 
physically unable to move him down the long trail and up the beach to 
an area above the flood.  Perhaps it would have been better if I had 
simply left him in the dark woods to die alone so that he could emerge 
from nature again as a bright flower or a bush of sweet berries. But I 
simply could not let him suffer anymore. So I opted for the vet's 
needle. 

For a couple weeks after his death, I found it helpful to mourn my loss
by visiting some of our old haunts. On one early rainy morning, I 
returned to trace the path in the city park that we had followed for 
years. No one was there so it was very quiet.  I stopped near the 
swollen banks of the creek and yelled, “Crash. Here!” and threw his 
favorite stick which I had stashed nearby.  Just then, I heard a 
muffled “thud” on the ground ten yards behind me.  I turned and saw 
that there was only one object on the freshly mowed grass. It was a Red 
Bartlett pear fresh with the slight blush of ripeness typical of the 
late summer crop in the orchards where I had worked years earlier.  
Only this was a late fall day.  The pear showed no signs of bruising 
and no other pears were visible as far as I could see. I looked up to 
see a young pear tree (about a year old) still bushy with leaves which 
should have fallen a month or two earlier.  There were no other pears 
in the tree.  Crash and I had passed that spot a hundred times before 
during all the seasons. Never before had I seen any pears or pear trees 
at that spot or anywhere else in the park. 

I suppose someone could have gone to the park earlier and unknowingly
dropped a pear which was intended for a snack.  Yes, that could have 
been possible. But for me, it was a message from Crash that he was 
still with me and always will be. I laughed and then bit into the 
slightly soft pear. It was the sweetest one I ever tasted.  My sense of 
loss began to ease and I yelled “Thanks buddy! me.  I turned and saw 
that there was only one object on the freshly mowed grass. It was a Red 
Bartlett pear fresh with the slight blush of ripeness typical of the 
late summer crop in the orchards where I had worked years earlier.  
Only this was a late fall day.  The pear showed no signs of bruising 
and no other pears were visible as far as I could see. I looked up to 
see a young pear tree (about a year old) still bushy with leaves which 
should have fallen a month or two earlier.  There were no other pears 
in the tree.  Crash and I had passed that spot a hundred times before 
during all the seasons. Never before had I seen any pears or pear trees 
at that spot or anywhere else in the park. 

I suppose someone could have gone to the park earlier and unknowingly
dropped a pear which was intended for a snack.  Yes, that could have 
been possible. But for me, it was a message from Crash that he was 
still with me and always will be. I laughed and then bit into the 
slightly soft pear. It was the sweetest one I ever tasted.  My sense of 
loss began to ease and I yelled “Thanks buddy! 


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