Sips of Wine from the Grapevine with sponsoring member author and poet, Leonard Tuchyner and his Poem/Short Story April a Dog

A Publication of Patty’s Worlds Publishing – Where Blogging Is Publishing Too

Patty L. Fletcher

Wednesday September 25, 2024

Hi patty, and all,

This is a memoir of a dog I had in the form of a poem.

April a Dog

Of all the finest dogs I knew,
April was incomparable.
A long-haired, mostly black canine,
weighing around an impressive eighty pounds, probably a blend of lab and collie.
Her litter mates were all the same.

As a puppy, she would run her heart out, trying to race with her bike-born humans — Never needing a leash for control, filled with the enthusiasm of a lab, she had her wild adolescent flashes which tested the temper of my wife.

When Diane and I were separated,
April lived with spouse and son in the city, until a neighbor complained of her barking, and she came to stay with me in the country.

Often I had to be away for a day or two.
Besides an open bag of food left for her in and old abandoned van, April was free to roam, looking fit as a fiddle and well fed.

When walking in the woods, April was there to protect, though I’ve never seen her in an unfriendly vein.
She showed determination and courage
where she believed it was mandatory.
Once while walking on a mountain path,
a very large cur appeared on a ridge.
April, taking him for a threat, went up the hill to drove the ill-intending canine away, who quickly returned her gesture by knocking her head-over-heels down the mount.
But she rose to oppose him again.
However, he was no longer there.
April’s mission had been accomplished.

When my spouse and I were reunited,
We moved to the shore of a five-acre lake, and discovered April was a water dog, who would rather swim her way than walk.
She’d chase us as we paddled our canoe, her long hair making a statement for floatation.

Her grasp of human needs was unbelievable.
Fishing for catfish at the base of a long, steep, bank, I hooked a whopper of a goliath.
But the fish slipped the slippery hook
and started flopping its way to freedom.
Three times I kicked it up the embankment, holding on to my precious rod and reel, failing to propel it to the flat above, but succeeding in incurring a hole in my foot from the catfish’s deadly pointy pike.
April sauntered leisurely down the slope, gathered the flopping, flailing fish in mouth, then deposited the cat on the flat, where it could flip without slithering down the slope.

April was a loving mother at heart.
Too bad they had to neuter her at the pound and deprive her of her needs for motherhood.
But a cat named Ford fulfilled them for a time.
Ford was a poor feline with leukemia,
too weak to find food or fend for himself.
April started carrying Ford around in her maw, and caring for the cat as best she could, until the feline finally passed away.
Then she mourned for her foster nursling.

When it was time for April to leave us, It seemed she had a premonition of death.
She suffered from wounds due to compulsive licking, which is a symptom of anxiety.
Her health sank into disability,
until April slipped away one woeful night.

The world has never known a sweeter dog.

—–

Leonard I. Tuchyner, Author

https://www.dldbooks.com/tuchyner/