A collie named Lassie

Several blogs ago, I promised more about our pets on the farm. I had mentioned Lassie, but how difficult it is to write about her.

Her parentage was beagle and collie. Her face and coloring was like a collie dog’s, but her hair was short and smooth like a beagle. She was one of the most intelligent dogs we had. She could follow any command we gave her and she would “talk” with us. We would take her with us when we went after the cows for milking. During the spring and summer, the milk cows would be out in a pasture, not in the barnyard or barn during snows and freezing weather. It was a practice that small farmers used to have some use out of fallow fields. This was ground they let rest from crop growing. Children would be sent to bring the milk cows in. Papa did not keep a bull, but would pay a neighbor for services of their bull or later, he would call the veterinarian and arrange for artificial insemination.

By the time Lassie was nine months old, she knew which three cows we wanted out of those in the pasture, and would help gather them. Sometimes Rex, the Spitz dog, would come along, but he had no interest in cows except for the milk they gave.

Lassie would wait for my youngest brother and me to return home from school. She’d sit at the top of the bank overlooking the road. When she saw us coming around the bend, she would run to the open kitchen window and bark at Mama and then run down the lane to greet us. She would prance around us all the way up the lane. After we went into the house to change (Mama insisted we wear the same clothes to school all week), she would run to the kitchen window again to announce that she had done her escort duty.

At nine months she came into heat and it soon became apparent that she would have a litter of puppies. As the gestation period neared the end, she disappeared. My brother and I searched and called for her to no avail. Mama tried to reassure us that Lassie had only prepared a “nest” some place to have her puppies.

The next morning after we had gone to school, Lassie appeared at the kitchen window barking furiously. Mother went out to see what was wrong. Lassie nudged her and ran toward the barnyard. Mama said she started to return to the house, when Lassie was back at her side, barking and then running toward the gate again. Mama decided to follow her.

Lassie led mother to the tool shed, a small building attached to the garage, and around to the West side. She disappeared underneath. There were four puppies in her nest. She lay down beside them and looked up at Mama. Mama described her look as saying, “See, look what I did.”

That afternoon she did not greet us, but we took her food bowl to set beside the water dish Mama had moved there and exclaim over her beautiful puppies. We had no difficulty in farming out those puppies as everyone knew Lassie was a cattle dog and Rex a fine ratter and mouser.

Lassie had one beagle trait. She loved to hunt rabbits. Of course, she never caught any we thought. Everyone knows a rabbit can outrun a dog or turn in such short circles the dog continues running one way and the rabbit another.

That was until one day a jackrabbit had the audacity to come right through the open part of the barnyard between the chicken house, washhouse, fenced front yard, and the garage/tool shed. Lassie took after it without barking. The jackrabbit did a turn at the cottonwood tree and headed back towards the lane. Lassie turned equally as rapid and was right on his tail. The rabbit executed another turn near the garage to run back up the hill when Lassie managed to leap forward and grab his back leg. That was the end of poor Jackrabbit. Rex was delighted. He knew she would share the spoils.

The next year Lassie had another litter of pups, but these she had in the barn as it was winter and too cold for little ones to be out in an Iowa cold snap. Rex once again stalked around like a king, but this time he circled too close to the puppies. Lassie lunged at him snarling and nipping. Rex slunk away with a baffled look on his face. Once again we found homes for the pups.

That spring, while it was still chilly, but the snow and ice gone, my parents decided to visit my oldest brother and his family in Council Bluffs. As usual, Papa had us up and out of the house before three a.m. for the approximately eighty mile drive. We spent the day there and returned home in the late afternoon by five or six p.m. We were startled when neither Rex nor Lassie were there to greet us. Rex, we assumed, was roaming again. My brother and I went upstairs to put on our work clothes when my father could be heard coming in the front. His voice carried all the way up the stairs.

“Where are the kids?”

“They are upstairs changing,” Mama answered.

“Don’t let them come outside until I say it’s all right. Lassie must have been waiting for them and started down the road. She’s in the ditch. One of the big trucks hit her.”

The door banged and we could hear Mama crying. I knew we would never find another dog as smart.