Losing a Friend

The day my little buddy came in this world I was in Tyler Texas making an appearance and signing autographs at a Comic Con. I had recently been featured on Survivorman with my good friend Les Stroud and I was riding pretty high.

We returned home to find that my Mountain Cur female had delivered 13 pups while we were away. Eleven of the pups had survived and were beautiful healthy pups. Immediately folks started texting and calling wanting a pup once the word was out that I had a litter for sale. I was pretty impressed but my pups are from good stock and have great noses. I got rid of all but 2 pups.

Now I took a long hard look and decided I would keep these two identical twin brothers and make squirrel dogs out of them. Their mother and father are both good tree dogs. Funny as it seems I named the dogs 2Pups and 3Pups. As they grew they became as much family dogs as hunting dogs. The biggest problem was that they were escape artists. I built kennels and they dug out or climbed over. I covered the top and they dug under. I buried wire so they couldn’t dig under and they gnawed holes in the top and climbed over. They would dig out or climb and I would deploy counter measures.

No matter what I did these boys seemed to have a remedy. Harry Houdini had nothing on these dogs. I would often wake up hearing these guys chasing a car down my dirt road. I would run out and put them back in.

Well Saturday it caught up with them. They had dug out and old 2Pups caught himself one of the cars he chased so diligently. For some reason these boys hated a car, even a parked one. He caught it and it caught him. I took old 2Pups out in my pasture and placed him in a comfortable spot under an Oak tree. I hope a few cat squirrels run up and down it for him. I sure will miss chasing bushy tails this fall with he and his brother. You can rest assured his brother 3Pups and I will talk about him and remember him while we chase those limb chickens up and down Wilkerson creek.

Story by Jeff Stewart