Blog Them Out of the Stone Age

Annie making herself at home in my office; inset: Annie’s webshot on the “adoptable dogs” section of the Franklin County (Ohio) Dog Shelter.
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For some years now, I’ve had two dogs as my most constant companions: Gypsy, an Australian cattle dog; and Jethro, a beagle-basset mix. Gypsy I rescued; she’s about twelve years old, but that’s just a guess. Jethro I raised from a pup; he just turned eight.

Yesterday my Significant Other and I added a third dog to the family: Annie, a beagle mix who is roughly eighteen months old. We got her from the local dog shelter. I dreaded going down there, for reasons I’ll explain a bit later, but actually it wasn’t too bad. The dogs seemed well-cared for and a steady stream of potential adoptive owners kept coming through the doors.

Even so, for much of the time a snatch of poetry — well, high-grade doggerel, no pun intended — kept running through my head: “We called him Rags. He was just a cur, but twice on the Western line . . .”

When we came home with Annie and got her properly introduced to her new surroundings (and to Gypsy and Jethro, who still aren’t quite sure what to make of her), I looked up the poem. As ever, Google made it effortless:

We called him “Rags.” He was just a cur,
But twice, on the Western Line,
That little old bunch of faithful fur
Had offered his life for mine.

And all that he got was bones and bread,
Or the leavings of soldier grub,
But he’d give his heart for a pat on the head,
Or a friendly tickle and rub.

And Rags got home with the regiment,
And then, in the breaking away –
Well, whether they stole him, or whether he went,
I’m not prepared to say.

But we mustered out, some to beer and gruel,
And some to sherry and shad,
And I went back to the Sawbones School,
Where I still was an undergrad.

One day they took us budding M.D.’s
To one of those institutes
Where they demonstrate every new disease
By means of bisected brutes.

They had one animal tacked and tied
And slit like a full-dresses fish,
With his vitals pumping away inside
As pleasant as one might wish.

I stopped to look like the rest, of course,
And the beast’s eyes levelled mine;
His short tale thumped with a feeble force,
And he uttered a tender whine.

It was Rags, yes, Rags! who was martyred there,
Who was quartered and crucified,
And he whined that whine which is doggish prayer
And he licked my hand–and died.

And I was no better in part nor whole
Than the gang I was found among,
And his innocent blood was on the soul
Which he blessed with his dying tongue.

Well! I’ve seen man go to courageous death
In the air, on sea, on land!
But only a dog would spend his breath
In a kiss for his murderer’s hand.

And if there’s no heaven for love like that,
For such four-legged fealty-well!
If I have any choice, I tell you flat,
I’ll take my chance in hell.

The poem was by Edward Vance Cooke, and contrary to my expectations, he was not a veteran of the First World War — in fact, by the time Armistice Day came he was on the high side of sixty. “Rags” isn’t considered his best poem, either. That distinction, such as it is, goes to “How Did You Die?,” which reads like a collaboration between Rudyard Kipling and Pollyanna. But I’ll bet “Rags” is better known. It figures prominently on any number of animal rescue and anti-vivisectionist web sites.

Though Cooke spent 1914-1918 in Canada and the United States, “Rags” does capture an authentic dimension of the First World War experience, at least on the Western Front. Offhand I can’t think of a conflict in which dogs played a more extensive, varied role. Rags was a mascot, of course, but thousands of other canines were working animals, used, among other things, to carry messages, search for the wounded, and pull heavy machine guns. (You can learn more than you may care to know about this at K-9 History: The Great War, 1914-1918.) At least one intrepid pooch is credited with capturing an enemy spy: That would be Stubby, The Military Dog, pride of the 102nd Infantry.

“Rags” also has a more personal resonance for me, and this gets at why I had to nerve myself to make a visit to the dog shelter. Just over twenty-one years ago I was accepted into the War Studies program at Kings College London. I was thrilled to be going abroad, of course, but at the same time I had to find a home for Lady, a cocker-springer spaniel who had been my family’s pet since I was thirteen. At first I didn’t think this would be a problem. But neither of my siblings were interested in or well-positioned to take care of Lady and my father, who had recently remarried, flatly refused to consider it. A couple of families from my church tried to board Lady but she was eleven years old and confused by being passed around several times in the wake of my parents’ divorce and my mother’s death not long thereafter. Unsurprisingly, she wet the floor or whimpered too much during her brief stay with these families, and within a day or two each one reported that things just weren’t working out. I went to my father a second time, but he didn’t unbend in the least. To him, Lady was just an animal, and he was not going to let himself be inconvenienced. To me, Lady was a member of the family. I could scarcely understand his attitude until suddenly I understood it all too well.

Well, there was no help for it. Faced with a choice between abandoning Lady and abandoning my plans to attend Kings College London, I abandoned Lady. I took her to the Humane Society, nuzzled her one last time, and gave her leash to one of the attendants. The last I saw of her she was trotting away from me, gentle as ever, hopelessly confused but obedient and trusting.

I’d like to think she somehow found a home the way Annie has done. But I know better. Once I’d actually given Lady up, my sister, who had previously been as indifferent to the matter as my father, suddenly reappraised the situation and tried to get Lady back. She called the Humane Society, but of course only one thing happens to eleven-year old dogs in a place where the needs are so great and funds so lacking. And it already had.

Lady (1973-1984)