Jumpin' Jack Flash

by Lyn

It was the first anniversary of my father's death and I was on my way home from work, traveling the back roads of Harrison County, and feeling very sad. I spied the Harrison County Animal Shelter on my left in the distance and once again felt the same sadness I felt in passing any animal shelter, thinking of all the animals needing a good home. This afternoon, though, was to be a little different.

As I got closer to the shelter I began to have this "feeling" that I needed to stop there. I can't say where the feeling came from or why, but, at the same time, I noted, I had been looking for a way to commemorate my father's passing and I guess it was this extra added little "umph" that made me pull into the shelter, park, get out and start walking around.

I have friends who go to animal shelters with the express purpose of spending time with the animals, and I think they are God's angels, but personally I find that hard to do myself. I am one of those people who, when walking into a shelter, instantly want to take every living animal inside home with me. Since I can't, I then grieve for hours afterward remembering the hopeful little faces I left behind.

I certainly had no need for another dog - I already had two, plus two horses and five cats. So I'm not exactly sure what I was looking for when I rounded the corner and, amidst all of the dogs who were yelping and jumping against the cages, saw the border collie lying flat down on the concrete, in the middle of his cage. His head was on his paws and a look of utter and woebegone hopelessness covered his face.

I stopped in front of his cage, and amid the chaos of his kennel mates said to him, "Hey feller, what got you landed in here?" He did not even raise his eyes to me. "Come on," I said. "You know I'm talking to you." This was rewarded with a couple of dull thuds of his flowing black tail. I laughed in spite of myself, and persisted, "At least you've got food and shelter." Three more thuds of the tail. I hunched down a little in front of the cage and tried to get him to come over. He pretty much ignored me until my haunches were getting just stiff enough to where I had to stand again, then he slowly got up, stretched and came over to sniff my hand, and looked up at me with the saddest eyes I had ever seen.

It was a couple of days later, adoption papers in hand, when he was leaping for joy at being let out of his cage that I gave him his name, "Jumping Jack Flash."

Jack was a handful from the very start. Headstrong to a fault, he insisted on doing every thing in his own way, only yielding to my authority when all else had failed. We had issues immediately. He threatened to rip my face off when I tried to brush him one day. Being brushed the next day with a muzzle on was the result.

All of our interactions went something like this:
Me-I want you to do this.
Jack-I don't want to do that, I want to do this other thing.
Me-No, I want you to do this.
Jack-What if I do this other thing first?
Me-No, I want you to do this first.
Jack-Well, okay, maybe I'll do that, but I'll stop over here and do something completely different before I come back over and then we can talk about it.

I knew border collies required a lot of attention and work. I knew you essentially had to "work" them to keep them happy and content, as left to their own devices and ignored, they could be very destructive. I had watched all of the border collie agility trials on TV and thought perhaps Jack might become an agility dog and we could have fun attending the amateur trials and such. On our first attempt I asked him to sit. I was encouraged as he sat perfectly, tongue lolling, looking at me with the "what?, what?, what?" face. I showed him the frisbee. "Here Jack, look, this is a frisbee." I was rewarded and excited when he looked at the frisbee with interest and even lifted his haunches off the ground a couple of inches. I threw a frisbee past him and cried "Get it Jack! Get the frisbee!" Jack watched the frisbee fly past him and looked back at me. "Get the frisbee Jack," I repeated. Jack sat perfectly still, panting. I retrieved the frisbee myself, showed it to him again and sailed it past him again. "Get it Jack, get the frisbee!" This time Jack didn't even watch it sail past. Instead he rolled over on his back and let his tongue roll rackishly out of the side of his mouth. I left the frisbee in his area hoping he would develop an interest in it, but he studiously ignored it. Thus it was with balls, chew toys, ropes, etc.

Bobby was intensely aggravated with me for getting Jack. He felt it wasn't fair to our two other dogs, who were smaller, and that Jack wouldn't fit into the program. Jack, though, had other plans regarding him and worked non-stop to make up with him regardless of my husband's disaffection. Bobby, who loves all living things, was soon caught stroking Jack's slick, black head and ears.

"You know Grandma's getting old," I pointed out to him. Grandma was our oldest dog and at 16 years old, was becoming ancient. "Yeah," he muttered. "And you know Grandma's a lot older than Ladybird..." "Yeah," he replied. Ladybird, the other of the two girls, seemed to bond instantly with Jack, especially in regard to bolting out of the house and running through the fields together. "Well, what's going to happen when Grandma's gone?" I asked. "Who is Ladybird going to run with then?" He muttered something unintelligible. "Dogs are pack animals," I said. "They really need that family thing happening." "I know," he said. "He's (referring to Jack) alright I guess."

I found them later, both asleep on the couch, Jack with his head in Bobby's lap.

Jack is a talker. He must have great thoughts, because he will, all of a sudden, come up to me, sit down in front of me and proceed to "tell" me something of great importance. He will not utter a decent, full-throated bark, but instead will whine, yip, dance and then do alternating combinations of the above. Sometimes I can figure it out - maybe he wants out, he needs to pee, or he wants a treat, but most of the time it's Greek (or dog) to me.

The early wee hours of April Fool's Day, we were sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. My mother had passed away a month earlier, and the night before we had lost a dear friend in an auto accident, so we were dull with grief when we stumbled into bed and instantly fell asleep. It was a couple of hours later that I awoke to hear Jack talking to me. He was not just talking. He was jumping against the bed, actually shaking it, and jumping on and off the bed, painfully stepping on my stomach and legs. I awoke up crying "Ow, ow, ow," into a dense fogginess where I could barely hear what I thought was Bobby's cell phone alarm going off. I turned over groggily and shook him awake, muttering "Turn off your #!?!# phone!!," then fell back asleep, vaguely feeling him leave the bed.

Seconds later he was back, pulling at my arm, shouting, "Get up, the house is on fire!"

The word "house," in this particular case, is a bit of a misnomer as our house was actually a 30 year old mobile home way out in the country. We all know the statistics re: rural mobile home fires - I believe the current time is about 5 to 8 minutes for it to burn completely to the ground. Also most mobile homes, and especially the older ones, are constructed of horrific volatile chemical compounds, from the paneling to the flooring, resulting in a noxious black smoke when it burns. Needless to say I was awake in an instant and ran into the hallway only to see the kitchen nearly engulfed. Everything after that was blur. I remember grabbing animals, stuffing them under my arms and then into the cab of our truck. I made the foolish mistake of going in a second time to grab my beloved guitars and throw, yes throw, them out the door. I made the foolish mistake of going in a third time to turn the power off, this time not without consequence. I could feel myself starting to go down and just managed to crawl back outside again coughing and hacking for my very life. Somehow Bobby had found a water hose and had it turned on the fire and all the area around it, trying to wet it down so it couldn't burn. He was cussing fluently and shouting his defiance to the fire gods. Through the flames and the smoke I could see a familiar black form shadowing his every footstep, yipping and whining in chorus. Jack was not going to let him fight that fire alone.

An hour later the firefighters were there, I was being given smoke inhalation treatments and the kitchen was a rancid, smelly, smoking, soaked ruin. Bobby was talking with the firefighters who were congratulating him on doing the impossible -- the unbelievable accomplishment of actually putting a mobile home fire out and saving most of it. Jack was going back and forth between Bob, the firefighters and myself, poking his cold nose into and underneath our hands.

Jack still gets muzzled when we groom him or clip his toenails - something that he still cries like a baby or growls like a rabid wolf over. But he gets away with a lot. I'm left with some questions about that awful April Fool's Day. How did Jack know to try to wake me instead of Bobby, who sleeps like a log? Why was I prompted to stop in at the dog shelter in the first place? I'll never know the answers, but I know I'll always be grateful to a pound puppy named Jumping Jack Flash.