A Tribute to Hank, the Cowdog

I was a dumb homeschooler. Firstly, I began on accident, since our family was in a remote third-world village. Our oldest, Travis, was six years old and should have been starting first-grade. On returning stateside, he could read, add, and subtract. Our secondborn, Kate, was learning her letters and numbers. I thought, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Secondly, I was selfish. I freaking loved teaching my kids. It was the most satisfying, joyful, exhausting job in the world. The pay is total shit but the rewards are priceless. Was homeschooling in their best interest? Would they be social misfits like everyone said? I wasn’t sure, but it was definitely in MY best interest. The thought of them leaving all day, every day, was crushing. I loved being with those kids, all four of them. Even when I didn’t.

The irony is, I didn’t even want to have kids. I thought babies were stinky and snotty and whiney and the white ones were ugly, to boot. Ours were certainly going to be some unfortunate shade of white.

Then I “accidentally” got pregnant. When Travis was born, God himself nuked my preconceived ideas, and not merely my view of children, but my priorities, my understanding of love, and even my understanding of God as a good Father. My career was suddenly unimportant, parties were shallow, and my old life was gone in an instant. My bare foot kicked all of it out the door, along with my tweed blazer, heels, and the money that went with it. If this was what it meant to be chained to the kitchen stove, I’d take it.

I’m one of those weirdos who can’t identify with parents who throw back—to-school parties on Facebook because they can’t wait to get rid of their kids in the fall. I’m just not that girl. Granted, the reason I wanted to be with my kids is because they weren’t pitching fits on the floor of Walmart or crawling across the table at Denny’s. We disciplined our lovely children when they weren’t so lovely, so they weren’t usually screaming and writhing around on the floor of the bank. Travis blew up his sister’s dollhouse, though. And Kate kicked the preacher in the shins. Jesse ate poop out of his diaper and Isaac climbed in our truck and wrecked it at the end of the driveway. So it wasn’t all roses, by a long shot. But for the most part, it was a blast and we loved them like crazy.

Thirdly, we did not have the money to homeschool. My husband was a contractor in a depressed rural area and for financial reasons, I should have remained a working mom. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Because I couldn’t. So he worked twice as hard, and so did I.

We knew it was going to be a struggle for the mortgage and electricity. Eventually, even food would become a struggle. But we were determined to suck it up. Clothes could be found at thrift stores, music lessons bartered for, gardens tilled and planted, chickens butchered, and venison cut up on the kitchen table. There were used school textbooks and the public library. There were batteries and copper wire, seeds and test plots, trips to museums on free days, little league baseball and hockey, community art studios and 4-H.

Our local public school required $20,000 to educate one child each year. I always wondered what it would be like to have $80,000 per year to educate my own four kids. I guess we would have gone to Spain, to learn Spanish.

Summers were for collecting the year’s school supplies...at garage sales. It was at one of those sales that I picked up a dog-eared copy (pun intended) of “Hank the Cowdog,” by John R. Erickson. It took a quick scan of one or two ratty pages to know that this was a good read. It was hilarious and touching. It was a book written by an Australian cattle dog, from his ridiculous and wonderful perspective. And strangely, I could identify with Hank. I bought it for 10 cents.

My kids read that book like it was “Little Women,” or “Farmer Boy.” It was read aloud, from one sibling to the next. Kate, loved that book so much that she stole it from our home library and added it to her own. I wanted to buy the whole series for her, but it was an outlandish luxury at the time.

Now, the kids are all grown and gone, successful adults, and wonderful people. Kate bought herself a real live cattle dog. I got a “real” job and my husband and I were making a decent living. Gardening is a hobby now, instead of a necessity.

Kate turned 26 years old in April. For her birthday, I ordered the whole series of “Hank the Cow Dog.”

When she opened that box, she jumped up and down, screaming and clapping like a little girl. And then she cried. And so did I. We might have been crying over struggle and suffering. We might have been crying over the beauty and wonder that was our family.

But mostly, we were crying over the memory of that one little 10-cent book from 17 years ago, and how precious it was.

So, thank you, Mr. Erickson, for creating “Hank, the Cow Dog.” Thank you, Hank, for bringing us so much joy, even all these years later.