Champ.

My dog is long passed, gone to another world where he runs free like the clouds across the sky but we made memories. We were an odd couple. I was a gangly stub of a string bean. Under five feet tall and under seventy pounds. He was a muscle freak. Half boxer half Rottweiler but I threw him around and I threw myself around with him. I used to knock him around pretty good, too. He would bound into me, "playing", so I had to get up and knock him around so he would understand that isn't how this can go. You'll get lost in this world if I let you get away with that. I told him he had to remember I look out for him, I know my way around better than he did. He did not understand how big he was, how much smaller I was and what the physics of all of that meant but I did. We had to put him outside because he was a bundle of energy. And with all his muscle he would have torn the house down. I remember all this. I remember watching exactly the way things were going. He knocked a few things in the basement down so my father built a pen. He jumped out of it after awhile. So my father put some boards over the top of it. He

kept arguing with the dog stirring him up. It was a real message to me when my father put the roof on it. It had no door. Just walls and a roof. The dog banged the boards loose with his head to get out. I asked my father, "Dad, did you put a roof on the pen?" and he said yes. I had already told him it doesn't need a roof. He said, "That's your dog you know?" That was far more ominous and telling than anyone else might understand but I knew all that meant. That phrase might seem very innocuous to many people but there was a deeper meaning and I knew it. I saw the way it was headed. Neither my father or the dog were backing down.

I strung up a cable outside. I put a chain on him. I put a link from chain to cable so he could use it as a run. He could run up and down a pretty good distance. He had some good lee-way. It was trial and error as I had to find the right chain to hold him because he broke free a few times to roam the neighborhood and I had to chase him down. I had to get a thicker and thicker chain until one was finally thick enough. Every oncecin awhile he could still figure out how to get loose

but I would just go hunt him down. I would wrestle with him. I'd wrestle him in the woods, bargain, negotiate when he broke free. He didn't always pick the best weather to break loose in either. If it was snowing and 9:30 at night you better believe when you least expected, he got loose. But I faithfully tracked him down. He was mine. I talked with him all the time so he became a pretty good listener and frustrated me much less than he could have because he knew I cared and he cared, too. That was our understanding. We reached it. We reached it together. I made sure he understood. I wanted him to know I cared and I wanted him to care, too. I was like 10 years old when we first got him and he grew fast. Faster than me. But I didn't want him to have a completely rough time in the world. Even though he was big and powerful then world is not always forgiving.

I taught him the distance the run would allow him to go. Next, I dragged scrap wood out and built him a rudimentary dog house right in front of him. I explained it to him while I built it so he would understand it. He calmly watched. My

father would have sent him away but I wasn't going to allow that. That was my dog and I wanted him. When I was done putting it together I told him it was to get out of the rain, the snow, the wind. You go in it when it's dark. Pretty much anytime but the times I already explained he would like it best. You can climb in and out of it freely. He just stared at it. I said ok. I'll show you how it works and I climbed in it. Then he climbed in after me. We talked inside his dog house. I hugged him for a bit. Spent a bit of time in there with him. Then I climbed out and left it to him. I brought an old blanket out and threw it inside of it for him. He was better behaved than people thought he was. I told he scares people because hecso big and a stranger to people. They don't know you, I want you to be nice. I want people to like you and you want people to like you. You will be happier that way. It's because of our talks. I told him the truth. I stopped asking my parents when that all started happening I just went around and put it all together myself because I didn't want to lose my dog. I explained things like that to him. I loved that crazy dog. I think he

appreciated my resolution because my father and him stopped fighting and I kept him in the family and kept the family together. They realized it was better. Things got better after I stepped in and just took over the situation and fixed it. Neither side was listening and my father was wrong. But he wasn't going to back down.

I named him Champ. We got him from junkyard. The mother had like four or five puppies. They were all brindle except him. When I got there to pick which one I wanted he was the first one to come up to me. Then his siblings knocked him down and out of the way. So I pet them all but I knew he was the one for me. He was a bit like Petey from little rascals. He was white and had a solid brindle patch over one eye like a shiner. He had a brindle spot on his back near his tail, too, but the one over his eye and being a boxer is why I named him Champ. That was the name that fit him best.