In Memory: Cowboy

If you've been reading my stories long enough, you'll remember that February 2024 was a difficult time for me. I lost my precious Little Bit and beautiful Joy, as well as FriendCat Emma. At that time, I expressed concern for our other oldsters, Copper, Cowboy, and Leela. Of those three, only one is left, my little "LoupGarou You Geaux Girl," known by her puppy name of "Leela." Copper, it astounds me to say, has been gone for six months already. Sadly, I also have to report that Cowboy has gone on to his reward.

Cowboy passed a couple of months ago, but his memorial is one of the most difficult that I have had to write. I sat down to write it a week after he passed, then a month after his passing. Even now, it's coming out in bits and pieces. He'll be gone for almost two months by the time I finish writing this article. Maybe it will be longer. I don't know. The emotions were too raw, the feeling of surreal loss still too overwhelming in the beginning. There's no escaping the huge hole that his absence creates on the farm, even now . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Cowboy was a striking dog, but he was not a "good" conformation show American Pit Bull Terrier (APBT). Dan tried showing him a couple of times in United Kennel Club (UKC) shows, but he never got enough competition wins to become a champion. I think that he topped out at two, and those were received because his competition was not sufficiently bold enough to meet the standard requirements. At his prime, Cowboy stood about 20 inches at the shoulder and weighed about 35 pounds. That made him small for today's APBT. Additionally, he lacked today's exaggerated head, and he was swift and agile. His pedigree featured Colby line APBTs generations back and you could see them in him.

Cowboy was just a puppy when I first met Dan. I had been getting raw venison for my dogs through a friend of mine (legal in Mississippi, btw) when she gave me three very important pieces of information:

The man she was getting her venison from was looking for an assistant, as his had quit,

He paid his assistants in half the venison processed on a given day,

He lived a 15-minute drive from me.

I was out of work, so feeding my dogs was a priority to me. Even though it was bitterly cold and I don't tolerate the cold well, I bundled up and drove over to the farm at the appointed time. It was like driving onto a movie set. I had to drive up a long hill of a driveway, flanked on both sides by thick trees. At the top of the hill, an old delivery truck stood at one side, clearly no longer in use. A small camouflage green pickup was parked about 50 feet ahead. Behind it was a trailer with several barrels on it. Even at that distance, I could see the bones sticking up from inside.

At the time, Dan was still breeding American Pit Bull Terriers for competition in United Kennel Club shows and events (obedience and weight pull, mostly). His late wife, who bred Yorkshire Terriers and Japanese Chins, had also left him with a number of dogs. The cacophony of barking was alarming. I had been told that the APBTs would all be contained in their kennels, so not to worry. I was totally unprepared, then, for the three farm dogs who ran up to the car: Bowser (a lanai dog), Toby (an oversized Yorkie), and Cowboy (an APBT). I sat in the car for a moment, contemplating the length of my future life if I opened the door, and looked for any sign of aggression from them. There was no aggression toward me as I opened the door and walked to the trailer, but I kid you not when I say that I was escorted.

All four of us became fast friends that winter--five, if you include Dan--and it lasted all of their lives. Toby was the first to go, run over by a visitor to the farm who drove up the driveway at an unreasonable speed, but both Bowser and Cowboy live to old age. To this day, I remember Toby jumping into the trailer and into the bed of the truck, cleaning up the scraps that had fallen there. He was a Good Dog, although I don't have any photos of him. Dan bred a lot of Good Dogs over the years, not a single one with aggression toward humans and few with any significant aggression toward other dogs. They were the proverbial dogs who would never start a fight but were still brave and tenacious to the end. Many of them were champions and grand champions in the show ring and some rounded off their conformation success with performance titles, as well. They were walked instead of allowed to roam the farm until after their retirement from the show ring, muscular, but not hardened. Cowboy, on the other hand, was whipcord tough from all of his rambling.

He might have been an unsuccessful show dog, but Dan wouldn't have traded Cowboy for a million dollars for his quality as a farm dog. He was an excellent vermin hunter, who regularly took out rats, as well as dispatching the occasional opossum and raccoon on his own. He protected the livestock from both human and animal predators alike. If someone drove up the long driveway to the house, Cowboy would be right outside the driver's side door until Dan could "clear" the driver. He and Bowser chased away a person--who they both knew!--who Dan had paid to feed the dogs while he was off on a judging assignment. More than once, he and Bowser, later teamed with Luna, harassed and chased away coyotes and dogs from the property. When Luna was just a puppy, Dan came across the three dogs mauling a coyote in the backyard. Dan called them off the (grateful) coyote, who would have been gone if he'd found them even a few minutes later. Years after that, when he was toothless and riddled with arthritis, he and Luna chased off a Doberman pinscher who was making its way to the chicken yard. Cowboy gripped the Doberman's leg in his tooth-free jaws, while Luna whupped the Dobe all the way to the property line. It was his last act as the farm protector and a good one to go out on. No one was killed or even significantly injured, but that Doberman learned a valuable life lesson (and never returned).

His days weren't all rough and tumble. There were many times that he and Luna would join me--with or without Dan--as I sat on the garden bench and took a break from chores. He would, when he was younger, chase after a stick or a ball and dare me to chase him. I don't think he ever got the hang of playing "fetch." He just liked to pick things up and run with them. When we were processing venison for dog food, he was always there to pick up pieces that we'd dropped. Butchering chickens was always done with an audience, Cowboy waiting in the bushes until we were ready to toss him a choice morsel for his patience. At night, when I went to feed the kennel dogs, he would amble down to the chain link runs with me, along the short wooded path, across the driveway, and down the sidewalk to the dogs penned there. I enjoyed having my protector with me, even if I knew that he was there mostly for the ground venison treats he got for his trouble.

Like all dogs who live to an advanced age, Cowboy began to slow down. His daily walks came to a gradual stop, with Luna taking his place at my side. He developed deficiencies as he got older. Around the age of 14, his gait began to stiffen. The smattering of white hairs that had begun on his muzzle overtook his entire head, eventually creating a flurry down the "extended mask" of black hairs that had dotted his fawn-and-white chest for years. His soft brown eyes began to cloud, his hearing was less sharp. By the age of 15, just six months ago, although it feels like years, he was taking Rimadyl "as needed." Being an APBT, he never whined with pain, but we could tell when he needed it by the way he rose from sleep. At that point, however, he handed over his guardian duties to Luna and spent most of his time sleeping in the sun.

One late September day, Cowboy got up from his rest in the sun. It was a beautiful day, with just a hint of a chill of fall moving in. He followed Dan around the farm as he did his chores, just as he had when he was a young dog: to the various garden plots, to the chicken yard, to the orchard. He never complained about an ache or a pain, not even when Vex tried to entice him to play by jumping on him. It seemed as if the Rimadyl was doing its job. We hoped that it was a sign of improvement for him. The next day, Cowboy could not walk. He never walked again.

I watched Dan struggle with the idea that Cowboy was coming to an end. I helped him carry Cowboy from bed to bed during the day, from near the wood heater, where he slept; to outside near the woodpile, where he spent most of his days. He could see the heartbeat of the farm from there, if he could still see at all. We both helped him stand when he needed to potty, we helped him turn over or stand up as he signaled that he wanted to move. He got special food, purchased or made just for him. He was spoiled to the nth degree and his good nature never wavered. He loved it when Archie brought him a toy in an effort to play tug, he loved it when one of us came to sit near and stroke him while he was on his pillow. Both Dan and I kept a close watch for the far away look that would tell us that it was Time. But that expression was slow to come, even as Cowboy lost the ability to eat his kibble, then his venison chunks, then his ground venison. Dan and Cowboy had grown old together. It was hard for either of them to let go.

As the end of October approached, we knew that Cowboy's time was running out. One Friday morning, it was there. The Look. Cowboy gazed into the distance, even though he was looking straight at us. His eyes were clouded with age, but he was looking beyond anything his dimmed vision could have seen. "If he's here in the morning," Dan told me, "I'll take him to Tylertown before they close." It was his way of telling me that I needed to prepare myself to say goodbye. Before I left Dan's house that evening, at 7:15 p.m., I sat next to Cowboy on his blankets. I petted his head and whispered into his deaf ear, "You've done a good job, young man. You're loved more than you know. Go be with Bowser now. He's looking for you." I know he didn't hear me, but he sighed at the touch of my hand.

Cowboy passed on that night, on October 25. Dan was right there, sitting in a chair with Cowboy at his feet, reaching down to stroke him as often as he could. At a little before 9:20, Cowboy's breathing started to become deep and slow. At 9:32, he let out a small gasp, right before he joined Bowser and Toby, running in the field of Eternal Sunlight, young and strong and healthy again. He was buried in Dan's "Row of Champions" the next day, alongside some of the best dogs I have ever known.

Today, as I type this story over three months later, I have tears streaming down my face. Some dogs are special, even when they are not your own. Some dogs burrow their way into your heart and live there forever. Cowboy was one of those dogs.

Fare thee well, Cowboy. Well met.

Until we meet again.