Sandy (The Shaggy Dog Story)

Sandy, our family pet, was with us for 13 years or so.  He was an ASPCA rescue.  When we picked him out, the choice came down to either him or his brother; Sandy was so much more energetic and happy to meet us that we unanimously decided that he was the one!  Sandy was a German shepherd mix; we think he was part chow because he was big and he had the same sandy brown color as a chow, hence his name.  Mom still has the one or two pictures of him that exist; as soon as I get the opportunity, I will scan those suckers so Sandy lives on the Internet forever as he lives in my mind right now.

I promised myself that I would only tell one Sandy story, so here we go:  One summer afternoon I was home with Sandy and Mom was at work or school; my brother and sister had moved away by then.  It was mid-afternoon and I had chained him up in the backyard.  His collar was connected to an iron bolt by a long, heavy-gauge chain (not too heavy for him, as he was full-grown and then some by then), and a dish of water, a shade tree and green grass to play in were nearby.  As I was watching TV and eating, I heard him barking excitedly; I went to the upstairs sitting room window and looked outside.  Sandy was being teased by Franchot Murphy.  The Murphy family was the one that no one really wanted their kids to hang out with because they would turn out bad.  There was one girl and five or six boys.  Ronnie Murphy was a year younger than I; Franchot was a couple of years older.  The one older than Franchot was the true terror of the bunch; I seem to have blanked his name out of my memory.  Anyway, Franchot (along with someone I did not recognize) had walked down our driveway into the backyard area, and were just standing there inches away from Sandy, who was straining to get at them while giving them his best “I don’t like you” barkbarkbark.

I just stood there and watched the scene play out, mostly because I didn’t want to get the crap beaten out of me.  Well -- OK, entirely because I didn’t want to get the crap beaten out of me.  I hoped that the confrontation would fizzle out on its own.  It did, as Franchot and his friend got tired of teasing after only a couple of minutes and walked away.

After waiting a suitable period of time, I went outside and to the backyard to check on my buddy.  Sandy saw me coming and rushed toward me as he usually did; the chain tensed up for about half a second, and he broke the chain like it wasn’t even there, and tackled me like Dino tackles Fred on “The Flintstones”.  Even as he was giving me an unwanted facial, I realized that something very special had just happened.  Did he hold back on purpose when the boys were teasing him?  Did a burst of adrenaline make him pop the chain because he was so happy to see me?  Was this the bidding of a higher power?  Surely if he had broken loose when the boys were there, he would have bitten one or both of them and probably would have been put down as a result, or they would have seriously injured him in self-defense.  As it turned out, it was just another non-incident on 193^rd Street.  I just shortened up on the chain about six inches so the broken link was no longer used, and we kept putting Sandy outside on nice afternoons.