FRED THE WONDER DOG.

Shame on me.  I can't find a good picture of Fred.

    We had a few dogs over the years but this one was special.  Fred was a "rescue" dog but in a different way.  He was a Border Collie mix and smarter than some folks that I have known.  No, actually, he was smarter than a lot of folks that I have known.  We looked for our place in the country for years and one day Nancy, Billy, Wade and I were on Martin Road in Hall County looking at land when we found Fred.  He had been tied up by someone with a cotton rope and it looked like he had chewed through it and escaped.  The stringy rope end was tangled up in some brush that was left when they cut wood of of the property and it looked like he had been there a while.  (Some people actually cut all the trees off of a piece of land and then put it up for sale.)  I think he may have been mistreated because he would not let me come close to him to free him but after talking to him for a while, and feeding him animal crackers, he finally calmed down and I got his rope loose from the brush.

     He was obviously thirsty so we went to a little country store and got him some water and a can of food.  By then we were all friends.  We had Fred in the back seat of our little 1973 Honda Civic with Billy and Wade.  The dog almost went from one side of the car to the other and was lying on the boys but they didn't seem to care. We drove up and down the road with Fred in the car and stopped at every house to see who owned him with no luck so he came home with us. 



    While we were living in the subdivision in College Park Fred would lay on the front porch and let anybody come to the door with no barking but after we moved to the sticks he became very protective.  I guess he thought that these fools are out here and it was up to him to protect us. 

    After we moved we put out water for him but we noticed that he didn't drink much.   Fred had long hair and went to the creek to cool off and  and he would drink water from the creek or spring.

    We called him our family dog but in truth he was Nancy's dog. If Nancy and I were sitting close together on the steps he would root himself between us.  I guess he was jealous of me or just wanted to be close to her.  I never worried about their safety while I was at work at night because I knew he would fight to the death for any of the family.

    He loved to lie in the cool loose dirt after we had run the tiller in the garden.  Nancy would let him lay there until we were ready to plant and then tell him he had to get out of the garden.  He would ignore the first request like he didn't hear it.  The second request he would grudgingly get up and go just to the edge of the tilled dirt and lay down again.  Nancy would ask him if he thought that he was out of the garden and he would finally get up and move out of the tilled dirt.  Just like a kid. 

   Nancy use to go for a daily walk on the road and she would not let Fred go with her because he would chase cars. She would leave and he would start to go with her and she would tell him, no, he had to stay home. He would go back and lay down just like a good dog until she got out of sight.  He would then slip off into the woods and stay out of sight, he thought, and go with her all the way while staying in the woods.  I'm sure that if Nancy had ever needed protection that he would have quickly appeared.  At one point she was walking 5 miles a day.  You would see Fred come back and lie where he was when she left and then she would be coming down the driveway.  Had she been able to ask him I'm sure that he would have said that he had been right there the whole time and ask her if she had a good walk.

    Nancy would take him with her in the Travelall station wagon whenever she could.  The Travelall was larger than the Chevy Suburban and had a large area behind the back seat.  She would tell him to stay in the back and he would until she was out of sight and then he would get in the drivers seat and stay there till she returned.  She would ask him where he was suppose to be and he would climb into the back seat like that was where he should ride.  She would again ask him where he was suppose to be and he would finally climb into the back.

   A stray border collie female showed up one day and Fred had a wife.  We hoped for some little Fred's but it never happened. We lost Fred years ago but we still miss him.

Home Scoolin Time:

Frederic Bastiat was a French economist who lived in the first half of the 18th century.  His pamphlet "The Law" is as true now as it was then and is highly recommended reading.  It is only 107 pages and is free many places on the web.  The link below is to the PDF download.

http://www.fee.org/files/doclib/20121116_TheLaw.pdf