There was, every spring, a new batch of pups,
Yipping, nipping, clumsy ***** of ***** fur,
Looking for all the world like speckled tennis *****
Before they’d learned any hard lessons
At the hands of a racquet.
They chased their tails and each other,
Not to mention various other denizens of the barnyard:
Frantic chicks, cranky piglets,
The occasional bemused draft horse,
And sometimes they chased us as well,
Yelping childishly, rolling with us on the ground,
Nipping bare fingers and toes,
Afterwards lying on the ground asleep,
Looking , save for the rhythmic twitching of their paws,
Positively angelic.
Come late August,
The time would come to set them on the *****.
We’d long since stopped thinking about it,
Much less questioning it
(I had, one year, asked my father if the puppies had to go
One time too many until,
With a look that brooked no further conversation,
He said flatly It’s what they’re born to.)
So we went on with the business
Of the soft, slow late summer
Until one evening just after sunset
We would hear the baying of the hounds
Out toward the back fields,
Mechanical and workmanlike at first,
But soon strained and syncopated with excitement,
And at some point there would be
A cacophony of cries and snarls
Until such time there was only silence.
The next morning we would visit the dogs,
And we’d pet them and rough-house a bit,
And there might be an oddly rouged spot
On their coats here and there,
Or one of them might sneeze out a tuft of fur
That didn’t rightly belong to them,
And every year our Uncle Bryce would slyly opine
You boys may want to be a bit more careful
Around their mouths now, hear?