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Last Updated 09/06/05
Email: joy@our-town.com
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Dog In His Field
You’d never
guess that Willie once didn’t have much more to look forward to than his next
meal. With just the shirt on his back, he got up one morning determined to get ahead and make something of
himself. Helped by a strong hand,
he took one giant leap up the ladder to success and since then he just keeps on
a steady roll. Today Willie climbs
into the seat of an air-conditioned pickup and rides to work.
Once at the construction site, he jumps down and takes his place in the
cab of a $400,000 monster dirt mover. He
watches over the road work, talking to the workers from time to time as they
drop by.
Willie
Buck is a small mixed breed dog that is the constant companion of Jim Buck, a
big man who handles big machinery in his business of road construction.
Like his buddy, Willie takes no gruff off anybody and will challenge the
person who tries to get in the pickup with him. Buck’s employees know this but
they also know that once inside the cab, Willie is ready to be petted.
There is one exception and that exception is Hurrsell Whitefield.
“Willie just
hates Hurrsell and has bit him a couple of times. That’s because Hurrsel acts like he’s going to eat
Willie’s bones and other stuff he’s buried back there.” Jim motioned to
the back seat of his pickup. “When
Willie sees that Hurrsel is fixin’ to get in here, he just comes unglued. He jumps into the back seat, rakes all his bones and stuff in
the floor, tries to cover them up with something and then lays down on top of
them.
“Willie
was just a little puppy when our daughter, Jennifer brought him home,” Deborah
Buck said. “I bought him a little
shirt that said, ‘Dogs are People too’.
I guess he read that and took it to heart because he really is People.”
One morning Jim Buck went out to get in his pickup and Willie, dressed in
his only shirt, followed. “I sat
down in the seat, looked out and there was that little puppy standing on his
back legs with his front feet on the step,” Jim said.
“I asked him if he wanted to go with me.
He looked like he did, so I reached down and picked him up by the scruff
of his neck, set him on the seat beside me.
That was 5 years ago this August. We’ve been together ever since.”
Arriving
at the construction site, Willie bales out of the pickup and scrambles into the
cab of whatever piece of monster dirt moving equipment Jim is driving at the
time. When lunch time comes, Willie
shares whatever Jim is having.
“He
really prefers T-bone steaks,” Jim said.
“He likes chicken tenders too but he prefers steak.
He’d rather have whatever I’m having.
When he gets a bone or some other treat that he doesn’t want to eat
right away, buries it somewhere in the back seat.”
Jim Buck stopped to chuckle, remembering how Hurrsel Whitefield and
Willie get along.
“Willie
goes everywhere I go,” Jim said, “and that includes vacations as well as
work. He’s stayed at some of the finest motels in the country. There’s only
one hotel I haven’t taken him to and that’s The Embassy in Austin.”
According
to Deborah, Jim always leaves his pickup running if Willie has to stay inside
and the weather is too hot or too cold. “If
it was 108 and he was leaving me, he’s turn the engine off but he’ll leave
the air-conditioning on for Willie.”
“Well,
he likes to be comfortable,” Jim laughed.
Willie
is groomed by Beverley at Polished Pets and she says that she has no trouble
bathing Willie or giving him a haircut. “I
do have a little trouble with Jim Buck,” she confessed.
“Jim drops him off and then wants him back in a few minutes.
He sure doesn’t want to leave his buddy very long.”
Willie,
is part Cocker Spaniel, part Wire-Haired Terrier, making him an non pedigreed
pet but according to Sherry Webb, publisher of The Texas Dairy Review, Willie is
a girl chaser when it comes to her registered Shih Tzu, Sally.
“Jim
Buck says Willie doesn’t care anything about Sally,” Sherry said.
“I asked him why he always chases her around then?”
“Willie
has gone through three new pickups,” Jim Buck said, acknowledging that there
is an accumulation of hair and other trash that builds up and has to be tossed
out ever so often. “But we travel around the country together and you know how
stuff collects out on the road.” The
big man stopped talking and looked down at the little dog. Willie returned that look.
“Hey,
Willie, let’s go get us a steak,” Jim Buck said.
Willie jumped in the pickup, Jim slammed the door and they disappeared in
a cloud of dust.