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| Queenie and the girls count sheep on a Driftless farm circa 2013 |
Apple season stirs up memories for us every year.
The best dog that ever lived is buried beneath our old
apple tree-the one with the hollow hiding hole in its trunk. 7 years ago, we had a team of hot Belgian
mares that needed a job to do. We loaned them to an Amish neighbor with 30
acres of corn to cultivate. While helping the mares settle in the barn at his
farm, our girls became enamored of a thick little Blue Heeler cross.
She was old, her “motherness” hanging low beneath her
belly and swinging side to side. Though she was too old to keep up with the
other dogs, and though the new pups on the block made her life one of nips and
annoyance, the farmer kept her on because of her faithful loyalty. “She was with
my father in the field the day he died in the accident. I can’t hitch up
without her watching over things.” Seeing how taken the girls were with her, he
lifted the dog into our truck. “She’s yours if you’ll take her. I figure she’ll
have more peace with your girls than with our pups.” That’s how Queenie came to
stay.
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| Haymaking, summer of 2013 |
Every time Shane hitched up our Norwegian Fjords to
make hay or bring a tank of water down to the lower 20 to the sheep, she’d give
a little bark of bossiness and sit in front of the team mesmerizing them,
daring them to move even one inch while leather and clasps and snaps and pins
were put into service and all was made ready for the chore of the day. When he’d
take the reins in hand, she’d leap up onto the fore-cart to ride shotgun all
afternoon.
When we moved to our current farm, Queenie spent the
winter asleep by the woodstove, sniffling and wheezing while she dreamed and
sighed over her younger days as a dog in the Driftless region of Southwestern
Wisconsin.
That summer she fell off the fore cart while Shane was
raking hay 2 miles away. She got caught up in the windrow tumbling as Shane
pulled the team up and looked down at her in fear. She was fine, but he had to
deny her the pleasure of accompanying him to the hay field from then on. He
would lock her in the barn and whisper “I know, I know, girl, but it’s for your
own good!” One day she broke out, and ran the 2 miles across HI way 95 to the
hay field she had only visited once by truck. When Shane saw her, he shouted “great
heart cannot be denied!” and lifted her up into his lap as he finished the
season’s hay-making. |
| Cider Making Day 2021 |
She had all the feel of a great lady with a wealth of
experience unknown to us. One day there was a commotion in the barnyard, and
the girls came running in to tell us they had spotted what they thought was a
Racoon under the woodpile. On our farm the coons are grain thieves and chicken
snatchers, and so this news was met with the pull of a trigger. When Queenie
heard the shot, she rocketed around the corner, out of nowhere, like a bullet,
and dove under the wood-pile snout first. Out she came, backing out with an
impressive display of feigned savagery shaking a woodchuck from side to side as
it thumped, lifeless, against her solid body. It was like watching your great grandmother
leap into the air and karate chop a shop lifter before stabbing him with a knitting
needle. “Whoa Queenie! You have some pretty impressive hidden talents!” we
exclaimed.
The day we were told by the vet that she had sepsis and
was actively dying, we took her home top out her down ourselves. As Shane went
in for his .22, Queenie died in my arms. She was too good a dog to make him
waste a bullet on her. We were humbled by the seeming perfection of her life,
the example of her quiet loyalty, the charm of her presence on our farm. Soon
after, Maj, our older mare, passed away of old age. No doubt she felt, with
Queenie her taskmaster gone, she now had permission to do so. It was the end of
an era for us.
When we buried her beneath the apple tree we said, “Every
autumn, when the apples are ripe, when the season draws to a close, we’ll
remember her. Some things are too good to last on this poor earth.”
