![]() So I carried Penny, my Christmas puppy, a gift from the woman I love, back to my dad’s truck and started wondering, for the first time, what breed she was. It came out only when she was drunk, tired or excited, and it was too early in the morning for it to be either of the first two. “The yalla one,” Kristen said in the country drawl she had worked years to hide. If she was going to adopt a dog with me, we had better be on the same wavelength about the one to get. One of these dogs was going home with me, and she could pick which one. I sent them to Kristen and told her to pick. I took a picture of Penny and a picture of another puppy. But Kristen had to know it was her dog, too. She looked at me and I looked at her and everything about the moment seemed right. Her golden fur was warm when I picked her up and held her in my arms. She looked forward through almond-shaped pools of deep amber. Penny leaned against the chain-link fence, quiet as a church mouse, bathing in sunlight. “What about this one? She seems like she wouldn’t be too much to handle,” my dad said, motioning toward a ball of fur the same color as the dirt that lined the pen. You could watch her heart break a bit after each shelter we left empty-handed. My dad was with me because Kristen had been emotionally drained from visiting shelters and saying no and saying no and saying no. They looked as good as any puppy I had seen in my month looking for one. Only a week before Christmas, all 10 or so looked like they would be perfect under anyone’s tree. It gave the same impression that all land around here gives: a silent facade that teems with life once the surface is broken.Ī pen full of puppies sat adjacent to the main building. Nothing moved, either on the water’s surface or at the woods’ edge. ![]() ![]() The shelter sat on a hillside overlooking a small bog. For stretches of the drive, the woods would contract, tightly flanking both sides of the road before expanding and giving way to large swaths of pasture on top of rolling hills. I had never been down this road before, but it looked like almost every road I had ever driven growing up in Northeast Georgia. The faded street sign read McGee Road, or it would have if not for years of bombardment by sun and rain. It lived in the pit of my stomach and grew and gnawed until I about lost my mind and was ready to take home the next damn dog I saw. Each Craigslist ad I looked at and every stop at a shelter made my need for a dog grow. Kristen and I searched for the perfect dog for a solid month. Owning a dog would signify that not only was I independent enough to take care of myself, but also that I could also care for another life.īut I didn’t know I needed a dog until my girlfriend of seven years, Kristen, suggested getting one in November 2011 as a Christmas gift. Lots of my friends at the University of Georgia - where I was smack in the middle of a five-year plan - owned dogs. As a young Southern man, I saw owning a dog as a rite of passage. I felt an itch that needed a scratch and every missed turn made the scratching wait a little longer. We set out to visit an animal shelter there, but missed a turn somewhere or another among the lush hills and dense forests of Northeast Georgia. My father and I were lost on the back roads outside Lavonia, Ga., the day I got Penny. They typify our love affair with man's best friend.īut you may have never heard of the most Southern dog alive. These dogs were bred by Southerners to thrive in the South. The Catahoula Leopard Dog is theorized to have been first bred in 16th century Louisiana - a cross between the Native Americans' dogs and Fernando de Soto's Greyhounds. The Redbone Coonhound was brought to the South by Scottish immigrants, then selectively bred by Southerners to create a dog with amazing stamina and tenacity. The Plott Hound was brought to North Carolina from Germany in the 18th century to hunt wild boars. We love dogs because they were shaped by us and their history runs concurrently with ours. And they do this in exchange for a warm place to sleep, a full belly and the love of a human family. We take them into the woods with us and let them sniff out our game and then retrieve it for us. ![]() Our four-legged brethren are a bridge between that wild past and a civilized present. Perhaps we are a generation or two fewer removed from the time when having a dog was essential to surviving and living off the land. Maybe it's because in the South, we're a bit more country than our cousins to the north. What is it about Southerners and our dogs? ![]() Things we love in the South: Moon Pies, SEC football, Otis Redding, Flannery O’Connor, Cheerwine and, probably more than anything else, our dogs. ![]()
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