After the stray dog saved Joyce’s life, it was allowed to stay, and Bob quickly became part of the family. The first thing Joyce did was to give him a bath and a good brushing. When she finished, her brothers, Mathol and Delos, gathered around.
Mathol petted Bob and said, “He’s a right nice-looking animal when he’s clean.”
“True,” Delos said. “He doesn’t even look like the same animal.”
But the cleaning showed something else strange about Bob. He had an unusual number of scars. “Daddy,” Joyce asked her father, “what do you think all of those scars are from?”
Her father shook his head. “There’s something familiar about them, but I can’t think what it is.”
Bob spent a lot of time with Joyce. He was timid around everyone else, but he didn’t seem afraid of her since she was only five. But he soon took his part in other ways around the farm. When Delos and Mathol headed to the pasture to get the cows for milking, Bob liked to go along. Delos and Mathol enjoyed his company, too.
After Bob had saved Joyce from the bull, the bull was more humble. But the bull still challenged Bob a couple more times. Bob was so expert at dodging the bull, and then sinking his teeth into the bull’s soft backside, that two more challenges were all the bull was good for. After that, when he saw that the boys had Bob with them, the bull ran to the farthest end of the pasture and let the cows fend for themselves.
Twice each day, the boys drove the cows to the barn for milking, and Bob hurried up the stragglers. But one day, a cow tried to break free. Delos yelled for Mathol to cut her off. Mathol barely headed her in time and turned her back to the pen. As soon as she was in, Mathol shut the gate and latched it.
A couple of days later, the same cow tried to make a break for it. But neither of the boys was near enough to stop her. However, Bob soon had her turned around and drove her back to the pen. But then he did something unexpected. He pushed the gate closed with his nose, then he used his teeth to pull the latch into position.
The two boys stood there, dumbfounded. Finally, Mathol turned to Delos. “Did you see what I just saw, or was I dreaming?”
“Yeah, I saw it,” Delos said. “Bob is better at herding cows than you are. But that’s not such a big miracle. Everyone is.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Mathol said. “Why don’t you push the gate closed with your nose then use your teeth to shut the latch?”
That night they told the rest of the family what had happened, and the others were skeptical. Later, when they were milking again, Delos mentioned the family’s uncertainty about what they shared.
“Well, it might be because you have a way of building on stories until they aren’t even recognizable,” Mathol said.
“A story shouldn’t be told more than once if you can’t tell it better each time,” Delos replied.
They wondered to each other if Bob would do his trick again. “Let’s try next time,” Mathol said. So, when it was time to get the cows, they went to the pasture gate. Bob followed them as usual, but this time, Mathol pointed at the cows and said, “Bob, go get the cows.”
It took a couple of times saying it, but suddenly Bob took off toward the cows. He rounded them up and brought them back to the milking pen.
“Let’s see what he does with the gate,” Delos said.
Once the cows were in the pen, Bob pushed the gate shut and latched it. After Bob had done this twice each day for a week, the boys called the rest of the family to watch.
Their father shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Let’s just hope the cows don’t learn his gate tricks.”
(To be continued)
