suppose I could blame it all on Professor Tolkien - the wanderlust of my youth, that is. Sure,
my family went on road trips to places as diverse as Florida, Oklahoma and New Jersey every
other summer or so, but I remain convinced that it was the Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings,
which I read at the age of twelve, that inspired me to climb the Misty Mountains and see what
dragons I might slay. After dropping out of high school the first thing I did was to earn my
G.E.D. - months before my former classmates graduated. The second thing I did was to set out
on my own to see this Great Land of Ours. Walkie-talkie in hand, I became known to the truckers
of the Interstate highway system as: "The Electronic Hitch-hiker." Though I wandered from Miami to New Orleans to St. Louis to Kansas City to L.A. to Dallas, I always wound up back home.
It was at my parent's home in Shreveport that I met the brother of a friend - who himself became my friend - Jim. Jim was visiting his family from Los Angeles, and when it came time for him to leave, he invited me along. Since my backpack was perpetually packed and ready, there was no way I could turn down such an invitation. This was the trip that would introduce me to one of the best friends a man has ever had. Other than myself, Jim had one other faithful companion, an half Coyote Alsatian Shepherd named Mc Queen - after the famous actor. I had known many dogs up to that point in my life, but Mc Queen was different - owing in part, I was certain, to his coyote heritage. While the skittish, yapping mutts I had been around in the past were mostly ill-behaved and bad-tempered, Mc Queen was quiet, obedient and surprisingly well behaved - for a dog. My attitude toward canines began to reshape itself as I grew to appreciate his unique personality and to understand, as Jim put it, "there are no bad dogs, only bad dog-owners."
For one thing, such a nicely behaved and attractive animal, with his ears and tail held high and wearing a perpetual dolphin-like smile was a delightfully non-threatening tool with which Jim (and I) could approach and meet members of the opposite sex (which was quite important to a twenty - one year old male human travelling cross country in the mid nineteen seveties!) This point was proven repeatedly by Mc Queen, most dramatically in Denton, Texas, where Jim and I met Diane and her black toy poodle, Nigger, who were to become our travelling companions.
When she found out that our destination was Los Angeles (after Mc Queen had properly introduced us) Diane, hoping to visit her sister who lived in San Bernadino, invited herself along for the ride - offering to share the driving and expenses. Of course, Nigger had to come along as well. Jim's assertion that a dog's behavior depends more upon it's owner than it's breed was proven beyond all doubt by the little black dog. For although his name offended my sensibilities, his behavior was exemplary - belying everything I thought I had come to know regarding toy poodles.
It was somewhere around Albuquerque that Diane, who was driving at the time, stopped and picked up a couple of hitch-hikers - the old fashioned kind, with thumbs, not walkie-talkies. They were a teenage runaway named Lori and her massive English Sheep Dog. Jim's old Caddy Fleetwood was beginning to look like a rolling kennel; and I was beginning to feel like the odd man out - the only one of our little group with no canine companion!
This proved to be something of a benefit when we reached the Grand Canyon, though, for dogs are not allowed below the rim. While my travelling companions camped up in the flatlands, I was able to hike down to the river via the Bright Angel Trail and enjoy
the solitude, serenity and breathtaking scenery that makes the Grand Canyon one of the most popular tourist destinations in North America. But something was wrong. A couple of very short weeks earlier, I would have laughed off any such notion, but I
actually missed the interspecies camaraderie of the trio of canines more than their human counterparts.
I began to think that I should have a dog of my own. Why not? Now that I had met a few well behaved animals and seen how their owners handled them - not to mention how they enjoyed their companionship - I was certain that I could also train an animal to be as well behaved and clever as anyone else's.
What kind of dog should it be, I wondered, beginning to visualize the perfect pet. Of course, I would have to get it as a puppy, so that I could train it properly. I also wanted it to be larger than Mc Queen, but not so large as the ungainly English Sheep
Dog of Lori's - something like a Lab or a large Shepherd. Definitely not a Setter, I thought, or any other breed with a narrow cranium. I wanted it's brain to be large enough to contain all that I hoped to teach it! Familiar with the messy inconveniences
of bitches in heat, I also determined that any dog of mine must be a male. Having learned that the more desirable an animal, the more expensive it is as well, I knew that any dog I acquired would have to be a gift - as much as I wanted a pet, I knew I
probably couldn't afford the kind I wanted and didn't particularly like the idea of purchasing a friend.
As I stared into the brilliance of the Milky Way with my mind filled with such contemplations, I drifted into a sleep that was not unlike an hypnotic trance, and dreamed of a beautiful big dog running along a sunlit beach...
I awakened with the first rays of dawn, as one inevitably does in the wilderness, and after a bowl of granola with powdered milk, I packed my gear for the trek out of the canyon. I was a little more than halfway up the Bright Angel Trail when I saw a
dazzling reflection in the morning light. It was as though someone was signalling me with heliography, but I could clearly see that no-one was there.
My curiosity piqued, I scrambled across the rock face and discovered a five-by-seven inch, postage-paid, plastic-coated post card. Underneath the plastic coating was a silver medallion - the signal mirror that had caught my attention. My skin turned all to
goose-flesh, for this was an identification tag for a canine. On the obverse of the card were places to fill in a pet's name, the owner's name and address and a separate mailing address.
In my dream, I had called my dog Bonzo, like Ronald Reagan's chimpanzee. I wrote the name in the appropriate space without hesitation, filling in my own name and home address, and adding Jim's L.A. address as the place to mail the medallion to. When I
reached the canyon rim the first thing I did was look for a mailbox, convinced that I had been given a sign as certain as Moses' burning bush. I mentioned the dream and subsequent sign to no-one, fearful of the old superstition that 'told dreams do not come true.'
After only a few more days on the road - we travelled in no great hurry - we arrived in L.A. and Jim and I parted with the new friends we had met along the way. Jim had a job to go to most days and I was free, so I babysat Mc Queen. In Century Park, people
let their dogs run in packs, and I took Mc Queen there almost every day for his exercise. He was such a great friend that I forgot all about Bonzo and the silver medallion. After all, more than a month had passed since the dream in the Grand Canyon.
After one of our daily romps in the park, I returned home to find a piece of mail addressed to me, and was a bit taken aback to discover that it was the I.D. tag I had sent off to be engraved. I smiled at my own naivete in having believed in the power of
dreams and mystic coincidences, and pocketed it as a reminder of my Grand Canyon experience. As before, I mentioned it to no-one - this time more out of embarrassment than superstition.
The very next day, Mc Queen and I were back at Century Park. He was running free with his buddies and I was playing frisbee with a dozen or so people who were Mc Queen's buddies' owners. As the frisbee game broke up, I collapsed on the soft grass and closed my eyes. A shadow fell across my face and I sat up to see who had intruded upon my meditation. It was a beautiful young woman wearing hip-huggers, an halter top and a smile so beautiful that I knew at once that this was Hollywood, California! Then,
I noticed that she was holding a puppy.
She introduced herself and began to describe the puppy to me. It was half Golden Labrador and half Irish Setter - the pick of the litter, five weeks old to the day and male. I thought I was going to faint. I told her about the dream I had in the Grand
Canyon. She sat on the grass facing me and by the time I finished the tale we were both covered with goose pimples.
In a dramatically anticlimactic tone, almost apologetically, she explained that the dog
was one hundred dollars without papers, or two hundred dollars with papers, adding that sire
and dame alike were A.K.C. registered champions, and that the A.K.C. was also considering the
cross as a new breed. My racing heart sank. I explained to her that I had thought she was
giving the puppy away and I apologized for having misunderstood, adding that she should have
no problem getting her asking price for such an handsome pup in this park filled with dog
lovers.
"No way," she said, "this dog is yours!" and she put the fuzzy puppy on the
ground, got up and walked away. The pup remained where the lady had set it down until I said,
"C'mere, Bonzo."
And he ran straight to me with his tail awag, bowling me over
and licking my face.