When I was a kid, all we ever had were small to teeny mutt dogs. My family didn’t go for big dogs until one specific, amazing girl named Nicki. By all rights, she should have been one of those nightmare dogs who kill someone, but she was the dearest love of my childhood. Not just mine—every kid in the neighborhood. This is a long story, but Nicki deserves it.
I grew up in a small town. When I was 9, this guy nobody knew moved into the rabbit hutch house a couple lots down, at the end of our alley. He had what all us kids thought at first was a wolf—she was mostly German shepherd, but there was something else there too, because she was really big—I couldn’t even reach over her at first, her back was taller than my armpit! He kept her on a tractor chain fastened around the big elm tree in the middle of his yard, where her sofa crate doghouse was perched. Every day as we walked to and from school, she would rush out to the end of the chain, bark, snarl, rear up, and just generally raise h*ll. We were TERRIFIED of this thing—it seemed like she was as big as the house!
So a few weeks go by like this, with us avoiding the yard, walking all the way around the block, rather than down the alley to avoid this creature. And one day I’m heading home late because I went to my friend Cindy’s to watch the After School Special, when I come around the corner of my block and run smack into the monster.
She was off the chain.
I didn’t know whether to freeze or pee my pants. Then she started walking toward me. So I started backing up. And I kept backing up, around in a circle in the middle of the street, down the sidewalk to the alley, down the alley and thru the hole in our fence where the board was missing, into my back yard. She followed me the whole way—head not really down, but kind of off sides, tail up but not wagging, very deliberately not walking any faster than I was, but not backing off an inch either, keeping real close eye contact with me. I remember thinking that I knew how rabbits felt. Finally, I’m standing there in my yard with this dog that’s more than twice the size of me when I realize that I can’t get OUT of the yard without turning my back on her to reach the gate latch on the other side of the gate..
So I do what all 9 year old girls should do when they’re in trouble. I start screaming, “Daddy, help!”
Dad came running, and as he came thru the gate, Nicki just fell over on the ground, crying. I’m think Dad suspected then what I found out the hard way a little later.
But he told me to go get the piece of chain we put Katydog on when we took her camping with us and to open a can of dog food. When I came back, he put the chain on her collar, and fastened it around the clothes pole so she couldn’t get out of the yard. She was sniffing at the can of food; but she wasn’t trying to eat it. It was like she didn’t know what it was.
So I scooped some out with my fingers and let her lick it off them.
I fell in love that instant, with her big hot tongue sliding over my fingers, her bony shoulder knocking me over. I had to sit down right there between her feet to feed her the rest of the can. She was big and solid, and snuggly feeling, even though I could feel her bones a lot more than I could our little Katydog. I thought it was just because she was big that I could feel them. I was heartbroken when Dad took her back. The guy wasn’t there, so Dad just put her back on that chain around the tree and gave her some water from the hose.
A couple of days later, we were all walking home from school, and she was off the chain again. Everyone screamed and ran except me—I just stood there and she came right to me and licked my fingers. Not being stupid, I knew what that meant. So I put my hand thru her collar and took her home, and fed her a couple of cans of food, just like she’d asked. (She loved that—licking canned food off your fingers. She didn’t ever want to take kibble or treats from anyone’s hand, but she loved to lick canned food off fingers. Sometimes, she would have eaten a whole bowlful of kibble, but she’d lick your fingers, asking for canned food. I think it meant trust to her.)
This went on for a couple of weeks or so—she’d meet us at corner, off the chain, and come home to be fed. The other kids got over their nerves pretty quickly when I didn’t get eaten alive. She would come in the yard and we’d take turns feeding her, petting her, playing with her—I even stole one of Mom’s good hairbrushes to brush her with. (Yes, I got my @ss beaten.) Then Dad would get home, and he’d take her home and put her back on that chain. “She’s his dog.” he’d say.
It made me furious. I figured, she gets loose because she wants to be with me, I’m feeding her, she’s MINE. I yelled at Dad a lot in this vein.
Then one day, a group of us were walking home and we heard this horrible thumping sound and a weird screaming sound. It kept getting closer and closer, until we turned the corner, and we saw it.
The guy had a piece of board—I think it must have been 1 x 2, for a fence or a porch railing or something, there was a bunch in the yard—and he was beating Nicki with this thing. She was the one who was screaming.
When I was a kid, I had absolutely NO control over my temper, which was infamously bad—I was constantly getting into fights. I don’t even remember picking it up, just the shock of the impact in my arms and shoulders and the stinging in my hands from whacking him across the back with another of the boards lying around. I do have a very clear memory of standing there, holding it like a baseball bat, getting ready to hit him some more, with him cursing at me and threatening to beat the s*** out of me.
My mom showed up in the middle of this standoff. My little brother had gone running for her when I went after the board. She claims that what she heard me say to him was that if he hit Nicki one more time, I would knock his f***ing brains out his f***ing ears.
Granddad used to say that, so she probably heard right. I just remember the board in my hands, hearing the blood beat in my ears and feeling like I was in an oven I was so hot. I can only think of one time I’ve ever gotten that mad again. That mindless rage is really quite an astonishing experience, and not in a good way.
When Mom came, it was like someone turned a switch, and I could hear kids crying and sirens. Cindy had run home crying too, and somehow her mother got that the guy was beating ME with a board, so she called the cops before she came running, thank god. When they got there a few minutes after Mom, they found both the guy and me with the boards still in hand, all of us screaming at the top of our lungs, Mom with a butcher knife, and Nicki bleeding on the ground. She had some broken teeth, a dislocated shoulder,needed a lot of stitches, and had to be taken to the vet in the ambulance. It was horrible.
After a LOT of wrangling over the next couple of days, it was finally agreed that nobody (including me, who should have been in juvie!) would be arrested if the vet were paid in full, and Nicki were properly licensed, spayed and given all her shots at her owners expense; but if she got off her chain again, whoever took her in would be responsible for her—I remember sitting in the sheriff’s office with the guy yelling that we were ruining his training , if he couldn’t teach his dog, he wasn’t responsible if she hurt someone and me screaming that the only person she was going to hurt was him because he was an a****le. It wasn’t a pretty scene, and I think the only reason it ended up the way it did was because so many kids had seen the whole thing, and everyone on the block was up in arms.
She ended up being a ‘neighborhood’ dog, because all of us kids wanted her for our own. She rarely slept in the same house two nights running—there was a constant competition to get her to come home with YOU for the night, and I only won about 1 night out of every 3 or 4, probably because my stupid mom wouldn’t let her sleep in the bedroom, and other moms would. Every house for blocks around had extra bowls outside for her—she wouldn’t eat or drink inside a house for some reason, no matter how cold it was. The garage was OK, if there was a door open—if not, she’d do without. She did come to my yard after school pretty exclusively, and I started making kids bring a can of food over if they wanted to come in the yard to play with her, and I saved them in a special cabinet in the garage so they didn’t get mixed up with what Mom bought for the little dogs, next to the kibble that Dad bought for her when Mom wasn’t looking. Every once in a while at first, the guy would catch her and chain her up, but she’d just get loose. Nobody ever figured out her trick, and finally he just gave up and left her alone.
She gained a LOT of weight, and was absolutely the alpha of every dog in every yard on the whole north side of Main Street, and there were only one challenger on the other side of town—a big Malamute named Chuckles that would get ALL upset when we walked past that yard on the way to the pool. I don’t think he could have taken her if he’d ever gotten out, but he certainly thought he could. I think Chuckles was a he. Nicky would just taunt him, because she was loose, with a bunch of kids to play with—and he never had more than a couple of kids in his yard. Also, Nicky got to swim in the real paddling pool. I’m sure she knew all he had was a plastic one in the yard.
She’d show up at school and lay on the steps until recess or lunch time, and a hundred kids would come piling out to pet her. She wouldn’t let any of us cross any street alone, only in groups—she’d go nuts, barking and howling, and come running to stop you. Once Callie was late for school, and was walking up to the crosswalk where the guard was by herself when Nicki came out of nowhere, put her nose in Callie’s stomach, pushed her down and held her down with her front feet until a some of us left the school, and went over there to walk back to school with her! When the rodeo or the fair came to town, she’d be down at the fairgrounds almost all the time. More than once I saw her herd a kid away from the corrals and chutes or the livestock barns. I can’t imagine where she learned that cows and horses were dangerous, but she didn’t let kids get anywhere near them if she could help it. Maybe she just didn’t trust anything that was bigger than she was.
She adored kids—any kid, from a baby barely crawling on up could do anything with her or to her—but didn’t really trust adults too much. I don’t know if that would have changed as we all grew up. She’d lay down and let parents or one of the teachers pet her back a little or shake her hand, but only if there were kids around. My grandmother was the one exception to that—she would lay across Gran’s lap forever and let her brush her and trim out the foxtails and the teeny knots in her coat with her nail scissors.
She lived for 5 years after that first day she was loose—she just didn’t wake up one winter morning. The first bad crack in my heart happened when Kim came crying to my door to tell me.
She wasn’t anyone’s version conventional, well-trained pet dog, but I don’t think any dog was ever loved more. And none of us who loved her ever talks about their dogs without saying, “Remember the time Nicki…?”
