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Pravin Kumar
Age: 60 Zodiac: 
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 Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 1:22 pm |
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[siz“
Hey, Mom, I can read this!” Lorne, our seven-year-old son, shoved the newspaper toward me.
With a grubby little finger under each word, he began: “For free . . .”
He paused, so I filled in: “Rescued, abused spaniel-type . . .”
“. . . male dog,” Lorne continued. “Can’t keep. Needs good home.”
“We already have a dog,” I said, patting my little Maltese.
“But he’s wimpy,” protested five-year-old Lee.
“Let’s just go see what he looks like,” begged the boys.
Twenty minutes later, we were knocking on a door in an apartment building with a large “No Pets” sign. A college student answered and told how he’d stopped to get gas when he saw a man yelling and mistreating this dog. When the student asked if he could have the unwanted animal, the man had roughly lifted the trembling dog into the student’s car and left. As I reached out to pet this cowering, pitiful dog, I felt sores from his massive tick infestation. His ribs stuck out from a dull matted liver-and-white coat, and his huge brown eyes looked at me shyly over a freckled nose. He wagged his tail halfheartedly. Talk about wimpy! One look in those sad eyes, though, and I was hooked.
I bundled him and our four delighted children into the car and hurried to the vet’s office, where we determined he was an English springer spaniel, about two years old. X-rays confirmed several broken ribs; a respiratory infection coupled with severe malnutrition, plus a skin infection, requiring several medications. As I explained to my husband that evening, our free dog was rather expensive.
Somehow, I knew he was going to be worth it.
That evening, I listened as the children held a forum on naming our new pet. Laurie, our nine-year-old, led the discussion. “He’s lived such a sad life, he needs a really good name,” she said. They tossed around several names, when three-year-old Leslie lisped: “How about Printh Charming? He’th alwayth the good guy.”
Thus we found our Prince Charming, admittedly a little ragged. We had our work cut out for us if we were going to transform this pauper of a creature into a dog worthy of his title. Like mother hens, we hovered over him, pouring medicines down his throat and watching his battered body slowly heal. As his sores disappeared, Prince put on weight, and his coat turned glossy.
Even better, he began to relax in our presence and show tentative signs of trust.
Bolstered by his new sense of security, Prince began taking daily jaunts over our four acres, exploring the fields and bringing me back souvenirs from his forays—gnarly sticks or a chunky rock. And then, Prince discovered the barn. That’s where he found his place in this world.
Prince proclaimed himself a nanny. With amusement, we watched as Prince warmed himself to the creatures of the barn—the sheep and goats—but we didn’t realize he was about to become an official midwife. At all the deliveries of each new creature, Prince was first on the spot, comforting the laboring mother and standing watch over the newborn lamb or kid. Prince nuzzled and licked the newborns as if they were his own, and when a newborn took its first wobbly steps, Prince ran around excitedly. What did the real mothers think about all this? They seemed to sense Prince’s calling, and they were unthreatened.
Prince’s gifts to us, naturally, started to take on a very maternal bent. One morning, he proudly deposited a new kitten on my stoop. “Thanks, Mr. Charming,” I said as I opened the door, “but please take this back.” A scowling mother cat from next door appeared a few minutes later to retrieve her offspring. Undaunted, Prince found me a new present: the neighbor’s pet duck. It became a daily ritual. Prince plopped the duck down, the duck gave me a “here-we-go-again” look, and the three of us waddled and trudged back across the field to my neighbor’s pond. “Oh, well,” I told myself. “It’s good exercise.” And it was awfully endearing.
I suppose that’s why, one morning, I was so surprised to hear Prince emit a long, low, menacing growl. I was watering flowers near the house, Prince by my side, when he made the noise, and I stood up to see a large, disgruntled rottweiler advancing on us. Frightened, I reached for the faucet, hoping to turn a blast of water on the rottweiler with my hose. Prince, feeling my fear, positioned his small body in front of me—did we ever call him wimpy?—meeting the dog halfway as it lunged for me. The combination of the hose and Prince gave the rottweiler pause, and he turned and ran off. Prince had taken a gash on the neck, but he recovered with only a small scar to remind us of his valor.
We still talk about that shining moment of Prince’s bravery, the pinnacle of any dog’s life, but more than that, we marvel at his selfless love and nanny instincts. Where did a dog who had been shown nothing but abuse learn to treat other creatures with such tenderness and kindness?
We’d like to think it was our doing, but I have a feeling that our beloved dog was never the pauper we took him to be. Underneath that ratty disguise he had always been the good guy.
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