“In every man’s life there is a summer … and a dog.”
— anonymous 

He was an Old English sheep dog named Butch. He cost only five bucks, and there the story begins.

In the summer of 1947, I was sent to live with my oldest brother Matt in the woods of Bellevue, Washington.

Some in the family thought I was in need of discipline, and working with an alcoholic war veteran suffering from PTSD was the solution.

In truth, I was being rented out as an indentured laborer, to help with building his new house.

On early evenings in those scary days, I used to sit on the edge of his dock on Lake Washington and cry.

I missed everything — the neighborhood I grew up in, my friends and the pinball machines in the Velvet Freeze ice cream parlor.

One day Matt put down his hammer and asked, “You wanna dog?”

“A what?”

“A dog. You want one?”

Two days later, Matt came home with a $5 sheepdog.

I named him Butch.

He was my first dog, and he was exactly what I needed.

We fell in love instantly. Butch slept at the foot of my bed, we ran the woods and bathed in the lake, and he never left my side.

The love affair ran for over a year, until Matt saw that I had no gifts for carpentry, and agreed to send me back to St. Louis, by train, with no dog. Matt and his wife inherited Butch.

Back home, I phoned Matt just before Christmas, and asked him to put the phone to Butch’s ear, so he could hear my voice.

Matt’s wife took the phone, and said they were sorry, but that Butch had run away the day after I left.

I knew Butch had gone looking for me. I still watch for him.

There were no more dogs in my life, until one Christmas in New York, I fell in love with a girl who, like myself, loved Chinese take out, film noir and sheep dogs, in that order.

But as students and actors, working two jobs a day and touring in road shows, we were too busy to have a dog.

By now, you all know the lyrics to this song, so just hum along while I fill in the blanks.

While visiting her family in Maine, we saw a dog in a mall pet store in Portland, an Old English sheepdog with magic eyes. I knew at once that it was Butch. We had found each other.

When he saw me, he went crazy and tore at the cage. We named him Gatsby, and drove him back to Los Angeles in a rented car. So began a love story.

After Gatsby passed away, there was Polo and then Jack, all Old English sheepdogs, commingled with two miniature Schnauzers for my youngest daughter.

And that’s the story of a boy and his dog.

These days, I write facing the front lawn and the street. Every day they pass by, folks walking their dogs, to distract me.

They are mostly beautiful golden retrievers and labs, with an occasional German Shepherd or a French bulldog. Lately there’s the flavor of the month, labradoodles, that cost as much as a Lamborghini or enough to feed a family of nine for six years.

As I’m trying to raise enough money to have the house painted, a labradoodle is out of the question.

Still, who knows, one rainy day when spring returns, a weary old scruffy sheepdog with magic eyes may appear at my door. Two old souls, once lost, and found.

You can stop humming now.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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