Ralph E. H***

As you probably have deduced, I don't have any children. However, I still have that maternal instinct - growing up I thought I wanted babies so I adopted - dogs.

When Tim and I moved into our first house together - before we married - he loved to hunt. Every year he would take off for 2 weeks to the deer woods. (I loved it - I was free to do what-ever for 2 whole weeks.) Anyway, one year when Tim returned home; I met him at the door (As much as I loved that freedom, I still missed him.) But this particular time he had something in his front shirt pocket.

When he opened his coat, there - with his front paws and head sticking out of the pocket - was the most adorable puppy I had ever seen. He was so tiny. He had beautiful brown eyes and velvety soft ears. He looked like a beagle, but after he grew up he was taller than a beagle and shorter than a walker. I researched and determined that he was a harrier hound.

Tim said he had been in the woods hunting and kept hearing a whining sound. He said it had been a rainy season and when he found him he was trapped in bog with water all around him. Tim rescued him and brought him home.

This was our first "child," Ralph. (or Ralphee, which is what I called him.)

Ralph adopted us, too. And, everywhere we went - Ralph went too. Tim took him to work with him. He went with us to visit relatives or friends. He went with us to the lake. There was no place that Ralph wasn't welcomed as part of "our family." My mother-in-law even included Ralph as a "grand-child" at Christmas. It became a fact of life that Ralph was a part of US.

Ralph was very smart. I truly believe he understood every word I ever said to him. All I had to do was say it and Ralph did as I asked.

When he went to work with Tim, he would have a morning routine. He'd take off down the road (and this was way before Kanis became so busy - it was, at the time, very rural.) But, he'd take off and explore the woods and surrounding area while Tim worked.

There was nothing that Ralphee couldn't do. We couldn't put him in a pen - he would just climb the fence and get out - no matter how tall the fence was. After we bought our new house we built a special door just for Ralph. He could come and go as he pleased and he had many antics through the 13 or so years that we had him.

When Tim raced at I-30, we had a friend, JD, that had a newspaper route. He came around the shop trying to get subcriptions one day. Well the shop and house already had one, so JD signed up Ralph for a subscription to the paper. Later, when the subscription was to expire a call came from the paper. She asked for Ralph E. H***. Everyone just cracked up. They told her that he couldn't come to the phone, took her number and told her he would call her back.

Once, we (Tim and I and Donna and Greg) had taken the bus (a 64 passenger school bus that Tim had renovated into a camper) and gone over on Hwy. 300 to a favorite fishing spot for the weekend. We had a great time fishing and partying. Of course, Ralph went too. And as usual, he had to explore the surroundings. Well, when he returned that evening - he stunk to high heaven. Someone had pitched a dead carp on the bank and Ralph, being a hound, loved it. For some reason, hounds will roll around on dead things. They actually rub themselves from head to tail on the carcass.

Tim took him to the creek and washed him as best he could, but Ralphee still REEKED. So, when time to go to sleep came, we didn't want stinky Ralphee in the bus with us and we didn't want him roaming through the night, we had a great idea...We put him in Donna and Gregs' little Toyota truck (which was really Donnas' dad's truck.) And we went to bed.

Well, apparently Ralph didn't like being cooped up with the smell either. He just about ate his way out of the truck. The seats, the headliner, the door panels, the dashboard, even the steering wheel was torn to smithereens. It was a disaster.

It was a very lucky thing that Tim does upholstery, because that little stunt would have been very expensive if we had to repair it by paying someone else to fix it.

Another memory of Ralph was how close he was to Tim. As I said Ralph went to work with Tim every day. If Ralphee wasn't roaming, he was right next to Tim. Except for one day:

When my sissy lived next door with Les and Bon. Les worked at his dad's school supply store downtown. One morning, Les went out and started his car but apparently forgot something, so leaving his car door open, he went into the house for a moment. He returned to the car and left for work. He said he made all the way to the interstate and heard something in the backseat. Ralph scared him to death. When he looked back, there was Ralph - wagging his tail and ready for a new adventure. Les took Ralphee to work with him that day.

The year that Grandma H. moved from Rogers to live with Father-in-law (F-I-L), they built an extension on his house for Grandma to live in. While they were putting shingles on the roof, Ralph watched as Tim climbed the ladder to the roof. Well, that put Tim too far away from Ralph, so Ralph climbed the ladder and made it to the roof with his "dad."

The same thing happened when they re-roofed the shop. This time there was no ladder though. F-I-L had some old cars parked under the back carport that the guys would get on to reach the rooftop. Again, Ralph watched them and, of course, he was up there with the guys working.

Then a day came when I was working at Red Cross. Tim called and said he was at the vet's office. He said that Ralph had tried to hurtle the chain link fence in his mom's yard. (Which is something Ralph had always done in the past with no problem. But Ralph was getting older, he was also "quite healthy" from all the leftovers he got. So he was little overweight.) But this time, he didn't clear the fence. When he jumped up, his little weewee got caught on the top of the chain-link fence. And when he dropped, his weewee didn't.

Tim said he heard Ralph whining at the door and when he opened it - there was Raphee sitting in a pool of blood. He immediately rushed him to the vet and called me. He said that the vet wanted to put Ralphee down, that without surgery and extreme care Ralph wouldn't be able to use the bathroom. I came UN-GLUED. I said, "you tell that vet to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY but under no circumstances was he to give up on Ralph. I did not care what the cost was," and I was worried sick.

The vet did the surgery, he removed Ralph's manhood, and repaired the weewee as best he could. Tim and I had to doctor the the weewee twice a day to make sure it didn't grow closed, if it had more surgery would have been needed.

Ralphee recovered and got back to his old self. We had Ralph another 5 years or so after that.

I could go on and on about Ralphee. We have never had another dog that could replace him. We have adopted other dogs - but none have measured up to RALPH E. H***.

M.