I Sleep With Other People’s Dogs
What we learn from the dogs we love
When my son was six, we were reading Where the Red Fern Grows, the 1961 classic coming-of-age story of a boy and his dogs. Max loved the adventures of Billy Colman and his red bone coonhounds, Old Dan and Little Ann.
But the story turns tragic at the end. Old Dan and Little Ann save Billy’s life by fighting off the attack of a mountain lion. The next day, Old Dan dies of his wounds. Little Ann, injured herself, drags herself to his grave and dies of a broken heart.
“I buried Little Ann by the side of Old Dan,” Billy says. “I knew that was where she wanted to be. I also buried a part of my life along with my dog.”
I was reading aloud over the lump in my throat and Max was just holding back tears as the tragedy unfolded.
“Who picked this stupid book anyway?” he asked, as the narrator described visiting the graves and finding that a red fern — symbolizing the presence of angels — had sprouted between the dogs’ final resting places.
What is it about dogs?
Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls, is one of innumerable books about the stalwart nature of dogs and their relationships to humans. Think “Call of the Wild,” by Jack London; “Old Yeller,” by Fred Gibson; the…
