CHRISTMAS WITHOUT CUTTER: Reflecting on one fine pup and seeking a soul mate for another
I hate to fret in the midst of the holiday season, but things just aren't the same this year at 1070 County Road 719. It's our first Christmas in 12 years without Cutter around, and the jingle bells don't sound quite as inviting as they used to.
Cutter is the name I gave to a Jack Russell Terrier pup I found in a newspaper ad back in 1998. I handed Mike Goggans $200 cash for the little guy, but I'd pay 10 times that much today just to have him back.
Cutter died last February after a lengthy battle with congestive heart failure, though it was kidney problems that ultimately forced my wife and I to make the decision that no good dog owner likes to make. Tough as it was, I held him as the veterinarian injected liquid poison into his vein, then gazed into his eyes as he took his very last breath. The way I see it, I owed Cutter at least that much in exchange for the all the fun times we shared and the mountain of great memories we made along the way.
Cutter was special, and I don't say that just because he was mine. Ask anyone who really knew him and they will tell you he was a dandy little dog with a heart the size of Texas and a genuine passion for all things outdoors. Tack on his colorful personality and it's fair to say Cutter was one of a kind.
For years he was my shadow in the woods and on the water. Cutter loved the sight of camo almost as much as he loved the definitive clang of a 12-gauge pump chambering a load of No. 4s.
When I'd don my spring turkey hunting duds and grab my shotgun, it was a chore to get out the front door without him. I honestly believe he would have gone after an elephant if I had asked him to -- maybe not so surprising when you consider his rural upbringing.
While Cutter destroyed his share of rubber balls and stuffed animals when he was a pup, his favorite toys we're the countless cat squirrel tails I whacked off unlucky road kills discovered between our house and town. I tied the squirrel tails on a rod and reel and cast them repeatedly across the front yard. We spent hours playing the game, and Cutter caught on quickly. Before long it became impossible to retrieve the bait without him latching onto the opposite end no matter how fast I reeled.
The game obviously served the purpose. With squirrel scent permanently etched in his biological computer, Cutter developed into a fairly good squirrel dog in time. He wasn't the best one I've ever hunted behind, but he wasn't the worst either. You didn't need track shoes to hunt squirrels with Cutter. He liked to hunt about 100 yards ahead, although he would venture off much farther on occasion. And he wouldn't just "hold" a tree. If he believed the tree had a squirrel in it, he would climb it if he could get a foot hold. Otherwise, he would skin the bark off every reachable limb using his teeth trying to get at that squirrel.
As much as he liked chasing bushy tails, Cutter may have liked bird hunting even more. He was especially fond of hunting doves, a self-taught talent forged all on his own across the road from our home in western Nacogdoches County.
While it is usually pretty tough to find a concentration of doves in East Texas, it is even harder to hold them in a specific area without breaking the law. As a rule, once you bust up a bunch doves a few times in these parts, they'll move elsewhere.
The season was anything but normal that year, largely thanks to a neighbor who had leased his 40-acre pasture to a watermelon farmer the previous summer. The broken ground was riddled with seeds left behind by rotten melons. Plus, the field grew up thick with goat weed. The combination attracted doves like kids to candy. To cap the setup, the field is split right down the middle by an overhead power line.
Early in the season I noticed the doves were flogging the field right after daylight. They favored the tallest pole in the middle, using the wire on either side as a staging spot before they dropped down to feed.
Once they had been shot at a few times, however, the doves would begin shying away from the sweet spot and loading up on the power line at opposite ends of the pasture, well out of shotgun range.
That was a punishing sight for a solo shotgunner. Cutter didn't like it much either. In fact, he wouldn't stand for it.
Like a soldier on a mission, Cutter patrolled the power line back and forth, looking for loafers. When he found one, he set up camp beneath it and barked repeatedly, forcing it to flush. The modest hazing tactic produced banner results. Often times the doves would flush and circle back right past me. If they perched elsewhere, Cutter wouldn't let them sit still for long.
By keeping the birds moving, Cutter improved the odds for his wingman. In looking back, I'm thankful I got to play wingman.
While hunting was Cutter's main forte, he was equally fond of riding in a boat, probably because he knew there was eventually going to be some meat flouncing around on the floor.
Trotlining, bass fishing, bream fishing -- it made no difference to Cutter so long as he wasn't left sitting on the bank. His favorite spot to ride was on the bow. He rode up there like a hood ornament with his thick chest poked out and his little button ears dancing in the wind.
As friendly as Cutter was towards most people, he also had some serious downfalls that sometimes got him into trouble with other dogs. Perhaps the worst were his size and cocky demeanor. My wife sometimes called him "Heavy Duty," a fitting nickname, indeed.
Cutter barely stood 11 inches tall at the withers and weighed about 22 pounds in his prime, but in his mind he was much bigger than that. In fact, he may have suffered from the worst case of little-man syndrome that I've ever seen in a dog.
Cutter's sawed-off walk was more like a strut and he had an inherent knack for rubbing just about any other dog the wrong way without ever saying a word. Even his kids hated him with a passion, but he brought it all on himself.
Like most Jack Russells, Cutter was a scrapper born with huge ambitions and a limited vocabulary that did not include the word "quit." He also had a bad habit of putting his nose in places where it didn't belong, and he left this world with a passel of battle scars to show for it. He lived through countless copperhead bites and tangled with raccoons, opossums and other varmints. I fished him out of an underground culvert in Red River, N.M., and armadillo dens on just about every piece of property where he was invited to hunt.
Perhaps his closest brush with an unnatural death came in 2002 when he was badly mauled by a coyote, likely the same one that killed one of our other Jack Russells a week earlier. The clash happened early one morning, just minutes after we'd opened front door so Cutter could tend to his business.
While we didn't see the battle, we saw the result. And it wasn't pretty.
Cutter showed up on the porch standing in a small pool of blood. His mouth was full of dirt and his throat was ripped wide open three inches across, completely through the skin and muscle tissue. Judging from the puncture wounds, our veterinarian said it was apparent that whatever had hold of the dog was big and had serious intentions of killing him. It was a miracle it didn't, and I'm thankful for that.
Cutter was a butch little dog and he passed on the genes to the nearly two dozen pups he sired. I'm proud to own one of his sons and determined to find him a mate to keep the bloodline going. Somewhere out there is the perfect match for Cutter's boy Harley. I just hope the right girl comes knocking before it is too late.
Matt Williams' email address is mattwilliams@netdot.com.
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