An Old Farmer Remembers His Dog

The ewes are rattled; they bleat as if the wind gusting around their ears 

were the hard panted breath of mustering kelpies. Last summer, 

Cheroot, my best dog was struck by a king brown on Wydah Hill. 

I thought he must have lapped from a fetid ditch, for a while 

he took my hand’s caress but soon began to shake, drool, stare 

blankly and pant in distress. Too late I saw the puncture wounds. 

I’ve sold those acres—though I miss looking down onto the myrtles 

and sugar gums, onto the ferns’ freckled shade, the wide creek’s 

curdling spills. I latch down tools, some corrugated iron, the wind 

sprints hard along my spine. Cheroot always dashed sure-footed 

along the backs of sheep. He could get his rear legs under him, 

turn on his hindquarters and round up a breaking mob quicker 

than any other dog. I called him Cheroot because his tail, before 

it was crushed by a horse, looked like a rough roll of tobacco.

After that, it was just a stub, always pointing skywards, curling 

like a hitchhiker’s thumb. Now, I only have Jock, arthritic 

and blind—he may soon need a bullet’s mercy. I walk to the house, 

the evening chill bites into me. These days my spine’s an old chain 

often locked to my recliner . . . Jock meets me on the veranda, 

pain hindering his steps, but tail raised, set to affection’s tempo.