Tippy, Chapter One

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

Prelude

I have dear friends who read The Highland County Press regularly. Thank you. These sweet folks eschew stories with "talking" animals. I understand this. I spent a great deal of time trying to work around this problem in the following column. I didn’t find a solution.  

We indeed know that animals think and make logical decisions. All you have to do is watch them, especially horses and dogs. In the end, I decided I must let my animals talk to get the story across.  

Apologies to those who are dismayed by this technique.

The Author

My name was Tippy. I was a Beagle, owned by Jim Thompson in the late 1960s. Since dogs cannot talk, this narrative is mostly a stream of consciousness from when I was alive. By the way, when I am dreaming here, the narrative will be encapsulated thusly: {D dream narrative D}.

Harold Wagoner gave me to Jim when I was weaned from a litter of Beagles in exchange for some work Jim did in the tobacco fields. I looked exactly like the typical Beagle. I had a white tip on my tail, hence the name “Tippy.”  

This was along about the fall of 1966. I had a nice doghouse, and I was kept on a light chain that first winter as I was small and Jim was afraid I would run away. He fed me human table scraps, which were great.

The Thompsons had another dog, a German Shepherd named “Pete.” Pete filled me in on the history of the Thompsons. There had been a dog before Pete, his name was Buttons, and he was a Cocker Spaniel Terrier mix. Buttons had joined the family when they lived in town and moved to the farm with them. My doghouse had originally belonged to Buttons.

Pete told me the Thompsons were genuinely nice to him, and he had arrived on the farm as a puppy at about the same time as the Thompsons moved there. In turn, Buttons had filled in Pete as to the history of the family.  

Sadly, one Friday evening when Buttons was crossing the road, he was hit by a dump truck and was killed. Jim Thompson buried him by the lane and, once I was free to roam, Pete took me to see the place where he was buried. It had been several years since he had died but there was still a sweet odor that came out of the ground there.

As I grew and was set free to wander, Pete and I became great friends. In the wintertime, we would be out running in the snow. In other seasons, we would often go to the briar patch in the pasture across the creek. It was full of rabbits. I would stir them up and Pete would give chase. Pete would often catch a rabbit, and we would share it. 

One day a rabbit broke free of the briar patch and was taking off across the flat bottomlands near the creek. Here came Pete right behind him. It was a race to the death and Pete was gaining. Suddenly, the rabbit turned completely around and ran between Pete’s legs. The next thing I saw was Pete doing somersault, trying to stop and turn around. That day, the rabbit got away, and Pete and I went back to the house hungry.

Occasionally, Pete would catch a groundhog, usually at night. I would stay away from those encounters, a groundhog was too big and tough, in every sense of the word.

No matter what we caught and no matter the season, Mother Thompson had table scraps for us, so we never went hungry.

The family had a few old chickens for eggs. Pete said stay away from them. He had killed one when he was little and Jim had caught him. He got spanked with the dead chicken and that was the end of that. No wonder Pete said stay away from them. 

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.