Sneaky Pie For President

Choose Your Allies Wisely

“Don’t you ever get bored?” Sneaky Pie asked the beautiful visiting German shepherd as they sauntered along the Rockfish River.

“No,” the dog replied. “I like being retired.”

Walking alongside the shepherd Daisy, Tucker inquired, “Why did you enlist?”

“I didn’t. I’m part of a program of special breeding. We’re bred for stamina and intelligence. This has been going on for a couple of decades. I don’t really know, but I know the human breeders study constantly.”

“Like Thoroughbred breeders or hounds, kind of like that?” Tally wondered.

“Yes. They observe other shepherds, they study bloodlines on the computers, they go to special training school. There’s a lot to it, but I never had a choice. I made the grade, and that was that.” Daisy stopped to drink out of the clear-running Rockfish River.

Pewter watched tiny bubbles come up, as they were near the pool. “If you go over to that pool, you’ll get a surprise.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Tally quickly intervened.

The shepherd, though, curious, padded over to the more quiet water, deep, looked down.

Up popped the small-mouthed bass. “You’re a big one!” she exclaimed.

“You’re a jerk,” Pewter snapped at the fish before Daisy could respond.

A stream of water aimed at Pewter missed its mark as the fat cat was just far enough away. “Lucky. Come closer.”

“Nope.”

Sneaky again pondered thoughts of representing fish, but it got too complicated. Plus, who would want to represent this twerp?

A long stream shot from the river, this time just grazing the gray cat’s chest.

“Ha, ha.” With that, the fish sank back into the deeper water.

“Fish are strange,” the big dog observed, before glancing over at Tally, running around in circles. She thought Jack Russells were pretty odd, too.

The five animals trotted past the road that turned up to the barns, following instead the wide footpath along the river. The dried-mud path, cool underfoot, crossed a little feeder creek, a culvert underneath, and opened onto a lovely low meadow, the soil rich. The alfalfa and orchard grass swayed in the slight breeze.

“Two more weeks and this will be ready to cut.” Tucker loved haying.

“The smell is the best.” Sneaky liked it, too.

“It’s a funny thing,” said the visiting dog. “You’d think there wouldn’t be much to smell in the desert, but there is.”

“Really?” Tally always wanted to know more about a good scent.

“At first you have to adjust to the heat. You think a Virginia summer is hot, nothing.” The beautiful shepherd continued, “If you drink a lot of water it helps, and my Army buddy put electrolytes in the water for me. Well, I digress. You can smell gasoline miles away, and when I worked in bomb detection, that was easy to smell, too. The humans assume it’s the inside of the bomb, the actual explosive material, but you can smell the wiring; the metal really gives off an odor in the desert. A lot of times that’s what I smelled first, the wires, and even though the bombs are hidden or buried, the heat works on the metal.”

“Were you scared?” Sneaky liked this gentle dog.

“I was scared when they took me away from my mother, brothers, and sisters. I liked the training once I got used to being in the Army. The more I learned, the more I liked it, and there were other dogs. I didn’t have to be completely alone with the humans,” Daisy answered.

“Lots of humans?” Tucker wondered.

“Yeah, but they’re in a special unit. They take tests just like we do and the service winnows the wheat from the chaff. The ones that have the ability to work with animals go through training. So you aren’t dealing with an idiot.”

“Did you work with one human?” Pewter couldn’t imagine taking orders.

“Lance Corporal Kenny Falkenstein. Big blue eyes, big fellow. I loved him.”

“Is he dead?”

“No. We worked together in Iraq for a year; then we came back here to train other humans and dogs. Kenny got promoted, and I was considered over the hill. The top brass wouldn’t let him keep me. He tried everything. So I was mustered out, and a group of ex-service people in northern Virginia found a home for me. Most of them had worked in the K-9 units. I miss Kenny. Don’t get me wrong, I like the person I’m with, I like living on a farm, but I miss Kenny. Together, we went through a lot. He e-mails Tiff, my new human. So I know what’s going on with him.”

Tiff was a lady in her late thirties, who liked competing in the agility trials. She and the C.O. were friends.

“Once you get used to a human, it’s difficult to adjust to a new one,” Tally said. “I don’t know how I’d do without our C.O.”

“Oh, one human is pretty much like another,” Pewter airily rejoined, as she walked in front of the others.

Sneaky whispered to the shepherd, “She loves our human. She likes to show off; you know the type.”

Whirling around, Pewter, tail up, accused: “You’re talking about me. I know it.”

“What makes you think I’m talking about you?” Sneaky shot back.

“Because I’m fascinating.”

“Let’s hang back.” Tucker, low voice, warned Tally, “She’s in one of her moods.”

At that moment, Pewter, having taken a few steps backward, turned around and stepped on a flat rock. A large copperhead sunning herself on the rock felt the weight, curled up, and opened her fearsome fangs near Pewter’s astonished face. Pewter simultaneously jumped up and sideways just as the copperhead struck. The snake missed, saw the other animals, and with astonishing speed slid through the alfalfa straight for the river.

“She tried to kill me! I could have been poisoned,” Pewter bellowed, puffed up, looking like a giant bottle brush. “How do I know she’s not a small python? Was it? She came up from the Everglades. I could have been strangled.”

Sneaky ran up to her. “It’s okay. She’s slithered away.”

“I could be dead!” the cat wailed.

“Take more than one bite to kill that fat thing.” Tally enjoyed Pewter’s fright. “Take all twenty-two feet of a mature python to wrap around the blubber.”

“I will kill you.” Pewter, still quite enlarged, flew straight for Tally, who had the good sense to run.

“Are they always like this?” Daisy asked, as she watched the two zigzag, circle, screaming, barking all the way.

“Yes,” the tiger cat forthrightly answered.

“The two cats at our house can be divas, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat like Pewter,” the shepherd said.

Sneaky and Tucker laughed and said in unison, “Lucky you.”

Turning up to climb through the meadows and then pastures to the barns, they spotted in the distance Pewter chasing Tally on the farm road now.

Jones and his two blind pasture mates, Blue Sky and Shamus, the pony, heard the commotion. Jones, with his one good eye, described the action. All three equines snorted air out of their nostrils, laughing at the description of the fat cat chasing the little dog.

“Moves pretty good for a large cat,” the shepherd observed.

“That she does.” Tucker wondered how long this fight would last and wasn’t looking forward to hearing about it from both parties. Tempest in a teapot. She feared it would go on for days.

Sneaky returned to life in the service. “When you were retired, did you get retirement pay?”

“No.”

“Did you have a rank in the Army?”

“No.”

“So you did all that work for free? No pay, no hazard pay, no retirement pay?”

“Not one penny. I did get free medical care in the service, though, but not now, of course. We rely on private citizens to help us after our duty is over.”

“If I am elected I promise that all animals who have served in the Armed Forces will get pay, get retirement pay, and all the benefits that accrue to humans. I will work unceasingly for this.”

“We’ve been in all the wars,” said Daisy. “Many of us were killed. Before mechanized warfare, think of the horses and mules, and what about carrier pigeons?” The shepherd knew she and the other animals throughout time often got a raw deal.

“And yet animals are proud to serve,” said Sneaky. “There were one-point-five million horses and mules who lost their lives in the War Between the States, and of all the horses taken over to Belgium and France for World War I, none came home, I think.” Sneaky knew most all of them died, shoved in unmarked graves, if buried at all. World War I was unremitting horror for humans and animals.

“Would you serve again?” Tucker wanted to know.

“I would. I liked the Army, but remember I was bred for this. I think it’s the same for people. Some can take the discipline and danger, but most can’t. I do think we should receive compensation, though. I mean, I can’t enlist, but once any of us are in there, we deserve consideration.”

“I see. What about the dolphins? The Navy trains them, doesn’t it?” Sneaky wondered.

“I’ve heard that, but I’ve never met one. It’s hard enough to meet land animals from the other branches of the service. Just about impossible to meet the water mammals.”

“Sneaky, that’s farther down the road. Stick with land animals,” Tucker advised.

“She’s right.” The shepherd noticed that Pewter had finally collapsed under a huge pin oak.

Tally was nowhere in sight.

“Will you help me in my campaign?” Sneaky asked the shepherd. “Will you ask your comrades to support me?”

“I will,” the shepherd vowed, glad to have another important task.

Once up at the barns, they joined the two humans sitting in the shade in two directors’ chairs under the sloping barn roofline.

Pewter had now also joined them, but no Tally.

Leaping up when the dog and cat appeared, Pewter shouted. “No reptiles! No reptiles in your campaign! I will leave, I swear it. No snakes allowed.”

Sneaky laughed. “Turtles aren’t so bad, they’re amphibians,” she protested.

“They can snap,” said Pewter. “If it’s cold-blooded, the hell with it.”

“There’s a lot of cold-blooded humans out there,” the shepherd coolly said.

“Don’t represent them, either.” Pewter remained adamant.

“Fine. No reptiles.” Sneaky sighed, but she was just as glad not to have to talk to them. Reptiles were difficult to converse with; those split tongues of snakes always upset her.

Tally crept out of the barn.

“Speaking of reptiles.” Pewter puffed up again.

“What is all this hissing and spitting?” the C.O. admonished Pewter.

“Oh, you have no idea. No idea at all,” Pewter replied, with the perfect blend of indignation and anger.

Sitting right by the C.O., Tally took no chances and stayed quiet.

Sneaky counseled Pewter, “Just forget it.”

“Forget it. Forget it! I could be lying down there on that rock, in the throes of death by poison or strangulation. Painful, protracted death. And she”—Pewter glared right at Tally—“makes light of it.”

The woman called Tiff said, “People think animals don’t have feelings, friends, preferences. Obviously your gray cat does.”

“She is a creature of many opinions.” The C.O. laughed, and all the animals except Pewter laughed also.

“I do have many opinions, and they are all correct.” Pewter had the last word.