He was trainer, guard dog, watchdog, and pet, all wrapped up in one. But he didn't start out that way. Skipper, an eighty-pound collie-malamute cross, came to us when he was ten months old. His previous owner was a fireman, and when he came home from work on two occasions to find his one-hundred-dollar fireman's boots torn to shreds, he made up his mind that Skipper would have to go. And he knew just the people to whom he would give him--US.

We lived out in the country, a perfect place for an errant, overgrown pup. We were overjoyed at the thought of having a dog. I had always wanted a collie, so when I found out that Skipper was part collie I was excited--until I saw him. He had no collie look to him. He was all Alaskan malamute. However, my disappointment didn't last long. After he jumped up, putting his big white paws on my shoulder, and licking my face, I forgave him. He took on his first responsibility, looking after me.

But he had been at our big, log country home only a few minutes when he discovered the chickens. Oh what fun! He chased the twelve hens all over the yard, ecstatic at seeing them run helter-skelter, squawking their heads off. Being new dog owners--we’d been married only a few months--we disciplined him severely. We hit him. Of course, he thought that was a game.

The next morning we found a dead chicken. How were we to train this big mutt that those chickens were not fireman's boots? We took the dead chicken and tied it around his neck and left it there until it rotted. Had that been in this day and age, we would likely have been up before the courts for cruelty to animals. Nevertheless, this "cruel and unusual punishment" did the trick. Skipper never chewed up another thing, and never killed another chicken. In fact, he became the guardian of those chickens, herding them as a sheep dog herds sheep.

Years later we saw him do the same thing with cattle. He had had no herding training, but on this occasion a neighbor farmer's cattle had gotten out of their pasture, and we were called on to help get them back to where they belonged. Not knowing how Skipper would react to cows, we took him along, hoping we hadn't made a mistake. It was marvelous to watch him nip and bark at the heels of those cattle, herding the strays back into line with the other cows. It made our job so much easier, and within a half hour the neighbor's cows were back where they belonged. Needless to say, our neighbor was happy, and we were proud of our "shepherd".

As Skipper matured, he became more valuable to us. We had moved several times, and again we were in the country. We lived on a beautifully treed acreage, beside a lake. Skipper delegated himself as the leader of our "welcoming committee", as he made it his job to escort our guests down our quarter-mile-long driveway. As soon as he heard a vehicle slow down to turn in our drive, he would give one guttural bark; then springing from where he had been curled up on our doorstep, he would bound up the road to the gate. His bark was like a sergeant major's command order. His "soldiers" lined up behind him. Maggie, the goat--his shadow--was first; then George, the lamb; with the others, as though knowing where they stood in ranking order, following: Mocha and Simba, our Persian and Siamese cats; Scruffy, our nondescript terrier, when he wasn't off in the woods barking at squirrels; and last of all came shy Chrissie, the cocker spaniel. She had only recently been adopted and knew her place. It wasn't unusual for Peter and Cottontail (need I mention, they were the rabbits?), and even old Methuselah, the bantam rooster, to join the parade as well. By the time any caller reached our house, he had broken out in a cold sweat, for fear of having accidentally run over a delegate or two.

And Skipper had another job; it was to look after Maggie. When Maggie joined our family of twenty-five bantam chickens, two rabbits, two cats, three dogs, and numerous summer-time children, she was no bigger than our cocker spaniel, Chrissie. But it was Skipper that she adopted as her mother--much to his annoyance. He tried growling, nipping at her, and hiding from her. But nothing would dissuade her. She followed him everywhere. After about the first week Skipper gave up trying to get rid of Maggie, resigning himself to having a shadow.

Even at night, instead of sleeping in the cozy, hay-bedded stall we had provided for her, she opted for the hard ground, curled up close to Skipper, her adopted "mother".

But his life wasn't all work, and managing the "farm". Sandwiched between his responsibilities, he enjoyed being just a dog. He loved to run and slide on the frozen lake, hike through the woods, climb mountains with us. And at the end of a hard day of play, he would sleep at our feet in front of the fire, on cold winter nights when it was too cold for even an Alaskan malamute to be out—at least WE thought it was too cold--and be didn't tell us otherwise.

We couldn't have had a more faithful and useful dog than Skipper, our very first dog. He lived to be thirteen years old, and would have lived longer, had not some sadistic neighbor made a special point of swerving off the road, intentionally hitting him.

Again, we lived out in the country, but this time we had neighbors living fairly close. My husband and I had been into town to watch the July 1st fireworks display. It was about ten o'clock when we arrived back at our place, and still light. Skipper always recognized our car by the sound of the motor. It was a delight to us to see him running down the road to welcome us home. That is what he did the night he got hit.

The driver of the car ahead of us, a neighbor, hated dogs. This was not the first time he had made a point of doing away with a dog by hitting him with his car. Only this time, it was OUR dog he hit. But Skipper didn't die that night. We called on everyone we knew who had a gun, even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to come and put the poor dog out of his misery. No one would do it. My husband and I sat up all night, just holding Skipper in our arms, and crying. At last at about six a.m. he died in our arms.

As we have done with numerous dogs since, we buried him on our property, and planted a tree in his memory. We have long since left that town, but for all we know there could be a forty-foot tree there, there where we buried our very first, beloved dog, Skipper.