Even though I have lived most of my life here in Mississippi, it’s been a long time since I resided in a rural part of our state. In fact, it’s been almost 40 years since I was a true Mississippi country girl.
Now, I say all this to help explain my story – my dog story, to be exact.
I cannot remember a time in my childhood or my adult life (other than the first year of our marriage) when we did not have a pet or multiple pets in our home. More than once, we ended up with a momma dog and her babies, including a howling litter of 12 adorable coon hounds.
We’ve also cared for everything from dogs and cats to birds, goldfish, exotic fish, turtles, rabbits, baby chicks, ducks, iguanas, lizards, hamsters, Guinea pigs, and probably a few other critters I have forgotten—possibly due to momma trauma.
Yep, we’ve had a veritable zoo in the Lucius household at one time or another.
But … I have never, ever, ever encountered a dog like our current furry friend named Ellie, a golden, part-spaniel, part-unknown canine creature with truly gold-colored eyes.
Now, let me preface this dog tale (pun intended) by prefacing my story with one important fact: Ellie is not our dog. She belongs to family members that live down the hill behind us.
No, Ellie is not our dog. But she thinks we belong to her.
In fact, Ellie is certain that every resident within a half-mile radius of our little Union County hillside belongs to her. And she proves her ownership of us each day in various, comical, and somewhat aggravating ways.
First of all, Ellie is an eco-warrior of the highest degree.
For example, she makes sure to examine everyone’s garbage, just to make sure that we are not discarding valuable, recyclable items. And most days, she brings the reusable items back to our yards and porches to instruct us about our wasteful habits. She even chews and compacts many of those items into tiny pieces and spreads them across our yards as a means of natural fertilizer.
Ellie also keeps all dead and deceased critters from littering our quiet country roadside. She is certain that these rotting, stinking corpses are put to better use by feeding those creatures smaller than her, such as ants, worms, and flies. She is keenly aware that these tiny friends need food as much as she does. So, why not feed them with recyclable products?
When her tiny friends are satiated, she simply buries the skeletal remains of their feasts in shallow holes within neighborhood flower gardens as a natural compost material.
But Ellie’s valiant efforts do not stop with her smaller friends. Oh, no. She keeps an eye and an ear (and occasionally, a mouth) trained to aid the local chickens and pigs as well.
She ministers to her equine friends too. She does that in several ways: First, she loves to play chase with them and help them get their much-needed exercise. By splashing water from their troughs, she also helps them make nice, cool, and muddy wallows too, for these final dog days of summer.
But her best aid for the horses is wallowing alongside her friends, and then wisely removing some of their field waste by bringing it up to our homes and smearing it along our sidewalks and porches as a natural deterrent of unwanted guests and intruders. It works well, very well.
Plus, it is such a joyful vision to see her running pell-mell from the horse pasture, covered in her horse friends’ muddy excrement, straight into the arms of one of her beloved humans. This tackling scene is reminiscent of an Ole Miss linebacker, as she takes down her human with a loving, licking, all-consuming hug.
But, alas, her football tackling talents are not Ellie’s only highly trained skills.
She is also a great fisherman (or fisherwoman), and she ensures that our various bodies of water do not become overstocked, unhealthy, or unproductive with too many small fish. Ellie also helps naturally aerate our ponds and lakes each day by taking long swims that often result in our local ducks getting great exercise in the process.
Oh, and she is persistent in her efforts to thin the area’s troublesome turtle population, as well as the unwanted mole population. In fact, she is quite vigilant with these two aspects of eco-farming.
Our precious Ellie is also very selective as to which type of plants we sow in our flower and food gardens. She will quickly remove plants that are not native and indigenous to this part of North Mississippi. She has even been known to diligently chase away birds from the plants that she deems worthy of our beloved state’s soil.
Oh, and let’s not forget Ellie’s continual monitoring of delivery packages. Of course, for safety’s sake, she makes certain that each package will be harmless for its recipients by ferociously gnawing open the contents and doing a quality test on each item.
But of all Ellies’ unique traits, it is her absolute love for us that makes her the queen of our humble country hillside.
She has yet to find a resident that she does not utterly love, but she especially adores the children in our neighborhood. She shows her love for everyone without hesitation by not just wagging her tail but wagging her entire body. Ellie kisses us all repeatedly each day, and she watches over us better than any hired bodyguard or expensive security system.
Each day, she positions herself – after her extensive eco-warrior rounds – so that she can keep her beautiful golden eyes fixed on each person, place, and thing she loves.
There never has been and never will be quite another dog like Ellie. But remember, she is our dog, not yours.
