Читать книгу Rover - Barry Blackstone - Страница 6

I have been pondering for quite a while the theme of this book; not because of the hero of this book, but because of the animal that provoked me to think again of the childhood friend that started this love affair with a treasured pet. That pet today is a cat named Eddie who has already his own book (Meows from the Manse-not yet finished because Eddie is still alive). For most of my life I haven’t been a great pet owner. I can honestly say I have never sought a pet, but dogs like Rover and cats like Eddie really do chose you. Eddie came one day as a stray, but Rover was the family dog that chose me to be his best friend. I believe it was because my father didn’t have time for a dog in the busyness of being a dairy and potato farmer: a 24/7 kind of job. My mother didn’t have time either, but unlike Dad never cared for any animal I know of. My sister Sylvia was Rover’s other hope and though she paid a bit of attention to him she never has cared for animals that much. Granted, there were plenty of cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents on the farm but they all seemed to have their own pets, so that left it for Rover to choose me. As I ponder on this boyhood friend nearly sixty years after Rover’s passing, I have come to some conclusions and some remembrances.

It was the wise man Solomon who first wrote of “ . . . a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18:24) I have for most of my life read this as speaking of a human friend like my best friend Bob, a cousin, but a brother. As a pastor I have used this verse often to speak of the Lord Jesus Christ because He invoked this concept in His relationship to his disciples: “Ye are my friends . . . ” (John 15:14) But as I study more the context of Solomon’s proverb, I was directed to this concept also from pen of the mighty king of Israel: “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast . . . ” (Proverbs 12:10) Did Solomon have a pet? Often I have found in my mediations that sometimes it is the creature that gives more comfort and encouragement than the human. I can’t tell you (you ought to read my ‘Eddie’ book) how much I have learned from Eddie and how much that simple feline has helped me through the years we have been together. It was the realization about Eddie that made me think back to Rover and what I might remember and reminisce about our relationship when I was a lad on the land. Before you are the stories I remember, and the lessons I now understand through a part German/Collie half-breed becoming my boyhood friend. Come back with me into the late 1950s and early 1960s as my friend and I roam my ancestral homestead in search of adventure.

Also before you are the spiritual sermons Rover preached to me and the practical precepts I learned from a barnyard dog. I would only ever have one more dog in my life: a dog my wife and I called Cherry, during the early years of our marriage in Pembroke, New Hampshire. For these dog tales I am taking you back to Perham, Maine when the Blackstone homestead was still a working farm and dogs were a part of the animal zoo we had. Cows were for milking, pigs for meat, cats for moussing, and chickens for eggs, but Rover was just a “friend”; he wasn’t even needed for guard duty in those days, days in which we “never” locked our doors (I don’t think my parents ever knew were the keys to the house were). As I look back I realize that I had human friends, but my best friend was a dog we called Rover. So come with me back in time to a simpler age, a quiet time, a gentle period when a boy and his dog could walk together down country lanes together, and now I realize I still can walk with Rover again down memory lane!

Barry Blackstone—January 1, 2017