died after struggling with a heart that just wouldn’t behave. His Testament bequeathed the animal to the Major. Peabody couldn’t keep Alexander in his apartment and he soon discovered finding a Philadelphia home for the dog was not an easy task. Few people shared his love of hunting dogs. Man’s inhumanity to dog was more widespread than can be imagined.
Damnit all, anyway, the Major thought. There has to be a way around this. He considered possible alternatives. He could murder that stubborn, unfair scoundrel - the Resident Agent - and hope the replacement would be more amenable to reason. He discarded that thought for the obvious reason. The possibility of the company sending a reasonable man to replace a murdered building manager was miniscule.
It occurred to him he could move to another apartment where the landlord didn’t mind a dog pen in the building’s back lot, didn’t mind circles of dead grass where the chemicals in dog by-product made growth of grass impossible for years and didn’t mind dog hair and dog smell in and around a tenant’s quarters.
No, the Major concluded, it would be impossible to find such a landlord in Philadelphia. He recalled his long ago attempts to convince his own wife of the gratifying enjoyment of association with hunting dogs. She reacted by citing the presence of his Labrador Retriever as a basis for the cruel and inhuman treatment she alleged in her divorce complaint. Her attorney had a hard time convincing her not to name the dog as a co-respondent.
Peabody thought about again trying to talk his attorney into providing a home for Alexander the Great. It was a good plan, but there were two problems. The attorney knew nothing about dogs. It wouldn’t take a year before Alexander would have been pampered to such an extent that it would be little more than a house pet, unwilling or unable to do the work of a hunting dog. The second problem was more serious. The lawyer had flatly refused the proposition and, worse, he had already convinced the lovely Stephanie to reject any dog sitting proposition the Major might advance to her.
“Well,” Peabody said as he scratched the head Alexander had conveniently laid in his lap, “I suppose I can call the animal shelter. They might find a good home for you.” Alexander heard and understood. He lifted his head and looked alarmed. Suppose, the dog thought, they place me with some non-hunter. Suppose they give me to a gun controller. I might never hunt grouse again. The Major watched as tears began to form in Alexander’s eyes.
An equally terrible scenario occurred to the Major. A wire-haired Griffon is much too big to be a lap dog. It is not a handsome animal and few, if any, would go so far as to call it cute. A Griffon is not the kind of dog taken from animal shelters and given to children as pets. Suppose, the Major thought, the animal shelter couldn’t find anyone to take Alexander. They’d push him into a vacuum tank and suck the air out. Alexander’s last moments on earth would be terrible.
Time was running out and one by one the Major’s options were disappearing. In desperation, he called his friend, Doc Carmichael. “I’ve got a tough problem and I need your help, Doc,” he said. “I’m quite depressed and I don’t know where to turn. I’m beginning to think euthanasia is the only solution left.”
“I can’t become directly involved,” was Carmichael’s immediate response. “The stupid laws being as they are, I could be charged with murder. I’ll give you a note identifying the chemicals you’ll need and the formula for preparing a dosage. Then you’re on your own. The product is lethal. It will do the job quickly. You won’t suffer much.”
“It’s not for me, you idiot,” Peabody answered. “It’s for a dog.”
An hour later, Carmichael arrived at the Major’s apartment carrying the proverbial doctor’s little black bag. It contained a hypodermic needle and a mixture of drugs calculated to propel a 65 pound dog into a painless but permanent sleep.
* * * * *
Alexander lay quietly in the backseat of the Jeep, his muzzle resting on his paws. He seemed to mirror the sadness of the two men who sat in gray, dejected silence as they drove to Carmichael’s cottage where Alexander the Great’s final resting place would overlook a tree lined lake.
It seemed obvious that Alexander knew what was in store for him. Through pleading eyes, he watched as Doc Carmichael opened his little black bag.
* * * * *
“I need a drink,” the Major announced when he returned to his apartment. “So do I” said a solemn and worried Doc Carmichael. “I’m not happy with what happened at the lake. How am I ever going to explain it to Janell?”
Peabody consoled him. “She won’t blame you for refusing to kill an animal and in time she’ll get to love Alexander. She’ll overlook the hair on the furniture. Look at the bright side, Doc. Now we can both hunt over a great Ruffed Grouse dog.”
“Yes,” Carmichael agreed, “but I’m the one who has to feed him and pay the veterinary bills.”
Peabody merely smiled.
Animal Rights
Major Nathaniel Peabody does not enjoy cocktail parties. During the years he served as a Military Attaché in various United States embassies, it was his duty to attend them. He was forced to hold a martini in his hand (without drinking it) for entire Saturday afternoons when he would have preferred to be in the field, hunting the local waterfowl and upland birds.
Moreover, as he matured the Major developed a distaste (which eventually approached a loathing) for small talk that does not concern itself with dogs or shotguns. Peabody considers attending cocktail parties to be an activity only slightly less offensive than stealing pennies from the eyes of the dead.
When he retired and established his residence in Philadelphia, Major Peabody immediately took a fancy to my fiancé. Though she is some thirty years his junior and, like me, definitely not the outdoor type, the lovely Stephanie charmed him. She is the only one who can induce him to attend a Main Line cocktail party and has done so on more than one occasion. And so, as a result of Stephanie’s cajoling, Major Peabody agreed to accompany us to such an affair.
There are people in the suburbs surrounding Philadelphia who have deep commitments to (but little understanding of) the environment, animal rights and other “feel good” movements. Whenever a hostess informs her guests of the Major’s out-of-doors activities, he is, he says, confronted by aggressive women in flat heeled shoes and tweedy, delicate men who engage him in argument or attempt to secure his approval of some distasteful theory.
Peabody regularly extracts himself from such situations by brutally ending all conversations. He has become an expert at it. For example, a lady author showed no interest in a then current newspaper headline about a woman who murdered her husband with an axe. She casually dismissed the story with the words “he probably drove her to it.” However, when someone mentioned how a Bryn Mawr man cut off his wife’s head, the woman went ballistic in her outrage.
If the lady had directed equal anger toward the woman who murdered her husband, the Major would have remained silent. However, the lady’s selective outrage offended him. Peabody successfully terminated her diatribe with a single sentence. When he commented: “She probably was too tall, anyway,” silence occurred abruptly and the author and her coterie of sycophants slowly backed away.
Peabody’s ploy to avoid what he considers to be ridiculous chatter has been remarkably effective. When a lady advocate of gun control gushed about the two fawns that regularly visited her back yard, the Major brightened up and offered to get a gun and
