Ruby was the original Terminator. As a puppy she proved to be too much for inside the house, and almost too much for the outside. I have never seen a dog so fast, or so muscled or so hard; indeed, I believe you could have hit her anywhere on her body with a broom handle and she would have barely taken notice.
As far back as I can remember we Hamptons have been dog people. Zack was the cattle and sheep dog of my Father’s youth, who would bring the stock in every evening and keep track of the lambing ewes. He played in the river while the kids swam and followed them faithfully as they walked to school each day. He was just a memory by the time I came along, but I remember Dad’s look when I told him that I had named my new Lab puppy after him.
The new Zack, now 10 years old, is a passable retriever, a faithful friend and a world-class garbage hound. Like most labs it took him a few years to get it together, but when he did, you could almost see the wheels turning. What did the trick for Zack was watching his first Canada goose fall out of a snowy Virginia sky. Up to that point he thought his name was “Get back get down, dammit!” and his goal in life was to eat as much garbage and pee on as many vacuum cleaners as was doggedly possible. I knew that he would be a good dog if I could keep Cecelia from killing him. (She still hasn’t gotten past that vacuum cleaner thing) . Another in a long line of heartbreakers and clowns. I remember what Dad said as we stood together in a cold January rain to bury Charlie, the seventeen-year-old beagle, the dog of my youth; “God made dogs with short lives so we can love alot of ’em.” It helped.
One of the greats of Hampton family dog history was Reuben, my Granddad’s Plott bearhound. As a four-year-old boy I stood incomplete awe of this massive beast, who never failed to wag like crazy and drown me with dog kisses every time we visited (nor did he fail , ever, to chase my mother like he would surely eat her up if he could catch her!). Reuben occupied the back seat of the old jeep whenever Granddad and I rode down to the river and spent his retirement days snoozing on the ragged old porch of Granddad’s place at Black Rock. He was the first dog I ever trusted, and I can’t remember ever being afraid of him, though his reputation as a fearless fighter was well known.
In those days Granddad’s job as a game warden included dealing with nuisance bears, and since all bears were considered a nuisance then, he was kept busy just trying to keep up with the complaints. Dad said that the family had always had an assortment of fox-coon-bear-bobcat dogs and that indeed, the Hamptons were known for their fine hunting dogs as far back as anyone could care to remember; of all of them, Reuben was Granddad’s favorite and his constant companion.
I still have a photograph of Granddad and Reuben with a 300-pound sheep-killing bear they ran to ground in 1946 in the mountains of Grayson County. I remember sitting beside the hound on the ancient porch of Granddad’s house on a quiet summer evening as my father told the story; I can still feel the old dog’s warmth as I snuggled up against his side and I remember the creak of the rocking chairs and the calling katydids like it was yesterday. It’s hard to single out another time that felt so safe, secure and downright good.
The story goes that in March of that year the bear had gone from farm to farm taking a calf here and a lamb there, never lingering too long in one hollow. Several other bear hunters from out of the county had tried in vain to catch up with him, only to be rewarded with dead dogs and empty hands. Granddad took Reuben to a friend’s property on Whitetop Mountain, where three ewes had been killed the night before and put Reuben on the trail. You must understand, this was all before the advent of the CB or the radio tracking collar.
Granddad followed Reuben on horseback and foot for three days and two nights, alone, through some of the roughest country in southwestern Virginia, from Whitetop to Buck Mountain to Mount Rogers and back again before the bear finally stood to fight. He would camp on the trail at nightfall and be up with the sun, riding the ridges to listen for the hound. I can almost see them now in my mind’s eye, as I imagined them while the story was told that night; the bear, hurrying through the thickets and across the ridges, his instinctive fear of the hound urging him on; the dog, his nose full of the hated bear scent, running through the icy creeks and over the frozen ground, briars in his coat and ears and his voice an urgent cry of joy; and the old man and horse, lathered, grim-faced, flecked with briar-blood themselves and locked into a dance as old as, well, the mountains around them.
The fight had been progressing for nearly two hours by the time Granddad tied up his horse and worked his way off the mountain to the laurel hollow to where the bear had made his stand. All involved were pretty well ready to be done with it by this time, as you might imagine, but at the appearance of Granddad the bear made a valiant rush to escape, which just happened to be straight toward the only opening in the tangle of rhododendron , which also just happened to be occupied by my Granddad. (Granddad was adamant about this point, that the bear was trying to get away and not charging, but the dog didn’t know the difference). Reuben locked up on the bear’s flank and when the bear turned to dispense with the dog once and for all, my Granddad slammed a bullet from his .30-30 into the animal’s ear. The bite Reuben put on the bear actually broke a rib. All in all, the kind of story that tends to raise a dog up a notch or two in the eyes of a small boy. I swore that someday, I would own a Plott.
Her name was Ruby.
Painting by Dan Burr
Ruby was the original Terminator. As a puppy she proved to be too much for inside the house, and almost too much for the outside. I have never seen a dog so fast, or so muscled or so hard; indeed, I believe you could have hit her anywhere on her body with a broom handle and she would have barely taken notice. She was starting to be hardheaded too, so out of desperation I borrowed a shock collar from a friend to teach her to come when called. I think it’s a tribute to her intellect that it took only one demonstration before she caught on. After that, if you called her, you had better brace yourself or she might break your leg slamming into you. Never have I seen a dog come to heel so fast, and every time we called her, no matter how she was occupied at the moment.
I rigged a cable-run and chain for Ruby in the front yard where she would have over 120 feet to exercise, and she made that damn cable sing like an 80-decibel tuning fork day and night. She had eaten all the toys we had given her as a puppy, and I guess in her boredom she took up whatever was handy to occupy her time. This turned out to be pinecones, wood, bones (from where they came, I still haven’t figured out), her bedding, her doghouse and the bricks under it. She actually ate a brick. I saw her do it. She seemed to be enjoying herself and, well, at least it wasn’t the front steps.
It was at this time, deep in the grip of winter, that I began introducing Ruby to various animal skins. She showed great interest in them all, no matter what species; in retrospect, I suppose she considered everything except Cecelia, my sons and I just another squirming something-to-eat. I had no doubt she would hunt. My only doubt at this stage was how to get whatever she caught away from her before she recycled it!
At this same time, we were feeding two stray cats on the back porch in an attempt to tame them. One night, I heard an awful racket out back and turned on the light to see an enormous raccoon in the process of shredding one of them. I scared him off and was able to save the cat with some home-vet stitching but decided the ‘coon needed a lesson. The next night I loaded the food bowl and brought Ruby into the house.
We were just preparing for bed when Ruby issued a growl that will go down in the history of the Hampton household as the all-time A-Number 1 hair-straightener had I not known from where it came, I doubt Carl Lewis could have caught me. As it was, it was coldly terrifying and, believe me, all business. I eased open the backdoor, Ruby got one whiff of ‘coon through the screen (remember now, she had never actually seen a raccoon), and went through the storm door like a cannon blast. I thought I heard the ‘coon say something like “Oh Shit,” then crunch.
When I finally pulled her off what was left of the ‘coon, it weighed twelve pounds, without a recognizable head and missing a shoulder. I’m convinced she would have eaten it all right there on the spot. We brought her in to praise her and give her a night in out of the cold, but she politely declined, vomiting over a gallon of god-knows-what smack dab in the middle of the kitchen floor. You see, she liked ‘coon, but it just didn’t seem to agree with her.
As the snowpack melted and people could once again access the National Forest land adjacent to my house, the late-winter coon hunters started to appear. A good friend stopped by one day and asked if I would like to take Ruby with him and his dog on an “experimental” hunt. I said why not, and plans were made. That night, with my new headlight and improved dog, I was ready. I’ve had more fun in the dentist chair. Most of the night it was “Yip, Get ‘em!” and” Where’s Walt?”, as I stumbled blindly around the ivy thickets and creek bottoms, the red brush and green briar, trying to head in the direction of the baying dogs. And bay they did, especially Ruby. Although I wasn’t there at the time to see it, my companion said she singlehandedly treed five coons and caught one on the ground, which she promptly ate. He was so impressed with her performance that he made a substantial offer for her on the spot. I declined.
As Winter turned to Spring, Ruby’s fame began to grow and many hunters that had heard of her through the “cooners network” came by to see her and make varied propositions, all of which I also refused.
One beautiful spring afternoon I was sitting out on the front grass with her, she on her cable and nearly asleep, me drifting toward it with the warm sun penetrating our hides. I glanced down toward the end of the driveway and saw the neighbor’s cat, a huge, mean old tom, sauntering up the road toward our garbage cans. He turned up the driveway and walked purposefully toward the house; suddenly Ruby saw him and raced toward his position. The cat nonchalantly sat down and ignored her approach, cable screaming and dog roaring. When it seemed that the cat would surely be murdered before my very eyes, the cable and chain came taut, Ruby was flipped over backwards, and the cat never moved. Ah, ha!, we seem to have played this game before! With Ruby spraying slobber and roaring like the Hound of the Baskervilles, the cat daintily walked to the garbage can, tipped it over and helped himself, oblivious to the death machine just two feet away.
Several nights later I spotted the same tomcat walking off our back porch after killing two of our new kittens. Before I could retrieve the double barrel, he was into the woods and gone.
Later that same week of the kitten murder, I was again enjoying the late April sunshine with Ruby, brushing her skin-tight-fur and letting my mind drift when, you guessed it, here comes the tomcat. He made his turn from the road to the driveway and was beginning to ascend the hill toward the garbage cans when I reached down and gently unsnapped the chain from Ruby’s collar. Ruby looked toward the road, saw the cat, and as God is my witness looked right up into my eyes with an expression that could only have said Thank You. Then, like a cruise missile homing in on target, Ruby was a brindle streak across the yard. The cat, sitting nonchalantly, suddenly realized that the chain and cable weren’t singing as usual. I expect it was the last thing to go through his mind.
As time passed, I became more and more aware that Ruby missed being able to hunt as she was intended. And though sweet, she was just too rough for the boys to play with, so with a heavy heart I sold her to the good friend that had shared that first ‘coon hunt with me. In the seven years before her death she whelped thirty-six fine pups and was in on the demise of over 400 raccoons. During those years I visited her often, and she always recognized me.
I hope to see her again some day. I’d like to ask her just how that tomcat tasted.
Editor’s Note: this article originally appeared in the 1997 May/June issue of Sporting Classics.
This marvelous collection features stories from some of America’s finest and most respected writers about every outdoorsman’s favorite and most loyal hunting partner: his dog. For the first time, the stories of acclaimed writers such as Richard Ford, Tom Brokaw, Howell Raines, Rick Bass, Sydney Lea, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, Phil Caputo, and Chris Camuto, come together in one collection. Buy Now
