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PUPPY LOVE

The old sergeant and his platoon were on patrol when the sergeant spotted a small mongrel puppy that appeared to be the runt of the litter. It looked as if it was also wounded because blood was flowing down its left front leg in rivers. The sergeant had a soft spot for animals but he never showed it and he didn’t want to this time either. “Doc!” The sergeant yelled.

As the doc ran up out of breath he said, “Yeah sarge? Who barked their big toe this time?”

“Funny you should say, “bark” doc. See that mangy dog over there? Can you see what you can do?” The doc looked at pappy but ran over and started to examine the dog. A few minutes latter he had the dog bandaged and the blood flow stopped.

As the old sergeant walked over the doc looked up and said, “pappy, he’ll live but he was never in good shape to begin with. I doubt if it will ever walk right and I know it will never run and play like a regular dog. It’s also undernourished and dehydrated. The best thing in this situation would be euthanasia.”

The sergeant looked at the dog and finally leaned over and picked it up and put it in his shirt. “Let’s keep this to ourselves, huh doc?” The doc just smiled and nodded.

After their patrol the old sergeant brought the dog into his old make shift office and made a bed of old clothes for the pup. The dog looked happy enough to be there and it took food when pappy hand feed it. He used an eyedropper to force water down its throat and changed the bandaged the doc had applied. “Well, boy I think you’ll live but you sure are the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.” The pup looked up at the old sergeant with big brown eyes and licked his hand. Embarrassed by the show of emotion pappy moved to his chair and started on the endless supply of paperwork. “Stupid dog,” he growled.

Over the next few weeks the puppy grew in strength and vitality but as the doc had said, he was never going to be a world champion at anything. He seemed content to sit in his corner and would crawl under the desk when the sergeant had visitors. His leg was almost entirely healed and he could walk---after a fashion. But when no one was around he would crawl over to the old sergeant and sit on his boots until he got a head rub.

One of the goon squad made the mistake of asking the sergeant if he was getting soft hearted. The old sergeant turned on him and said, “you know soldier, I haven’t killed anything today and I’m having withdrawals.” The soldier beat a hasty retreat and from then on NO ONE mentioned the puppy.

On one of their rare days off pappy had the puppy out in the sun and they were both lying up against the perimeter fence soaking it up. The pup had crawled up on the sergeant’s chest and fell sound asleep.

The sergeant himself was a little drowsy from the sun but snapped wide-awake when he heard a noise behind him through the fence. A small-undernourished Iraqi child was standing behind him looking at the pup and the sergeant recognized the kid as a local. “Hey kid.”

The little girl smiled shyly and said, “Hi Mr. Sergeant. You have a new friend?”

Pappy looked down at the dog and said, “Well I wouldn’t call him a friend actually. More like a sand flea that you can’t get rid of.”

The little girl laughed out loud. “I wish I had a friend like him,” she said. “Can I buy him Mr. Sergeant?”

The sergeant smiled. “Well sweetie how much ya got?” The little girl reached in her pocket and pulled out a few Iraqi coins. “Humm,” the sergeant said. “ Well that’s a lot of money, but honey you don’t want this dog. You see he was the runt of the litter to begin with and then he was shot. His front leg doesn’t work so good. He’ll never be able to run and play with you and he needs lots of care.”

The little girl looked sad as she reached down and pulled up the leg of her pants. Her leg was a mass of scars and about half the size of the other. She said, “He sounds like me Mr. Sergeant. I was wounded by a bomb and the American doctor said I would never walk right again.”

The old sergeant grew very quiet and he stood up and handed the puppy over the fence to the little girl. The pup took to her immediately almost like he knew they were both wounded in mind and body. He licked her face and her smile was a mile wide. “Well, he seems to like ya kid. Guess we got a deal, huh?”

The little girl reached back in her pocket for her coins but the sergeant waved her off.

“Honey, there’s never a charge for love.”

Steve Newton

The Old Sergeant Series is fictional http://steven.newton1.home.att.net/

This “Old Sergeant” story was inspired by an Internet e-mail called the “Perfect Puppy.” Author unknown.