Once in a while I’ll remember something that happened that wasn’t all that pleasant. Usually I don’t like passing along Debbie Downer stories, but in Buddy’s case, I’ll make an exception.
Buddy was a good-looking, friendly, black-and-white smaller-size dog, probably part spaniel. He belonged to the Dowd brothers, Roger and Theo, who lived near Vince’s.
Five or six of us kids were headed home from school, walking up High Street, when we spotted Buddy. He was near the railroad crossing, where the street is raised a bit so the tracks can be level. Another dog had been run over by a car earlier in the day and was lying in the street, dead. Maybe he was run over by a train and not a car, but trains rarely came by there and ran quite slowly, so the dog would have to have been pretty stupid. His body was mangled, and there was a lot of blood.
We noticed the blood right away because Buddy was out in the middle of the street lapping it up. We were instantly outraged and ran toward the scene, shouting “STOP IT, BUDDY!”, “GET OUT OF THERE!”, and “BAD DOG, BUDDY!”. Seeing us coming straight at him, Buddy broke off and ran for home.
Somebody said aloud, or maybe we all just thought it, “I didn’t think a dog would do that.” But I guess he would.
After that, we regarded Buddy with some suspicion because of his disloyal treatment of a fellow dog. But Buddy hadn’t done anything wrong, he was just being a dog himself.