Some Observations from the Hill
By HH (Hub) Brown of Owego

Over the years we've seen quite a few dogs come and go on the farm. One time, my wife Agnes had stopped to visit Wilma Russell down on Main Street. Some of her children had just brought home a stray dog that they wanted their mother to let them keep. But Wilma said they already had a dog so Ag offered to bring the dog home with her. It was a female, looked to be mostly some kind of terrier. At that time, we had a big, wooly English shepherd who was three times as large as the little terrier. She soon began to get bigger and one morning when we went to the barn, there were three puppies - a large blonde male and two tiny females. They were almost identical except for a slight difference in color. They were born in front of the cows and as they grew older, it seemed they thought they were cows.

When we first went into the barn, they would come to greet us and then back to the cows they would go. We gave the male pup away and later on had the females spayed. Every morning when the cows went out to the pasture the pups would be under the chin of the leading one, jumping up and down. The only time they ever barked was when two cows were scuffling with each other. They would go out to the pasture with the cows playing with each other but always staying close to the cows.

One afternoon, when the cows came in, there was only one dog with them. We drove around the pasture calling for Marlene. That's what our three daughters had named them, Lily and Marlene. Lily continued to go out with the herd the same as before. As she grew older, she started to take a little better care of herself. Like if the weather was a little raw and for some reason or other we had to keep one cow in the barn, Lily would decide that was the one to stay with. We used to have a photo of a cow lying down and Lily curled up on her back.

One day when she came in she carried something in her mouth. I took it from her and found it was a dog's skull. It was as clean as though it had been buried in an ant hill. I compared it with her head and the teeth and formation of the skull were the same. We never knew how she had died.

One evening, Lily acted sluggish and refused to eat her supper. The next night was the same thing. We had had to call Dr. Phelps for some reason and we had him take a look at Lily. He examined her thoroughly and said she had a liver ailment from which she probably wouldn't recover and if she died it would be a very painful death. So we asked him to put her to sleep. So, Lily's life ended where it had begun and never once had she had to leave her beloved cows.