LOYAL
Loyal: "unswerving in allegiance."
Your family and
friends, your community, and your country can all rely on your faithful
support.
CHAPTER
6: DUKE AND DUCHESS
“Tess, isn’t that Eddie coming up the street?”
“Where?” Tess looked up from her notebook, where she had
been doodling “Eduardo Gomez.”
“He’s walking that big German Shepherd by our house. Again.
Tess, is this notebook yours or Eddie’s?”
“Mine, Mom.”
“But Eddie’s name is written across the front. Unless
you’ve changed yours to Eduardo.”
“Oh, Mom. I just like the way his name looks.”
“And you like the way he looks, too.”
“Well...yes.”
“I’ve often seen him walking his German Shepherd past our
house lately. I don’t remember his doing that a lot before.”
“He likes to take her to the park. In fact, I see him
coming up the hill with Duchess right now.”
“’Duchess’?”
“That’s his dog’s name. It’s funny. Our German Shepherd was
named ‘Duke.’ If he were still alive, they would be Duke and Duchess.”
“I miss Duke, dear.”
“So do I, Mom. Will we get another soon?”
“I’m not quite ready, but I do want another dog, either a
German Shepherd or a Golden Retriever.”
Mrs. Williams went back to doing some dusting, thinking
about her little girl, who was not so little anymore, and who clearly had a
crush on Eddie Gomez, who seemed like a good kid.
Outside, Tess yelled, “Hi, Eddie. What’s up?”
“Walking Duchess to the park. Want to come?”
“Yes, I do. I wish our Duke hadn’t died last year. Maybe
the two dogs would have been friends.”
“Duke and Duchess.”
“Right.”
“I felt very safe with Duke around,” said Tess, “and so did
the rest of the family. He never bit anybody, but he looked like he might if
they gave us trouble.”
“Duchess hasn’t bitten any people, either, but she has
beaten up a few other dogs. She wants to be the boss dog. Some guy let his Pit
Bull Terrier loose, and it came after Duchess. They went for each other’s
necks, and then Duchess had a better idea: she reached down and grabbed the
other dog’s front leg in her mouth, picked it up, and she wouldn’t let go. The
Pit Bull was stuck and couldn’t do anything to her.”
“What happened then?”
“The other owner came and very carefully got his dog back
on the leash. I haven‘t seen them since.”
“Served them right,” Tess said.
As they walked, Eddie continued to praise his dog. “She’s
smart, too. She sleeps in my room most nights, and last week I was just getting
to sleep when she banged her water dish with her paw to tell me she wanted more
water. I didn’t want to get up, so I just lay there. She used her mouth to pick up her dish, and she
placed it on my pillow, then licked it to show me it was empty.”
“Wow! That was smart. What did you do?”
“I got up and filled her dish with water. She had earned
it.”
Not to be too outdone, Tess said, “Our Duke was smart, too.
He would stand close to the front door and bark if he wanted to go on the
porch. He would stand about a yard back from the front door and bark if he
wanted to go for a walk. If you tried to put him on the porch when he wanted a
walk, he wouldn’t go, knowing that once he was on the porch, we hardly heard
him, so he couldn’t easily tell us he wanted a walk.”
“Smart dogs!” Eddie agreed. “Good protection, too. Nobody
who comes to the door will get past Duchess if she doesn’t know them. Even
though my dad’s a cop, my mother doesn’t want guns in the house when he’s not
home, so a tough dog, a tough-looking dog anyway, is really good.”
“We feel safer with a dog, too, so we will get another.
Duke was a sweetheart, and we miss him. We are almost ready to get a puppy.”
Three months later, the Williams family bought another
German Shepherd, a puppy. They named him “King,” outranking a Duke or a
Duchess. Eddie laughed when he heard the name applied to that small ball of
fur, but he was careful not to laugh about it in front of Tess.
Moral: Life is a team sport. Where you can, support your team.
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