Hooch the Pooch
the story of a White Labrador

From the Introduction
From my earliest memory, I was fascinated by the stories of “Uncle Remus” by Joel Chandler Harris and “Black Beauty” written by Anna Sewell.  The characters contained in these books, mostly animals, spoke volumes of real life situations to my youthful mind. Somehow, the complex intended analogies by these authors were lost in my youthful innocence and I simply related to the characters as they were portrayed. Now, in retirement, the complex interactions of adult society seem wearisome and plastic to me. I can grasp the analogy of these authors and I yearn for the simple idealism of my youth.

Chapter One - Early Memories
Everyone knows that when animals talk about each other, they don’t say “Mr. Rabbit” or “Mrs. Frog”, no, they don’t talk that way. When animals talk they say “Brer Rabbit” or “Brer Frog”. So when Hooch learned to talk from Polly, his mother, he had to learn to refer to the other animals respectfully, by using the proper title “Brer”, that’s just the way it is in the animal kingdom. His mother told him, that when the animals referred to humans, they never used the title “Brer”, that was only used for animals, they must always use the term “Man” or “Woman”, for it had  been passed down by the old ones that the animals must hold humans in high respect. It seems that The One who created all, said that the animals must respect humans because He had made humans in His Image and therefore they were made higher than animals.

Hooch remembered many things that his mother told him,  he also remembered how good he felt when he could snuggle up next to his mother and hear her heart beating, he could not remember ever seeing his father, but his mother said his name was Larry and he was a very handsome dog. Hooch remembered how he disliked it when his mother left the doghouse where he was born, how even though he huddled with his brothers and sisters he sometimes felt cold and alone.

As Hooch began to grow he noticed that all his brothers and sisters seemed to be bigger than he was and sometimes they would pick on him and hold him down. His mother told him they were just playing, but Hooch did not like it anyway, so he would always try to stay away from them, but then he would feel lonesome. There was a man that came by every day to bring food to his mother, sometimes the man would have someone else with him, the man would call all the puppies out of the doghouse and the people with the man would look at Hooch and all his brothers and sisters, whenever they would look at Hooch,  the man would say, “Oh, that’s the runt of the litter, he stays by himself”, the others would nod their heads and not look at him anymore. As Hooch and his brothers and sisters got bigger, sometimes the other people that came with the man would pick up one of the pups, but they never seemed to pick up Hooch. His brothers and sisters seemed to like it when the people would pick them up, Hooch saw that their tails would wag and they would try to lick the face of the people that held them. He thought that looked like fun, especially when the people would play with the puppies, the puppies would jump and bark and run all around, and Hooch would join in the fun too, but nobody ever seemed to pick him up.

We have completed four chapters in the story of "Hooch", time constraints have prevented us from further work on this book, however, now with winter effectively stopping all outside activity, we will turn once again to the story of "Hooch", and perhaps complete it by the time daffodils begin to bloom.

You are welcome to submit comments and suggestions concerning the distribution and publication of this piece, it is a first effort in this area for us.

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