"Pepper Jax" By Abraham Lincoln

Pepper Jax

By Abraham Lincoln

Pepper Jax loves to run. I am not talking about a trot or a jog but running like the wind. He seems to get some special delight in running and stopping instantly and looking to see if anything is moving.

He likes to chase the squirrels out of the yard or up the white oak tree. The squirrels go as high up in the tree as they can and as far away from the barking dog as they can get. But his barking is too much for them and they seem to want to come down and go back to their home, wherever that was.

The squirrels run across the top of the fence, which is a hazardous, and Pepper Jax runs below them as fast as he can go. After several months of that, the squirrels have learned to start the run and the dog runs and he keeps on running until he gets to the end of the fence. The squirrels have learned to jump down on the neighbor’s side of the fence and go wherever they were going.

Maybe Pepper Jax is just happy to have a family again and a backyard that is host to birds and squirrels that he can bark at and chase. He was picked up in northern Darke County, running with his ‘buddy.’ Both were at the animal shelter but his buddy, the shelter had named, “Buddy,” was adopted first and little, “Jax,” as they called him, was alone until we stopped to see their dogs.



I thought it was love at first sight. “I gotta have this dog,” I told my wife. She squinched her eyes and eyebrows up. She didn’t want another dog. The death of Autumn Eve, our beloved Toy Fox Terrier, in 2006, was still haunting her and going through that separation process again was out of the question.

He rode home in the car being hugged by our granddaughter—that might be the reason for him following her everywhere, like a dog. And when she comes home from school he goes bananas with his whines, yips, barks, and grunts. He like girls anyway and seems to have settled on her as his favorite pet.

Pepper was a mess, smelled like a skunk, and had to be washed two or three times. The odor is gone, he has been to the vet, had his toenails done by the vet, and he has become a member of our family, along with a black male cat the size of a real black panther, aptly named, “Baby Kitty.” In spite of our worst fears, the two of them get along like they have known each other for ages.

Someone trained him—when he came home he did not stand around the table while we were eating but would lie on his bed and watch us eat. That was a good thing. I ruined that by offering him choice bites of whatever I was eating. Now he stands between my legs while I eat.