Chapter 9 (Animals I've Known And Loved, cont.)

BLITZEN



All we needed was a vacancy for the spot to be filled. The winter after Rex died, my older brothers found a German shepherd pup in the snow. He was already suffering from distemper. My mother set up a large box ( the packaging from our new refrigerator, replacing the old ice box).

She put newspapers layered on the bottom, and there the pup was nursed back to health. My first recollections of Blitzen was him dashing about in this large crate when he had seizures from his distemper. Mom pulled Blitzen through his illness. She called him Blitzen, German for lightening, as he could run that fast (or so it seemed).

Blitzen was Jerry’s and my first companion dog, and would accompany us on our treks through swamps, woods, paths through the Hall’s land, and to the near and distant sandpits. The woods just above our house was owned by the Halls, and the sandpit that lay between Merrimac street and those woods, then Tomato Hill and field lay along the border of our land and the neighbor behind us at the end of Williams Court. The brook that started in our field wound around the Blair’s house in back and wound through the bottom of acres Hall’s fields. On the other side their land stretched up into rolling hills, first with oak and nut trees, then into the hills with tall pines--a park-like area we just termed, “The Pines.”

There was a Spring in between the hills, and near a tractor path that led from Tomato field (which was actually just a hayfield when we knew it) over a bridge and skirted the base of Potato hill, then a stone’s throw below the path was this source of pure water, and because of it’s always being there, there was a “right-of-way” to the spring, should something happen to the city‘s water supply. We took advantage of that “right” and were going to tell anyone who stopped us that we were going to the spring as we needed some pure water. We’d lie on our bellies and sip the water like it was a ritual if we were in the area.

I think the owners never enforced the “No Trespassing” rule, as I think they realized that we cleaned up after other people who picnicked there and then left their trash. A hollow stump became a receptacle for this debris, and especially any broken glass. Years later, the grandson of the owner said that they were removing that stump and all this old glass poured out, and they realized someone had carefully cleaned up the area and stashed it there. I mostly was afraid it would cut my feet, as I was usually barefoot from one side of the summer to the other, and cleaned up the area religiously each time I‘d “go to the spring.”

If Blitzen went roaming by himself, he couldn’t find his way back home. Mom said it was the distemper affecting his instinct dogs have for finding their way home. As many times as we went roaming with Blitzen, it seemed that as many times we would be also out looking for him. One time we lost him completely. No amount of searching or advertising for his return had any result.

There were piggeries in Woburn at the time, and one piggery on the north back of the pines would abut another in back of a sand pit on the east side of the pines. The owners couldn’t afford to have dogs come in and harass their pigs. Mom thought Blitzen wandered too close, and was shot by one of the owners.