To the untrained eye, YoYo might appear rather ordinary. He is 12 years old, an aging Border Collie, more interested in bagging bees with a snap of his jaws than herding cows. He spends most f his time curled outside the kitchen door awaiting a handout and ensuring his arch enemy, the cat, does not slip inside unnoticed. His coat is rather bedraggled because as YoYo has gotten older he snarls and growls when brushed.
Our daughter Molly doesn’t really care that YoYo’s fur is encrusted with burrs or that his hair is matted or that YoYo’s occasional visits to the cow pen leave him smelly and dirty. To Molly, YoYo is prettier, smarter and more loyal than Lassie. “He can read, Mom!” announced Molly one day. Her proof was indisputable. On the back of our garage wall is a huge recycled stop sign. Molly excitedly told me that while she had YoYo on the leash, he looked up at the sign, and immediately stopped walking.
Naturally, Molly decided to enter her wonder dog in the children’s pet show at the county fair. She selected a new hot pink collar for him and a matching leash and for weeks practiced leading him around. It was quite a sight. There was YoYo, walking dejectedly in the hot August sun, his coat clumped with dirt, desperate to find shade a and take a nap, while Molly pranced about and declared proudly, “Look, Mom! He loves for me to walk him!”
It took quite a bit of soap and water, not to mention patience, to get YoYo ready for the fair. But when we were finished, YoYo looked really good. Molly rewarded YoYo for enduring the humiliation of being placed in an old washtub by feeding him dog biscuits, broken up so YoYo wouldn’t have to chew so hard.
At the fair, YoYo was definitely the oldest entry. Other dogs leapt and tugged at their leashes, sniffed at the other entrants, wagged their tails and barked excitedly. YoYo spent the entire time waiting for the large dog class with his head in my lap looking at me with baleful eyes. YoYo wanted to be home, snapping at bumble bees and making life miserable for the cat.
When his class was called, YoYo reluctantly went with Molly and followed her around the ring.
Molly wasn’t surprised when YoYo was awarded a blue ribbon. After all, how could judges fail to notice such an exceptional dog?
What I noticed was that each every dog in the Children’s Pet Show won a top ribbon. The judges knew that in the eyes of their young owners, these dogs were all “best in show.”
Our blue ribbon dog is back home now. Molly fixed him a champion’s dinner: a bowl of dog food ringed with dog biscuits. YoYo’s nose is really dirty because he has buried most of these dog treats in my garden.
Next year, we enter the cat.