As told by Bernice Leland to Nancy Boutelle, 1967
Sailor's Story
It was odd how we met Sailor.
A black and white shepherd dog simply appeared at our kitchen door one evening and stayed around very politely. After everyone had gone to bed, my sister and I crept downstairs to the back porch, hoping with every sneaky step that the dog was still there.
It was, curled in an alert, responsive ball on the door mat, although Mother had not let us feed it. How could we let it sleep hungry? We took care of that with leftovers from the ice box and decided to name the dog “Sailor” because its black and white color reminded us somehow of Uncle Warner’s navy and white sailor suit.
Every morning, Sailor would rouse himself from the mat, pull up his upper lip in a grin, wagging a fluffy white-tipped tail and be ready for some fun with us. Even Mother would feed Sailor now and could find no fault. Sailor never insisted on coming inside, always politely unobtrusive, and had that sweet way of grinning as if he read your kind thoughts and appreciated them.
One horrible day, he was missing. Jean, my sister, went all around the neighborhood calling him. I could hear her little voice piping, “Saily, Saily! ‘way down the block between my own calls. Sailer didn’t come and we spent most of the day drying our tears or just letting them run. Jean kept insisting pitifully, “I just know Saily’ll come back!” I cried almost as much for Jean as for our loss.
Cool summer darkness was falling when Sailor finally appeared. We hugged and patted him and wept some more. But he was strangely different. He grinned at us but was preoccupied and restless.
“He’s sick – look at how thin he is!” wailed Jean, stroking the lovely, long fur.
Mother, looking odd, turned to Father. “Alfred, so you suppose...?”
But of course! The puppies were found when Sailor refused to let our neighbor enter his garage the next morning. He heard whining under the floor boards and hurried to inform us. We kept Sailor in the house while Dan and Mr. Grover pried up the floor boards. Seven pups were bundles into a make-shift nursery in our basement. Sailor was a devoted, immaculate mother but there came a day when she left the cleaning-up to us. Soon after, Mother put her foot down.
“We simply cannot keep all these dogs!” she said in her I-Mean-It voice. Romping and playing with the growing, mischievous pups had been like a child’s dream come true to Jean and me but we knew it was no longer of any use to whine and plead.
“Maybe we should find a home for them,” I suggested, trying to be business-like.
“But how?” worried Jean.
We finally hit on a plan. We’d put them in a basket, take them to the Case Company and offer them to the men coming from work at closing time. We’d keep one puppy – Mother had agreed.
Which of the pups to keep was a problem. They were all so appealing that there was nothing to go by, so we resorted to our regular way of choosing in such cases. “Ibbity, bibbity, sibbity, sab. Ibbity, bibbity, knick.” Knick’s it.
Sailor and Nicky, as we named our puppy, sniffed the empty basket when Jean got home from the Case Company the next dat and trotted off, un-upset, to play. A few mornings later, Sailor was missing from the doormat where she still liked to sleep. We never saw her again. Mission accomplished, she had gone her way.
Nicky grew up to be as polite and considerate as her mother, and every inch a lady.
Jean & Nicky
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Margot, Bunny and Jean with puppies
Margot Leland, Ethel Leland VanSpanckeren and Jean Leland with Sailor (l) and Nicky (r)