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Paul E. Gauthier, D.D.S.
or wood that has stopped giving off flames but
still has combustible matter in it.” That name fit
because we learned Cinder was recovering from
canine distemper, a viral illness that usually
affects dogs with high fever, reddened eyes,
and discharge from nose and eyes. “An infected
dog will become lethargic and tired, and often
anorexic,” sources say. Distemper can affect a
dog’s spine and nervous system. Cinder never
was able to raise her tail very high or wag it well.
Distemper caused her teeth to appear a bit
brown, but our vet vouched they were OK, just
discolored on the outside. I tried to get Cinder
to run and play, but she cowered and seemed
as weak as a kitten. But several weeks later, she
raced around and appeared healthy.
Before we married, my wife Carol and I
worked as first-year teachers for Greenville, S.C.,
public schools. She served in elementary school,
and I taught art at Woodmont High. Uncle Sam
called, and I completed basic training during
hot summer months at Ft. Jackson, S.C. We
married in August 1970, and I spent a year in
Vietnam, working first at Long Binh for the U.S.
Army’s inventory control center as a draftsman
and later for “The Army Reporter” newspaper as
an illustrator (81E MOS).
Carol wanted a dog after I left the army in
Feb. 1972, so we found Cinder. Some folk say a
couple shares a dog before they get a child. We
adopted Cinder, and Carol soon announced she
was pregnant. Cinder loved lying on our black
Naugahyde couch. Not noticing, I once half-sat
on her, before she yelped. She later pawed a hole
in that settee after circling to prepare herself a
place to sleep.
I worked at Faith Printing until a client of
that business offered me a job as art director
for his Christian book publishing business,
Logos International (no longer in business) in
Plainfield, N.J. Carol and I staged a garage sale
at our tiny rented house, shipped furniture to
N.J., loaded Cinder (who had grown to about
30 lbs.) into our 1969 Nova, and headed north
in July 1972. Carol had to change doctors
during her pregnancy, but we were young and
adventuresome.
Cinder, a Good Dog, the Crain family dog.
The owner of Logos bought an old 2-story
apartment house for us to rent and share with
another couple (the Balsigers and their two
young daughters). David Balsiger, hired as a
Logos writer-editor, and his wife, Janie, moved
from California to N.J. just before we moved
from S.C. When we arrived, the Balsigers had
settled into the second-floor apartment. The
house lacked air-conditioning at that time, and
our windows had no screens. Our landlord (the
owner of Logos) planned to supply screens as
soon as he could. Houses in that neighborhood
were close. Our driveway, to the right of our
house, jutted up to our neighbor’s drive. The two
passageways were divided by a sliver of yard and
a waist-high wire fence.
Our master bedroom, in the rear of the
house, featured a window that stood, at the sill,
about six feet above the backyard lawn. July in
N.J. in 1972 was hot and humid, and despite lack
of a screen for that bedroom window, we raised
the window’s bottom portion as high as possible.
We had put up “curtains” made of a gauzy, seethrough,
lace-like material. Cinder slept in our
bedroom each night. After occupying the house
several days, we were lying awake around 10
p.m. when I heard Cinder growl, which was
unlike her.
“Be quiet, Cinder,” I said.
She growled again, walked to the open
window, placed front paws on the sill and peered
out. I rose slowly from the bed and nudged
Cinder aside, parted the thin curtains and gazed
into the backyard. A distant streetlight allowed
me to see most of the narrow-but-deep rear
landscape that I scanned from side to side.
Then I looked down. There, crouched three feet
below our window was a burly, gray-haired man
wearing a gray jacket.
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“Yeo-o-w!” I yelled and slammed shut the
window. I guess I told Carol there was a man
out there. I hardly remember what was said.
She donned a robe, snatched up Cinder under
one arm, and high-tailed it up the stairs to
the Balsigers, who had heard me yell and the
window slam. (I’ve wondered, “Why would an
‘obviously pregnant’ woman lug a 30-lb. dog up
a staircase? I probably needed that dog down
there with me.)
I called the police: “What’s that?” I said.
“You can’t do anything about a man in our yard
unless he’s still in the yard? He’s gray-haired
with a spiky hairstyle. He was underneath our
bedroom window. My wife’s very upset, and
she’s pregnant!”
The next day, we learned from neighbors that
our “night visitor” was probably our next-door
neighbor, an alleged “Peeping Tom.” They said,
“We hated to tell you about him.” The accused
lived in the house on the other side of those two
gravel driveways I earlier described. After work
the next day, I knocked on the accused’s door,
and he answered. Behind him, about a room
away, I saw his two teenage daughters and wife
peering in our direction. “Mr. ___,” I said, “I
know you were over at our house last night. God
loves you, and I care about you, but don’t ever
set your foot on our property again.” He denied
he was the guy, but I believed our neighbors. As
far as I know, he never again snooped around
our landlord’s property during the year we lived
there. During that year, when Mr. ___ came out
to get into his car and Cinder was anywhere near
our back door, the hair on her back would rise
up, and sometimes we heard a low growl.
Cinder wasn’t always “wonder dog,” in a good
sense. During autumn, I planted tulip bulbs, but
Cinder dug up those bulbs, playfully flipping
them into the air. When my mother and our
friend, Janet, journeyed together from the South
to visit us, Mother petted Cinder, but Janet, who
was not a “dog person,” shunned her. We made
a Sunday train trip into New York City. Home
alone, Cinder chewed three pairs of new shoes
Janet had bought for her trip. Cinder touched
none of my mother’s shoes.
For months before our daughter was born,
Carol’s feet swelled badly. She rested daily on
our couch while Cinder licked those painful
appendages. Carol gave birth to Janelle in Feb.
1973, and her feet returned to normal size.
When Carol came home from the hospital and
reclined on the couch, Cinder looked at Carol’s
un-swollen feet and never licked them again.
In July 1973, we moved back to Greenville,
S.C., and I returned to Woodmont High to teach
art. Janelle, learning to walk, steadied herself by
holding onto Cinder. They’d walk along together,
and Cinder would look back to see if Janelle
was OK; at least that’s the way it seemed to us.
Janelle tried (once, that we know of) to eat some
of Cinder’s dry dog food. We saw the evidence:
Janelle’s cheeks were pooched way out.
Five years after Janelle was born, our second
and last child, Suzanne, arrived. Cinder became
part of Suzanne’s life, too. Cinder was 13 years
old when arthritis prompted X-rays. Our vet
viewed those pictures with me. He said her
hips had deteriorated, and he felt it was best to
put her to sleep. Janelle drove with me to take
Cinder’s body to my grandmother’s farm. We
buried Cinder, amid tears, close to the barn
where I played as a child. The field had been
plowed hundreds of times, and the ground was
soft and easy to dig . . . but leaving Cinder’s
remains there was hard. Agnes Sligh Turnbull
said, “Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault,
really.”
p.26 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. No. 130
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