. . . When we bought this property, I wanted a large and fierce appearing dog.
Everything I’d read about Wolfhounds said they were gentle giants, and I spent $750 for a pup from a breeder. I figured such a large and loyal dog would be excellent around the farm. My wife would be spending a lot of time here alone while I worked, and the presence of such an animal might be a strong persuader to anybody who thought of messing with her.
The pup grew awkwardly. His front legs would grow, but the rest of him would stay the same for a few weeks, and he’d look funny. Then his ears would get left behind, and he’d look funny.
When fully grown, Corwin was 130 pounds. He’d jump up and greet me, and when he did so, he’d place both paws on my shoulder and look down at me.
When we wrestled he did something I’ve known another dog to do. He’d give you a foot sweep. He’d walk up and club you in the lower leg with his big baseball bat of a paw and knock you down. Then he’d slobber you to death.
Sometimes he did look fierce, but then he would move and spoil the illusion. The fact of the matter was that he was obviously a big goof.
He’d run full speed through a field, and suddenly trip. He’d go cartwheeling and sliding fifty yards before coming to a stop, and there’d be a big trail of dust marking his crash. It was like watching a bus wreck.
Little kids loved him, and would actually ride him. He was polite, always friendly, and a good companion. He’d go wherever you went, and love it.
He was a terror inside the house though. He had that hound smell, and he’d render furniture unfit for human use just by being near it. If he sat on the couch, it’d be all dented and covered with coarse white hairs. There’d be a huge trail of drool soaking the side of it and puddled on the floor.
He’d wag his tail and it was like slinging a baseball bat. Chairs would get knocked over and lamps thrown from tables.
My wife and I worked a deal to preserve the marriage. I built him a home in the barn to sleep in. He could spend evenings in the house, but in the Great room only, so that the damage could be contained.
Corwin, being rather agreeable towards anything, was fine with this.
The other problem was I got no respect. People around here are serious about there dogs, and nobody took big goofy Corwin very seriously. People have Rotweillers, Shepherds, Jack Russells, Retrievers, but I had the only Wolfhound, and there weren’t any wolves.
Then, one day, at my nieghbors house, Corwin and my neighbor’s Rottweiler hooch were messing around. They were in the back of my neighbor’s pickup truck. I called Corwin to go, and he jumped out of the truck.
He didn’t quite make it.
Corwin’s balls landed on the trailer hitch.
Hoooooooooowwwwwwoooooooooooo!!! he cried, curled up pitifully.
It cost me two hundred dollars to get his balls treated.
What little respect I had received from my neighbors for Corwin was due to his considerable size. Now he was the laughingstock.
People would ask me how my dog’s balls were as a form of greeting, their deadpan delivery giving way to a sly grin.
In spite of his clumsy good-natured klutziness and the ridicule it got me, I loved that dog. When he sighed contededly, it was a titanic emotion. You could lay down on the floor with your head on his chest and hear his mighty heart pulse. When he played with little kids or smaller dogs you beheld an infinite and epic goodwill and kindness, and a careful gentleness.
Later we got another dog, and it was the height of comedy to watch the little puppy “pin” Corwin to the ground.
He had a great soul, and I came to think of him as “Great-Souled Corwin,” and admire his humanity (for lack of a better word.)
But, I thought of him as a lovable, but ultimately inept goof. A comic figure.
Corwin though, showed me differently, and we shared a defining moment.
I was walking around the property. Corwin was off galumphing about somewhere ahead.
There’s a wild dog problem in this area. People buy a dog, decide they don’t like it and set it free in the gamelands a mile away. Every late fall these dogs get hungry, lean, and mean, and they cause trouble with livestock and scare people. I’ve had five or six encounters in my time here, and I now do what my neighbors do when they encounter one. They shoot it.
This was my first fall though, and my first encounter. I was unarmed, and merely out for a walk.
It was a Doberman, and it had been shot in the side of the head at some point. It had a big infected wound, and it was pissed off and seemed inclined to take it out on me. I knew better than to run, but this dog had me scared. It would charge forward silently a few paces, stop and back up. It wasn’t barking, just growling quietly, and it felt like it was testing me out prior to a serious attack.
I was trying to make my way to a tree when Corwin showed up.
He came bounding over, toungue hanging out of his mouth, tripping over his own feet, and stopped dead when he and the Doberman simultaneously spied each other.
And then the dog I knew was gone. For the first and only time in my knowledge, Corwin became all business.
His goofy ears flattened against his shovel of a skull. His great long neck angled low to the ground, leaving his huge head parallel and a few inches above the dirt. The tounge withdrew into the mouth whose lips curled, revealing teeth and jaws more befitting a T-rex than a dog. The front legs and paws splayed widely and his huge shoulder muscles bunched. His tail whipped slowly from side to side like an angry and venomous snake.
The Doberman growled dangerously.
Corwin did not growl. I swear it. I know a growl. A growl is a threat. This was not a threat. It wasn’t even a promise. This was a fact that issued from his throat. It was the eager fact of death both imminent and inevitable. It was the sound of murder.
I had never heard a sound like that before, and it’s difficult to describe. It’s a sound like an IRS audit, or the last tortured cry of the turbine engine on a jumbo jet before the plane crashes. It’s the sound of a bill due and payable when you’re already overdrawn.
It literally gave me goose bumps and loose bowels as I stood there. I knew if he had ever made that sound to a human being he would have had to have been destroyed.
Suddenly I understood his epic good nature and carefull clumsiness. Equipped as he was, a perfect machine for murder, Corwin could not afford to pose or play it tough. Any overture in that direction would have been overkill.
Later I figured out that he shared something in common with every legitimate badass I’d ever known. He didn’t give a shit about his image. He knew he was deadly, and saw no reason to adertise the fact.
The other dog saw it too, and tried to back off without turning tail. It didn’t work. Corwin slid in low and fast.
His front paw shot out and swept the front legs of the Doberman, knocking it off balance. Then the Corwin’s huge jaws were around the throat of the Doberman. His neck came off the ground, taking the Doberman with it. The muscles clenched and you could here bones snapping like crunching Broccoli.
All the while the same low yet insistent sound of murder continued.
It ended quickly, but Corwin held on for a long minute, unmoving.
Then he dropped the dog, and turned to me.
The ears popped up in their airheaded way, and he bounded comically over to me
“Duhhhhh, how ya doin?” his look said.
Wolfhounds don’t live long. 10 Years is a rarity. They are too big. Bloat gets them a lot, as does cancer, but most die of a heart attack.
Corwin made it to three years old. One night he seemed tired. He’d jogged with me that day, so that wasn’t unusual. He was mighty but he never had especially good endurance. The next morning he was dead.
I buried him, and planted a Maple. My brother, never a sentimentalist, loved that dog, and drove 4 hours to say goodbye.
I’ll never get another. The heartbreak was too much, and three years is far too short a time to spend in the company of such a magnificent animal.
That dog taught me a lot about manhood. I had just gotten married when I got him. Just bought this farm. I was pretty caught up in my image and felt very self-important at my relative success in business. I was proud, and thought dignity was something you wore like a piece of fine clothing. I thought it was a thing like a museum piece.
I’d like to think I know better now. I’d like to think that manhood and dignity are a compassionate fool who moves like a living Chevy Chase pratfall, that the greatest and stongest of us all, hide as clowns.
And, I hope that I learned enough from that dog that my daughter knows him, though they have never met. I hope that I’m man enough to reflect enough of that animal onto my daughter.