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In Praise Of Man's Best Friend: A Mutt

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By FRANK SARGEANT | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 2, 2008

Updated: 01/01/2008 10:56 pm

I like mutts. Even though I spent quite a few years raising and training Brittany spaniels, and have owned a half-dozen other "purebred" dogs, the critters of mixed and usually indeterminable ancestry have a special place in my heart.

My current best friend is Wassee, found 6 years ago on the wooded shores of North Carolina's Lake Hiwassee - the name was a natural. I was turkey hunting the mountain valleys miles from the nearest road, when this strange little creature came racing down a deer trail toward me. At first, I thought she was an otter; long in the body, short in the leg, and with lots of speed, even then when she was maybe 8 weeks old.

She was pretty well starved, and I picked her up and put her in my coat and took her back to the cabin we had rented for the week. A meal of Cheerios and milk and she immediately went to sleep in front of the fireplace. By the time she woke up, my wife had decided that we were going to keep her, though she didn't start that argument until a few days later.

It's hard for a puppy to be anything but cute, but Wassee had a straight flush of ugly. She had scraggly brown hair, legs too short for her long body, a pointed snoot, and a tail that curled over her back when she was happy, but drooped over her butt like a wet noodle when she was sad. She had a black tongue.

Her ancestry always will remain a mystery, but most who see her guess the body shape came from a whippet. Her coat and color are probably somewhat Labrador influenced, and the black tongue and curly tail are chow traits.

In any case, Wassee seems to demonstrate the typical result of dogs left to roam and breed at will, a regression toward the original canines, which makes them smart, durable, disease-resistant and capable of taking care of themselves. Mutts are sort of tri-athletes, good at a lot of stuff that allows wild animals to survive, and yet, for some reason, many retain the need to be close companions with humans.

Wassee seems totally devoted to my wife and me, willing to put herself between us and whatever danger she perceives. She is never sick, another mark of mutts, in my observation. Either they are completely healthy, or at death's door; they seem subject to few of the lingering inbred maladies of many purebreds. They are satisfied with little, are not picky eaters, and seem to appreciate what they are given, unlike some of the snoopier thoroughbreds that have lost their appetite in the process of being downsized to pocket breeds.

She doesn't have the nose of a good pointer, doesn't love the water like a Lab, and does not seek to quarrel like a pit bull. But for all-around useful dogness, quick to run deer out of the shrubbery, let us know when the UPS truck is a quarter-mile up the street, or check on the slightest unusual creak of the floor at night, she is a pragmatic companion and a devoted friend.

The only problem with this mutt, as with all others, is that you can't go down to the pet store, someday after the years-times-seven algebra takes its toll, and get another that is similar in looks and temperament. But perhaps that, too, is part of the charm of mutts. They are an original painting of life rather than a print, truly one of a kind.

ETC.: Captain Pat Damico presents a free seminar on fly fishing in Patagonia tonight at 6 at Tampa Bay Fly Fishing Club, meeting at Compton Park Rec Center in Tampa Palms; www.tbffc.org. ... Rattlesnake Point Outfitters presents a free trout-fishing seminar Thursday at 7 p.m. at Jerry Ulm Dodge, 2966 N. Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa; www.jerryulmdodge.com; (813) 872-6645. ... Captain C.A. Richardson joins captain Mel Berman of WFLA, 970 AM for a flats clinic tonight at Toyota of Tampa Bay, 1101 E. Fletcher Ave. in Tampa, 7 p.m., free snacks and Power Pro line; (866) 540-1711.

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