Prince of Denmark: A Dog's Tale

He was a big dog. In fact, he was a giant dog. His mother had been a registered Great Dane, and his sire was a Great Dane-yellow Lab cross that had “accidentally” befriended his mom. His dam’s owners were not happy about the union and the resulting offspring, so the seven mixed breed pups had been ripped away from the mother dog and had ended up at an animal shelter. On his first night there, he was terrified. The adjacent cages held rough-looking dogs that snarled and growled at the new arrivals. The floor was cold and hard, and he missed the softness of his mom’s underbelly and her warm milk. He and his littermates huddled together all night, shivering and whimpering.

He didn’t know the fate of his siblings, but he was lucky. After a short sentence at the shelter, he was adopted by a family with three girls, and they had been a wonderful pack. They lived in the small town of Denmark, Georgia, and his humans had named him “Prince Hamlet,” but they always called him “Prince.” The only time his full name was used was at a terrible place they took him to occasionally, where the sharp bite of antiseptic filled his nose and where they often stuck needles into him or forced pills down his throat.

When he went home with the humans, he missed his brothers and sisters terribly, especially for the first few days. He was only six weeks old at the time. It didn’t take him long to adjust, however. The middle child was especially fond of him, and she often cuddled with him under a fuzzy blankie on the living room floor while watching television. When he was still small, the girls sometimes dressed him in doll’s clothes, but he didn’t really mind. Anyway, he soon outgrew the frills and bonnets. He enjoyed spending time with the girls, but they were gone much of the day to something called “school.” The man didn't pay much attention to him, but he was kind whenever he did. The woman was home with Prince almost all day, every day, and she adored him. His mother and siblings gradually became a distant memory, and after a few months, he forgot them completely. This was his home now.

He grew into a handsome adult – tall and muscular, with a tawny golden coat and a black muzzle. He had a gracefully arching neck and soulful brown eyes, too. He looked just like a purebred Dane, and only a canine expert would have been able to tell that he wasn’t one. Prince had lived a life of leisure since being rescued from the shelter. He lived indoors with the rest of the family, and he always had plenty of food and lots of love. He even slept on a human bed.

A few years back, when Prince was five years old, they moved into a house way out in the country, on the outskirts of Denmark. Since there were no close neighbors and little traffic on the narrow dirt road, he was allowed to come indoors or outdoors at will, thanks to a huge doggie door the man had installed. The sprawling back yard was fenced, so Prince had lots of room to run and play with the three girls. The girls had some enormous dogs – bigger even than him – that they referred to as “horses.” And when the kids rode off on their steeds, Prince always followed along. This is how he got into his present predicament.

He was lost. The girls had traveled on horseback, far from home, to an area with which he wasn’t familiar. When a storm blew up suddenly and rain began to fall, the kids ran their mounts back to the home barn in an effort to stay dry, and Prince couldn’t keep up. He was almost nine, and that’s old for a Great Dane. He was already gray in the muzzle, and arthritis often made him stiff and sore. He’d taken shelter under some bushes, but the hard drops had pelted him, and the reverberations from the thunder claps made him shiver. Once the storm abated, he trotted off in the direction of the girls’ swift retreat, but when he came to a crossroad, he was unsure of which way to go. He’d been frantically trying to find his way home for days now, but the rain had washed away the scent of the horses.

He had encountered few humans, and those he had seen had all been in automobiles. For the first couple of days, he’d pause and stare intently into the passing cars, hoping to see a familiar face. The vehicles rarely even slowed down when they approached him. One that did was a pickup truck full of boys, and they had yelled at him and tossed cans at him. He’d never been subjected to that sort of treatment before. After that, he took to crouching into the ditches that ran parallel to the roads whenever he heard a car approaching.

Prince was afraid, alone, and hungry. His last meal had been a road-kill rabbit he’d found on the edge of a blacktop. The meat tasted terrible, but his instincts drove him to consume it. His sturdy 180-pound frame had dwindled to skin and bones, and he was weak and exhausted. It was November, and the nights were cold. His short coat offered him little protection against the chill and frost. He slept wherever he could find a soft spot in the woods, and when he dozed, he dreamed of home. He missed the entire family, but it was the woman that usually filled his dreams; he missed her the most. The woman…she was the one who fed him, and she was the one who took care of him when he was sick or hurt. She sometimes spent hours snuggling with him on the big, comfy couch and speaking to him in low, soothing tones. He had always slept as close to her as he possibly could at night, and when he ran in dark, troubling dreams, she had always reached over to comfort him.

He had tried backtracking, to no avail. Nothing looked or smelled familiar. His nose was assailed by all kinds of new aromas, and if it weren’t for the fact that he was hopelessly lost, he would have found this an exciting adventure. And there had been some new experiences. One day he’d encountered a fox – his first ever. Another day he’d been sprayed by a skunk. And just the day before, he’d become tangled in a rusty woven fence as he was trying to cross it. His collar had caught on a broken wire, almost hanging him. Since he’d lost so much flesh, however, he was able to wiggle out of the collar and leave it behind. The woman would get him a new one.

Now, try as he might, Prince couldn’t catch a familiar scent of home. He had wondered aimlessly – for how long, he wasn’t sure. The day he’d discovered the blacktop and the dead rabbit, he encountered several automobiles, and he knew he was on the wrong path. As the cars and trucks passed, he had hoped to hear the familiar sound of the family’s jeep, but he never did. He’d thought for a fleeting moment that perhaps some human would stop and help him, but that hadn’t happened, either. The highway didn’t smell right, so he returned to traveling the dirt roads and woods. He’d lost almost an entire day on his quest for home, as he had to spend hours resting and recuperating in a thick stand of broom sage. It was warm and soft, and it was all he could do to force himself from this welcomed respite. He felt as if he could have just stayed there forever, but the impetus of home drove him to continue on his journey.

Now he was traveling again, but he knew he couldn’t hold out much longer. He was on a red clay road, and the hard-packed dirt and litter of rocks and pebbles proved painful to his aching paw pads. He came to a path that led into some woods, and he thought he remembered it. He stood there for a moment, trying to choose between the wooded path and the road. He stepped tentatively onto the path, and the soft, cool sand felt good to his tender feet. He thought he had a vague memory of the place, so he made the decision to stick to the path and abandon the unforgiving road.

Not long after he entered the woods, he saw something out of the corner of his eye that gave him real hope. Attached to the gnarly trunk of an ancient oak was a wooden platform. The humans called it a “deer stand.” He had seen this one before on his excursions with the girls, and he knew he was headed in the right direction. He could find his way home from here, he was sure. This put a happy urgency in his gait, as he found a renewed strength. He would soon be back home and in the loving circle of his human pack, and he would be with her again. He stopped momentarily and raised his massive head to sniff the breeze, and when he did, the air suddenly shattered with the sound of an explosion, and horrific pain ripped through his ribcage. The white-hot river broke bone and tore out lung tissue before leaving a horrendous exit hole on his right side.

He lay there in agony, fighting for breath, as a crimson puddle formed beneath him on the dry autumn leaves. Within seconds, he saw two men approaching, and he was sure they were coming to help. Finally, he would be rescued and returned to his family. With a mighty effort, he managed to barely raise his head and give a welcoming, pleading whimper to the humans.

“Hell, that ain’t no deer, you moron!”

“Oops. My bad. It looked like a deer to me.”

“It’s still alive. What do we do now?”

“Prob’ly just some stray. It ain’t wearin’ no collar.”

“Think we oughta finish him off?”

“Nah, don’t waste your ammo. He’s about gone. And anyway, if you fire again, somebody might be able to find us. I ain’t wantin’ to spend Thanksgivin' in jail.”

The men left. As Prince lay there, his last thoughts were of the woman. His heart yearned for her comfort. He found that he no longer had the strength to keep his eyes open, and they closed involuntarily. And then she was there. He could smell the familiar scent of lavender soap, and he could feel her warm hands caressing him. She sat next to him and he put his head in her lap. The pain disappeared as she gently stroked him to sleep. Good night, sweet Prince.