NANCY'S NOTES

The news every day is often so sorrowful and worrisome that most days, I just avoid it. But I love hearing or reading a happy story, especially when it’s about a dog. There’s just something about a good dog story that warms my heart. I guess it’s because many of us have dogs who take care of us more than we take care of them.

The dog in this story, a black lab named Buck, lives on a farm in Pratt County. According to his owner, Billy Studer, Buck gets bored sometimes just hanging around the farm, and he has been known to wander out to U.S. Highway 61, about a quarter mile from his home, and wait for someone to stop by and visit him. Studer says Buck knows just where to sit so that he won’t get hit, but so that people will stop and talk to him. “People pick him up all the time,” Studer says. “Sometimes they just take him for a ride.” Studer has learned, after experiencing 25 or more of Buck’s escapades, that those who stop for Buck will read the name and phone number on Buck’s collar and bring him home. “He always comes back,” Studer says. Either someone drops him off or he walks back to the farm on his own. Studer says Buck is very strong willed. “If he wants to go, he finds a way to do it.” And he’s always come home, except for the day he didn’t.

Studer began to worry when Buck didn’t come home for several days recently. “That dog is my best friend,” he says. On day one of Buck’s most recent disappearance, Studer, who is in his 80s, walked his property looking for any sign of his dog. He was worried, but thought, like other times, Buck would soon reappear. On day two, Studer called the local newspaper, The Pratt Tribune. “I’m getting really worried,” Studer said. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of my dog, and I need to put out an ad in case someone has him so they will bring him back.”

Studer checked in with the dog catcher in Pratt and at the Pratt Area Humane Society, but neither place had had any calls about a friendly black lab that might have been picked up northeast of Pratt. He also talked with the Pratt County Sheriff’s Department, who knew all about Studer’s dog, Buck, but had no idea where he might be. “This time he has done it,” Studer told the sheriff. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

On day three, with no sign of Buck, Studer took a lonely walk around his farm. “I just happened to go around the back side of my shop building,” he said. “I don’t usually walk there, but I heard something. I went around to the front and opened the door, and Buck shot out of there like a rocket! He had been right here all the time.”

Studer and Buck were overjoyed to be reunited. Buck was so excited to be free that he went into overdrive piling sticks and limbs on Studer’s back porch deck. “He thinks I clean up the trees just for him. He is always bringing branches bigger than himself up onto my deck,” he said, and Studer didn’t care. “I’m just glad he is back,” Studer said. “Life is just not the same without him.”

Someone once said, “Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” I find that to be true of the newest member of our family, Charley. Still in the puppy stage of life, she can be a pain in the butt at times, but she has certainly taken us into a whole new and fun chapter of life. Just like Buck is to Studer, life would just not be the same without Charley. The world would be a nicer place if everyone had the ability to love unconditionally as a dog.

(Thanks to Jennifer Stultz of the Pratt Tribune, for originally telling Buck’s story.)