The Funniest Thing I Never Saw

The Funniest Thing I Never Saw

When my brother, Roger, was about 10 years old he had two best friends. Copper was a golden Labrador mix dog and Brighty was a donkey. In the summer they spent all day every day together. They were in the Heritage Days parade dressed as a prospector with his donkey and dog. There was a picture in the newspaper of Roger sharing his ice cream bar participation “prize” with Copper. The three of them roamed all over the ranch together.

Roger spent hours and hours teaching Copper and Brighty tricks. The best one was Copper jumping onto Brighty and riding double with Roger. It was quite a trick because Roger not only had to teach Copper to jump up but he had to teach Brigthy to let Copper get on his back. They practiced it over and over and over.

One day Daddy needed help moving some cows from one pasture to another. Brighty was no good at herding cows. Donkeys can’t (or won’t) turn fast enough to make a cow turn around. Besides the cows didn’t like him so Roger rode a horse named Pally. Pally was quite a bit taller than Brighty. Copper went along just because Copper always went wherever Roger went.

One big cow decided she didn’t like that dog so close to her calf. She started to chase Copper. Copper, of course, ran to Roger for protection and TRIED TO JUMP UP ON PALLY. Pally was too tall for Copper to get on and he wanted no part of a dog on his back anyway so he jumped away. The cow was chasing Copper and Copper was trying to jump up on Pally and Pally was jumping away from Copper and Roger was trying to stay on Pally and chase the cow away from Copper. Finally, Daddy and Jim (the hired man) were able to stop laughing long enough to chase the cow back to her baby and Copper and Pally stopped jumping and Roger could catch his breath and they could continue to drive the cows to the other pasture. I wish I had seen it. It must have been quite a Wild West show.