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Gulliver and Abe The Spiritual Traveler
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This
is Gulliver and this is Abe. Abe and Gulliver are
pals. They play together. They run
together. Sometimes they just sit in the sun together.
Abe lives with the Meyers on East Huron River Drive, in Ann Arbor,
right near Gallup Park. Gulliver lives with the Laws, just a
few houses down. Gulliver comes over to the Meyers’ house
almost every day to see Abe. He sits by the Meyers’ back
door until Mrs. Meyer sees him. “Look,
Abe. There’s Gulliver!” Mrs. Meyer says. Abe
comes running to the door, ready to play.
When Mrs. Meyer opens the door and lets Abe out, Gulliver puts his paw
on Abe’s shoulder in greeting. Then they go off, looking for
adventure. They hunt rabbits in the woods. They
meet people in the park. They like to wade along the bank of
the river, and sometimes they go for a swim. Abe always
comes back very dirty. Mrs. Meyer lets him in the
house. “Go home, Gulliver,” she says. “You and
Abe have played enough for today.” She combs the burrs out
of Abe’s coat and gives him a bath. “How do you manage to
get so dirty?” she asks him. Finally, Abe goes to bed and
dreams of playing with Gulliver again.
For the next few days, Mrs. Meyer decides, she won’t let Abe out of the
house. “You’ve had enough exercise for a whole week!” she
tells him. “And besides, I’m tired of washing
you!” It’s not long, however, before Gulliver is back, and
Mrs. Meyer changes her mind. “Come back home,
Abe. You too, Gulliver,” she says to them. Abe
and Gulliver know that she is giving them permission to go and
play. They get all excited. They bark and
jump. Each one gives Mrs. Meyer a good-bye lick on the
cheek. Then they are off.
When Abe sees a rabbit, he can’t help himself. He dashes off
after the poor thing, making his little war cry like an Indian:
“Yip-yip-yip…” Gulliver is a digger. He sniffs around in the
grass. Suddenly, he starts digging. Nothing
there! Then, in a flash, something darts out of the hole!
It’s a ground squirrel, with a striped back like a
chipmunk. It runs for its life! Gulliver tries to
chase it, but he’s too slow. Before he knows what’s
happened, the ground squirrel has disappeared into the back entrance of
its house. Gulliver stands there, wondering where it went.
Sometimes Abe and Gulliver end up very far from
home. They’re tired, and it’s a long way to go
back. Abe is a very smart dog, however. He just
looks around until he sees some people. He trots up to them,
nuzzling against their legs and licking their hands. “Oh,
what a cute little dog!” they always say. The next thing
they do is look at the tag on his collar. It’s made of metal
and says, “My name is ABE.” It also has the Meyers’ address
and telephone number. “Well hello, Abe,” the people
say. “It looks like you and your friend are
lost.” They take Abe home with them, and Gulliver follows
along. They call the number on the
tag. “Hello. Do you own a dog named Abe?” they
ask Mrs. Meyer. “Oh yes, oh yes,” she
says. “Thank you for calling. I was so worried
about him!” The people give Mrs. Meyer their address and she
comes right over and picks Abe up. She has a big car, so
there’s room for Gulliver, too. Abe is very pleased with
himself. He’s back home and goes happily to his little bed,
tired from another exciting day!
One day, however, something unexpected happens. Abe and
Gulliver are a long way from home. Abe sees a pair of boys
playing catch. He trots over to them. “Oh, what a
cute dog,” the younger one says. “We better look at his tag
and see who he belongs to.” He looks at Abe’s
collar. “His name is Abe,” he declares. “Now what
do we do?” The second boy, who is his older brother, says,
“Why don’t we just take his collar off? Then we can say he
doesn’t belong to anyone, and we can keep him!” That’s just
what he does! He unbuckles Abe’s collar and throws it
away. Then he takes Abe home with them. The
younger boy decides not to argue with his brother. Gulliver
follows them, a little ways behind.
When the boys arrive home, they show Abe to their
parents. “Look, Mom. Dad, look what we
found! Can we keep him?” the older boy asks. “His
name is Abe.” “Did he have a collar?” their father
asks. “No, the boy lies. “Then how did you know
his name?” the father wants to know. “Oh, we just made it
up,” his son answers. The boys’ parents agree to let Abe
stay.
Meanwhile,
Gulliver has been waiting outside their house. Abe does not
come back out, so Gulliver trots home. Mrs. Meyer is in the
kitchen when she sees Gulliver in the back yard. “Gulliver!
Where’s Abe?” she asks him. “Oh no,” she exclaims to
herself. “Something must be wrong. Gulliver never
comes back without Abe. This has never happened
before!” She calls up the Laws. “Have you seen
Abe?” she asks. “Gulliver has come back without
him.” “No. We haven’t seen him,” they
reply. Now Mrs. Meyer is very worried. She calls
up all the people in the neighborhood, but no one has seen
Abe. She calls the dog pound, but he’s not
there. She puts up posters on trees and telephone
poles. Each poster has a description of Abe, along with her
telephone number, but no one calls. Mrs. Meyer is very
sad. She misses Abe very much.
Every day, Gulliver goes to the house where Abe is staying, but the
people don’t let Abe out to play. Gulliver sits in the front
yard. When Abe sees him through the living room window, he
begins barking excitedly. His new owners come to the door
and shoo Gulliver away. “Go home, you big dog!” they
say. “We have enough dogs here now!”
For a while, Abe doesn’t mind living with the new
people. They feed him and take him for walks, and the boys
play catch with him in the yard. Soon, however, he begins to
remember the Meyers. He remembers the food Mrs. Meyer used
to give him. He liked it better than the food in his new
home! He remembers his familiar little bed, all his
own. Here, he has to sleep on the floor! Most of
all, he remembers Mrs. Meyer. He wants to be with her more
than anything! Abe feels very sad. He can’t
understand what went wrong. His eyebrows droop and his tail
sags, but the people in his new family don’t seem to notice!
One day, Gulliver is out nosing around, all by himself. He
comes upon Abe’s collar—the one the older boy threw
away! Gulliver doesn’t know the secret of the tag on the
collar, but he knows the collar belongs to his friend. He
can still smell Abe’s scent on it! Gulliver carries the collar to Abe’s
new house. He sits and waits, hoping maybe Abe will come
out. “There’s that big dog again,” says one of the
boys. “Shoo! Go home, you big dog!” Gulliver is
stubborn, however. He won’t go away. Soon Abe
sees Gulliver and starts barking, making a racket all over the house.
The father comes out to investigate. He sees the collar in
Gulliver’s mouth and takes it from him. He reads the tag
with Abe’s name on it. “Michael,” he calls to the older
boy. “Come here. I want to talk to you right
now!” As soon as the boy sees the collar in his father’s
hand, he hangs his head. “I’m very disappointed in you,
son,” the father says. “I know you wanted a dog very much,
but you lied to me. Think of the people who own Abe—what you
put them through! You will have to call them yourself and
apologize—and do anything else they ask you to do, to make up for the
trouble you caused them!”
Mrs. Meyer is busy in the kitchen when she gets the call from the
boy. She is so happy, she can’t think of anything
else. “I’ll be right over,” she tells him, and drops
everything she is doing. She jumps into her car and rushes
over to the address the boy has given her. As she approaches
the front door, there—still waiting patiently—is
Gulliver. “Gulliver!” she cries. “You found
Abe! What a good dog you are!”
Then Abe comes bounding out the door, into her arms. He is
so excited, he is yelping and jumping around and running every which
way. He sees Gulliver, and that makes him even more
excited. He keeps running back and forth between Gulliver
and Mrs. Meyer. The father and his two sons come out to
greet Mrs. Meyer, so there is a real crowd at the door. Last
of all, Gulliver comes up to Mrs. Meyer. He realizes that
he’s done something, but he doesn’t know exactly
what. Still, he has a feeling that he’ll get a reward, and
he does. Mrs. Meyer kisses him, hugs him, and tells him over
and over what a good dog he is. Then she does the same with
Abe, because she knows if she doesn’t, Abe will be jealous.
Mrs. Meyer has a long talk with Michael and his father. She
lets the father talk sternly to his son, because that’s his
responsibility. They decide, to make up for what he did,
Michael will have to mow the Meyers’ lawn twice a month for the whole
summer. Michael also agrees to help his father around the
house every week. “You can start by helping me clean out the
garage,” his father says. “And remember—no more
lies! If you’re very good, at the end of the year I’ll go
with you to the pound, and we’ll pick out a new dog for
you.” “My own dog?” Michael asks him. “Yours and
your brother’s,” his father replies. “Just like Abe?” the
boy questions him, excitedly. “Just like Abe,” his father
promises.
Finally,
Mrs. Meyer drives back with the two dogs. It’s a long time
before she lets Abe out of the house again. In the end,
however, she decides that maybe Abe has learned his lesson, too, and he
has! He doesn’t go up to strangers nearly as much any
more. Most of the time, when they’re through playing, he and
Gulliver come straight home, all by themselves.
They still hunt rabbits and dig for ground squirrels. They
still wade in the river and lie in the sun, and Abe still gets very,
very dirty.
If you ever visit the neighborhood, you will find them there—two of the happiest dogs in the world! |
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Date Submitted:
2001-03-13 00:00:00 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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