Be the Noodle Riding Shotgun

This is Bingo. He's a Parson Russell Terrier, think Jack Russell Terrier, and he's an old fart.

He's a rescue dog from the Omaha, Nebraska Humane Society. He's been an amazing companion during my travels around the Midwest. At nine years old, I thought being in the truck might be rough on him. Other than the usual learning curve where missteps are often made, he was a great dog.

The first misstep came when I left the windows cracked about eight inches while I went into Walmart for a little shopping. I'd just reached the deli counter when my phone started ringing. The woman on the other end asked if I had a dog named Bingo. I said yes, and she proceeded to tell me she'd found him wandering the parking lot and called the number on his collar.

Trucks are thirteen and a half feet tall. The windows were up at the ten-foot mark.

What the hell?

I ran outside and met the woman who had kindly rescued my rescue dog. He had a small cut on his inner thigh but otherwise seemed fine. I sighed, took him back to the truck, and rolled the windows up a few more inches. Either that prevented a repeat, or he was being cautious. Knowing Bingo, it was the windows.

The second misstep came when the little booger jumped out a second time. I found out by the jingling of his collar tags. The little beast was going to give me a heart attack.

The third misstep came at a shipper. I'd gone to the rear of the trailer to slide the tandems and turned to walk back when I saw a Mighty Dog commercial happening in real life. He launched from the driver's window like he was going off a dock into a lake. Airborne, he looked beautiful. Strong and amazing.

In slow motion, I watched him land and roll. He stood up immediately. My heart died a little when he raised his hind leg and just stood there.

I rushed over, picked him up, and scolded him.

"You're an old man! Are you TRYING to break a hip?"

He appeared appropriately ashamed as I checked for broken bones. After a couple of hours he was walking mostly normally, though he wasn't thrilled when I moved his leg around. That was the last of his flying attempts. I think it hurt just a little too much to risk again.

I've had a few hard-braking events with him in the passenger seat. Lying on a blanket doesn't prevent a fast slide to the floorboards. He started spending more time in the sleeper bunk after that, which he preferred anyway.

That dog had a bladder of steel. He held it like nothing I'd ever seen. There were days we literally couldn't stop or we'd be late to the customer. He'd come up front, look at me, I'd apologize, and he'd go back to the sleeper. Only twice did he have accidents, and both times it was my fault. Truckstop food does not agree with a small dog the way it agrees, barely, with a tired truck driver. One pill, a trip to the grass, and he was ready to go back to bed.

From the very beginning I knew I could trust this dog. The first time I picked him up, he just melted. He flopped onto his back like a cooked noodle and let me love on him. No matter how I held him, he trusted me completely to keep him from falling on his head.

I thought this was pretty amazing until I watched him sleep. He always ended up on his back, neck stretched out, little legs flopped like an understuffed doll. At least he was fixed and I didn't have to look at his balls.

He was friendly, or willing to be friendly, to any person who met him. Other dogs though? He was convinced he was bigger and badder than everybody else. He wasn't. He absolutely was not. But he never once believed that, not for a single day of his life.

Bingo lived to fifteen. In his final years he went blind and took up pretending to be deaf, which freed him from any inconvenient instructions while still completely ruling every dog in his neighborhood. He was, until the end, exactly who he always was.

I miss him still.

Bingo taught me that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply relax and trust.

I've tried to carry that lesson with me on every hard mile since. When someone you trust picks you up, you don't have to hold yourself rigid. You don't have to brace for the fall.

You can just be the noodle.

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