The county deputy who pulled up behind Clyde Hollis’s riding mower on Highway 63 figured he was dealing with a drunk until he saw the dog in the cart.
It was a Saturday in May, outside Houston, Missouri. Clyde was 90. His license had been gone for three years, since his eyes got bad, and the pickup sat in the barn with a tarp over it. Clyde’s daughter drove him to church and to the doctor. Nobody drove Buster anywhere.
Buster is a redbone coonhound, 13 years old, the last of the dogs Clyde hunted with. That spring a lump came up on his side, and the vet in town removed it on a Thursday. Buster stayed two nights, and the clinic called Saturday morning to say he was ready to go home.
Clyde’s daughter was at her grandson’s ball tournament in Springfield until evening. The vet’s office closed at noon.
At 9 in the morning Clyde filled the gas tank on his John Deere, hitched up the little utility cart he hauls firewood in and laid an old army blanket in the bottom. The clinic is 4 miles away, mostly along the shoulder of the highway. He drove it at about 5 miles an hour with an orange flag zip-tied to the seat.
The vet tech who carried Buster out to the parking lot says she didn’t know what to do, so she helped him settle the dog on the blanket and waved.
Deputy Rick Sutter caught up with them about a mile from home. Clyde told him the whole story without getting off the mower. The deputy looked in the cart, where Buster was lying with his head on the edge and his stitches showing, and put his ticket book back in his pocket.
He turned on his light bar instead and followed them at 5 miles an hour, the rest of the way to Clyde’s driveway, while a line of cars stacked up behind the cruiser.
At the house the deputy lifted Buster out of the cart and carried him up the porch steps. Clyde held the screen door.
His daughter heard about it that night from three different people before she even got home. She told her father he could have been killed. Clyde said he’d thought about that, and he’d decided Buster had waited long enough.
The lump turned out to be benign. Buster sleeps on the porch in the afternoon sun again, with his back against Clyde’s chair.