Today we honor a dog that has beaten all odds in order to simply still be standing. His name is Jake. Jake is a powerful American name. Consider ‘Jake the Snake’ for instance: A spectacular professional wrestler of old who enjoyed large pythons and trashy mustaches. How about ‘Big Jake’? One of John Wayne’s finest films shot in the twilight of his career. A career for Wayne, by the way, that ended far too soon. There’s Jake Owen who sings of the South’s best time-honored traditions in his country songs, and there’s Jake Delhomme who is known for his many, many interceptions on the NFL’s biggest stages.
The Jake we honor today though, is no ‘roided combatant of the steel cage nor is he a cue card-aided creation of the silver screen. He isn’t a legend beneath the neon moon of the Honky Tonk nor an inept handler of the pigskin on Carolina’s gridiron. No, this Jake is something else. He is a real American like us. He grew up in the fields of a sleepy North Carolina town called Kings Mountain. He was one of 5-20 children (the records are unclear). He never knew his father. He was taken from his mother soon after birth. One by one he watched his brothers and sisters as they were snatched in the night…and sometimes during the day. People called him a bastard. The same people told him that his long lost mother was a bitch. The odds were against Jake from the start, but he never got down and he kept plugging along. Family after family passed Jake by leaving him to fend for himself until one fateful day. That’s the day a kind man named Jimmy on Goforth Road agreed to take Jake in.
Jake’s life started to turn around. Jimmy had a barn and lots of new animal friends for Jake. Jake met Maggie the yellow lab, Cody the sheep dog, Ben the large angry billy goat, several nice horses, and countless bovines that were pleased to meet him. Jake was happier than he had ever been. He had a dogloo roof over his head and food on the ground every night. Things could only go downhill for Jake at that point, and that’s just what they did.
First, Jake’s new family noticed that his eyes were becoming cloudy, and his vision was leaving him quickly. Most likely a victim of cataracts, Jake soon became blind and was forced to travel by sense of smell, sound, and sudden impact.
It was perhaps Jake’s lack of sight that led him into a near fatal accident. To this day the details are unclear, and Jake refuses to talk of the incident. Family members believe one of two things happened to the brave dog. His owner Jimmy speculated:
“He was either sniffing around those horses out there and got kicked or he found that road out there and got hit by a car. Either way, it was bad…”
Jake’s private area (man land) and one of his legs became terribly swollen. An essential function could not be performed. “That dog couldn’t make water for weeks. He ought to be dead. We thought for sure he’d die,” said Jimmy.
To Jimmy and everyone else's surprise and delight, Jake did not die. No, Jake did what he has done his whole life: he took a lick and kept on ticking. The pain he had to be in isn’t even fathomable. The adversity he faced just to be standing and walking today is incredible. Now, the only sign of Jake’s accident is the slightest of hitches in his gitty-up. And, since he’s blind, he really doesn’t gitty-up too fast these days anyway for risk of certain head trauma.
The fact that Jake is alive is amazing in itself. But what’s most impressive is that he has got to be one of the most content dogs I’ve ever been around. He’ll sniff his way over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house just to wag his tail and say hello to the rest of Jimmy’s family when they visit for holidays. That’s how I know Jake. Jimmy is my uncle and my grandmother and grandfather live right through the woods where Jake slowly makes his way every time we visit. He can’t see; he’s probably still in pain from his near-deadly accident; and he constantly bumps into animate and inanimate objects whenever he dares to commute. And yet, here he is, happy and proud as can be. When he’s sitting there with his nose in the air towards the wind (because he sure as hell can’t see what’s coming), he truly looks stoic and all-knowing. He should be an inspiration to us all. Maybe you are fortunate to know someone or some animal like Jake who has faced and knocked the heck out of adversity. That’s truly emblematic of the American spirit.
Long live Jake, and when he doesn’t live anymore, they’ll all say, “he shouldn’t have made it this long to being with.” Quite a compliment if you ask me.
-Special thanks to Tony T-Bone Sturgill for the pictures.
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