WE CALLED HIM CHILI

This story originally appeared in Gun Dog magazine a while back, written under the pen name of “Howard Campbell, Jr.” Kurt Vonnegut fans who have read Mother Night will recognize both the name and the inside joke for using it.

The reason I was forced to write under a pen name is because the organization I worked for at the time refused to allow me to write anything for any other publications in the hunting space, regardless of whether those publications directly competed with us for readers (they didn’t) and regardless of the potential business and partnership-forging benefits of such cross-pollination. This same intractable organization also refused to let me pursue a book project on a subject I had been writing about long before I started working for them (Hint: The subject is in the title of this Substack), but that’s another story…

Anyway, the editor of the magazine still wanted the story, and I still wanted to write it, so I fictionalized a few minor details to cover my tracks and hopefully obscure my identity. I actually do have a younger brother. My dad did like to hunt, but he almost never got the chance to because he was working all the time. Other than that, every sentence is true. And I still think about that old dog every now and then.

WE CALLED HIM CHILI

By Howard Campbell, Jr.

We called him Chili. I think dad gave him the name, but I can’t remember why. It was 40 years ago, and I was only ten at the time.

I can remember almost every single day afterward, but all I can remember of Chili’s arrival is a big, friendly, yellow mutt of indeterminate lineage wandering up to the house one day, skinny and filthy and friendly in the way of almost every unwanted, dumped-off dog I’ve ever known. And like every other unwanted, dumped-off dog I’ve ever known, he stole my heart and became my best friend.

We lived on a small acreage outside town, just my parents and me. No siblings, no neighbor friends to play with. I was a quiet, bookish, nature-obsessed kid who was — just as Chili appeared in my life — in the throes of a serious boy-and-dog literature kick. Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller and Savage Sam, Big Red, I devoured them all.

So when Chili showed up in the yard that day looking like a dead ringer for the dog that played Old Yeller in the Disney movie, I begged my parents to let me keep him. My dad was not a dog person, and especially not dumped dogs, which Chili obviously was. But he realized his only son — miles from the nearest kid his own age — craved companionship, needed a buddy, even if that buddy had fleas and stunk of cowflop.

Plus, I argued, Chili would make a great watchdog, just like Old Yeller. He’d scare away coyotes and shady characters while dad was gone and it was just mom and me at home. Dad, a welder who worked in the Oklahoma oilfield boom years of the late 70s, was rarely home, and while Chili acted like he’d never met a human he didn’t like, I could tell that struck a chord with dad.

So he relented, and Chili got a bath, a bowl, and a home. In return, Chili gave me something that’s stuck with me for life, long after he was gone: He gave me a world.

My dad didn’t hunt, and no one in either his or my mother’s family did, either. Hardscrabble, blue-collar, and paycheck-to-paycheck, there wasn’t much time for such recreation for my parents. So I was never introduced to hunting as a child, never had a clue that such a world as dog and human and gun working together even existed.

I usually tell people that my first real gundog was a lab, bought my freshman year in college, but that’s not exactly true.

My gateway into the world of gundogs was a yellow, slobbery mutt who didn’t point, didn’t flush, didn’t retrieve, and wouldn’t know a gamebird from a Nerf football (which he loved to destroy).

As far as I know, Chili never showed the slightest bit of hunting interest, or talent. The only living game he pursued was the occasional fence lizard. And to the best of my recollection, I never shot anything that might have given him the opportunity.

But he ran with me as I ran the woods and fields with a pellet gun, and somewhere along the way something clicked inside of me, an awareness that running feral with a dog by my side was intrinsic to my soul. Chili, that goofy, friendly, clown, was my spark. He gave me meaning, and I have never been the same.

Chili was with us for two years and made himself part of our family. And in fact he did once scare off a shady character, just like in a kid’s book. It was just an encyclopedia salesman, but it counted, anyway.

When dad found Chili on the road, the image of my hard-souled father bawling as he carried Chili’s body up to the house will never leave me. Neither will the pain.

Eventually I grew up, went off to college, got into hunting, got that lab, and along the way discovered pointing dogs. Dogs and birds became an essential part of my life, a necessity.

I’m much older now, both parents gone, and our small acreage where Chili lies buried has long since been sold and converted to housing. I run pointers these days; hard-charging, big-running wonders.

But sometimes, as I watch them eat up prairie, I still see a lonely boy and a yellow dog, and a long-ago time when the two were one.