Rip was my four footed fishing friend. He showed up at my farm one day and adopted me. There has never been a happier, more fun loving dog. His name fit him well. He never walked when he could run and his tail never stopped wagging. His smiling face welcomed everyone.

Rip loved to ride in my truck, but not the first time I put him in it. I tied his collar to a hook in the bed of the truck and he tried to jump out, almost hanging himself. I shortened the length of the rope and drove out to the farm and he never tried to jump out again. I quit tying him in after a few months an never had a problem again.

He would jump from side to side, putting his front paws up on the sides, going back and forth especially when getting near the farm or home. When I made a stop at the store there was almost always someone petting him when I came out. Despite his 90 pounds he just looked friendly and always welcomed a petting hand from anyone willing to give it. And everyone that saw him was willing.

Going to the pond was one of his favorite activities, but sometimes he got into trouble there. Rip would not swim but would wade out and sit down up to his neck in hot weather. Anytime I caught a fish he got excited and tried to sniff it. If I gave a bream to him he would eat it. I worried about the bones the first few times but he never seemed bothered by the fish he ate. I guess he liked sushi. And if I let the fish go he stared at the water then looked at me like he was asking why I let dinner go.

Tearing things up was also a favorite pastime. I had a bundle of yellow insulation at the barn and tried to use it to insulate a house for him before taking him to my house. The next day it looked like a yellow snow storm had hit the area. At home sticks of wood from the woodpile would be dragged into the yard and chewed to bits. Maybe he was part beaver. No rug had a chance on the back deck, it would be nothing but threads the next day. He even chewed the handle off an ax left in a stump in the woodshed.

When he was ten years old I got a friend for him. Ginger is a brindled pit bull but very gentle, and she and Rip played together. They got along great.

Rip loved it when I got out a gun. The first time I shot a squirrel in the back yard I wondered how he would react. The shot did not bother him, he just ran and got the squirrel and brought it to me. From then on if I walked out with a shotgun he started looking up in the trees. I even trained him to go around the tree so the squirrel would move where I could shoot it.

But both Rip and Ginger were terribly afraid of thunder. Last summer while I was at the lake they dug under the fence during a storm and got out of the yard. Two days later, on a Saturday, I got a call from a neighbor about a mile down the highway saying Rip had been hit by a car. He was alive but dazed. I took him to an emergency vet clinic and they sedated him. That night at about dark I called and they said he might recover. He was no worse but no better, either.

I went to bed at midnight planning on fishing a tournament the next day. About an hour later the vet called and told me Rip was going into convulsions. He probably had brain damage and had less than a 25 percent chance of recovery. More likely he would just suffer until he died. I choked out “Put him down.”

I could not catch a fish the next day – my broken heart kept me from thinking about fishing. I picked his body up from the vet and buried him under the pear tree with Merlin and Squirt, watering the ground with my tears as I dug.

Two days later Ginger came home, safe and sound.