Melody ’95: a survivor / Illustration by Rosemary Coates
From The Hound Intelligence Series, published by Hounds Magazine (UK), edited by Deirdre Hanna, illustrated by Rosemary Coates. Click to purchase the 333-page collection.
Brazos Valley Melody (Deep Run Butler ’91 ex Mission Valley Gamely ’92) was an English bi*ch―half fell hound and half Modern English―whelped by huntsman Tommy Jackson at the Mission Valley Hunt (KS). Butler, Melody’s sire, was all fell blood, top and bottom of his pedigree, from the Eskdale and Ennerdale kennels in Cumbria. This is a storied foot pack with rugged hunting territory in England’s Lake District on the English-Scottish border. Gamely, Melody’s dam, was Modern English with bloodlines back to the Hamilton and Ottawa Valley Hunts in Canada.
Tommy drafted Melody, heavy in whelp, to Sandy Dixon, MFH and huntsman of the Brazos Valley Hounds (TX). Melody had been bred to Mission Valley Nero ’95, an American dog hound with mostly Penn-Marydel blood. The handover occurred at the end of the 1995 Central States Hound Show, which both hunts were attending. For the journey home to Brazos Valley, Melody was put into a travel kennel with the rest of Sandy’s hounds that had been at the show.
Sandy Dixon continues the story of an extraordinary journey.
It was raining when we left Kansas, and with a forecast of heavy rains, we headed south on Route 35 into Oklahoma. Just north of Oklahoma City, we stopped for gas, and Bobby took the wheel. We had checked on the hounds in the trailer. They were wet but it wasn’t cold, so we headed out for the last three hours of the nine-hour trip home. South of Oklahoma City, it was raining very hard, but it was still daylight so we could see the road reasonably well.
Just outside Ardmore, Oklahoma, we noticed several cars and trucks pulled off the road under the overpass, so we pulled off behind a cattle hauler. After a few minutes, the rain slacked off. Though we did not realize it then, we were, at that moment, in the eye of a tornado. We learned later this tornado blasted a nineteen-mile path through Oklahoma City, injuring hundreds of people. As we drove on, it started to rain so hard we couldn’t see, and we pulled over again.
Bob spotted the circular motion of the wall of water, leaves, trees, and debris heading straight for us and pushed me down with my little dachshund, Weanie, between my chest and legs. Bobby was sitting straight up pushing as hard as he could on the brakes to hold us on the road, then it felt like the truck exploded. All the windows were sucked out, glass was flying, and my little dog was screaming because I was holding her so very tight so she wouldn’t get sucks out. Then it was over. A guard rail was through the windshield, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw melody hit the ground. She’d been sucked up into the air, then released. She was running as hard as she could being heavy in whelp. The trailer was on its side with all the floorboards askew, releasing hounds.
Still holding Weanie, I reached for my horn and several hounds stopped in their tracks and ran to me. A car full of college students stopped in front of us and they climbed out and started helping us catch hounds. The cattle hauler we had seen down the road pulled his rig over in front of us and started putting hounds in the hauler. His dear wife, as broad as she was tall, was pitching those hounds in as fast as the rest of us. Gimlet, Duster, Bashful, and Melody were still missing.
At this point, a veterinarian in a pickup truck arrived on the scene. He told Bob he could pull our trailer upright. Then we could reload the hounds and take them to his clinic. He attached a rope, pulled it upright, and we all replaced the floorboards. Upon transferring the hounds from the hauler, we saw that some had strawberry bruises from being skidded down the highway, but nothing major.
When we arrived at the clinic, the full impact of what had happened hit me. We had glass embedded in our heads. The vet and his wife helped us clean up. With another band of storms coming and darkness, further searches for missing hounds had to wait. Our friend Ed Zielinski hooked up our trailer and we headed for home. We got to the Zielinski’s at about ten o’clock, stopped for a brief but wonderful pizza, then continued safely home.
We headed back to Ardmorethe next morning, and as I looked to the right I saw Bashful! She was so glad to see us we had no trouble getting her loaded. We searched all day for Gimlet, Duster, and Melody. We found parts of their kennel from the day before, as well as the contents of our cooler, strewn along the path of the tornado. The corkscrew which had been in the cooler was in the bed of the pickup truck along with eighteen dog food pans―not one missing. Bobby’s trousers were inside-out and the lining of his sport coat was gone.
We put an advertisement in the paper and visited the animal shelter, which was overwhelmed with injured and lost animals. I had to go to work for the rest of the week but searched the following Saturday. On Sunday morning the phone rang. A lady had seen a “big black and brown hound-looking dog eating out of her dog’s bowl.” I snatched Bobby away from his Sunday newspaper and it was eight o’clock that night when we got to the lady’s home. The “dog” had been caught and it was Duster―thin, full of ticks, and lots of scrapes―but alive.
Twenty-seven days after the tornado, the lady from the shelter called. “Someone has seen a female hound that looked like she had had pups and was around Ardmore,” she said. As I turned off Route 35, I saw her. It was Melody. She had a dead bird in her mouth. She was scared and ran from me, but she never put the bird down. As I got to a pile of downed trees, I heard puppies, and sure enough, it was her nest, and in it were six fat puppies. Their eyes had not yet opened.
I still could not catch Melody, so the lady from the shelter sent her helper with a large humane trap. When this kind old man arrived and stepped out of his pickup truck, I noticed he had the word Melody emblazoned across the back of his t-shirt. “It belongs to my daughter,” he said. “I just grabbed the first shirt I found so I could get here fast.”
We put the puppies in the trap and waited. It was now getting dark, the puppies were crying, and guess what? Another storm was coming. I could not stand having the puppies get soaked, so I gathered them up and put them in my truck. At least I had them. I then put my hamburger in the trap. I bought a baby bottle from the store and some formula (milk) and headed back to the pickup where the puppies were. It was pouring rain so I checked into the motel and asked for a room overlooking where the trap was set.
As the lightning flashed, I saw Melody’s eye. She was in the trap. Poor Melody was so scared and so skinny. She was full of ticks and full of milk. On our way home I pulled into the nearest hamburger place and ordered five hamburgers and gave her four but she wouldn’t eat them. The vet looked her over the next day and basically, she was okay. Although I make it a policy to name puppies using the first letter of the dam or sire, in this case, we had to have a Tornado. The other males were Turbine, Twister, and Truant.
Melody recovered from her incredible journey. She hunted every season since 1995. Now, she no longer hunts but she eats well, seems happy, and loves to walk with me and the puppies. We tried to move her to the house but she was not comfortable there and went back to the kennel.
Gimlet was never found.
Posted May 8, 2021