Lady and the Tramps

(I heard this story from a one-eyed horseshoer in the Salmon River country of central Idaho. He and I were leaning into the campfire about midnight after three days of drinking beer and swapping lies. I don't remember the subject of conversation.)

"I've been riding, breeding, feeding, doctoring, buying, selling, and trading horses for forty years, and I've done pretty well by it. At least I've always had a few more horses than I could afford. Worst I ever got took in a deal, though, was when I got to messing around with improving the bloodlines of a dog.
"My wife brought home a little cocker pup looking like it came straight from Disney, all flop-eared and misty-eyed, so Carolyn called her Lady. When Lady wasn't more than about six months old, she came into heat. I just couldn't see putting a dog that young into motherhood, so we made a bed for her in our six-horse trailer, and fed her in there. Every cowdog in the county fought for the privilege of pissing on those trailer tires. Lady made it through that first heat a virgin.
"Six months later, the cowdogs started sniffing her butt again, so back in the trailer went Lady. I had been doing my homework, though. The neighbor up the hill had a male cocker, full in the chest, standing proud, a good prospective mate for Lady, but the damn thing was a housedog, and never left the yard.
"The third day Lady was in lockup, I took a ring of baloney and wandered along the property line between us and the neighbor, pretending I was doing some fencing. When the male cocker took notice of me and started yapping, I pitched a chunk of baloney his way. Pretty soon I had him down by our house, eating out of my hand. It was easy enough to pick him up and toss him into the trailer with Lady.
"A couple of hours later I spotted the neighbor man driving real slow down the county lane, whistling out of the car window, honking the horn now and then. When he came to our driveway, I wandered out and played dumb. No, sure enough hadn't seen his dog, what was it a cocker or something, must gone jackrabbit hunting, probably will come home before dark, that sort of thing.
"About that time, the fool dog caught wind of his master, or heard his voice, or recognized the sound of the car engine, and went to whining inside that horse trailer. All that metal just amplified that dog's voice, and the neighbor recognized the yelp, went gawking around, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.
"I ran over to the trailer before he could figure things out, cracked the door, and out come Ace, I think his name was, went to licking the baloney smell off my hand, while Lady scooted by and ran around the corner of the house, two steps in front of a bob-tailed dingodog.
"I said, by golly, I sure didn't know how that dog had jumped up six feet through that trailer window, but that I did have a bitch in heat, and the power of sex was a wondrous thing, wasn't it? Being an animal breeder myself, I'd be more than happy to pay a small stud fee for the services of his animal, and I peeled off a ten and handed it to him. He was a little hesitant to take the money, but I insisted, so he tucked the bill in his shirt pocket.
"He gathered up his dog, crawled back into the car, fired up the motor, and, as he was backing out of the drive, he leaned out the window, kinda smiled, and told me that old Ace had been neutered for five years. Lady was spayed that September, ten weeks after she whelped a litter of dingo-cocker cross pups."