A Dog's Christmas Carol

Late one snowy Christmas Eve, Charles Dickens wearily laid down his book as he sat by the hearth with his trusty Companion Dog, Tim, by his feet. “Well, Tim, my Friend, my readings of the latest scientific literature on Animals leave my spirit of hope very dim. So many Animal behaviorists, biologists, ethologists, otherwise intelligent writers and scholars irrationally attack the obvious fact that Animals feel and think! They say it’s all anthropomorphic nonsense! They don’t even believe that Dogs can truly smile! What shall I write to help them see the error of their ways?”

As the clock struck twelve midnight, Tim got up to stretch. Then, as if possessed, he walked toward the still-resounding clock, threw back his head, and howled! It was a long, low, ghostly howl that seemed to come from the Nether Realm. Calmly, his mission accomplished, Tim resumed his position at Dickens’ feet, smiling mysteriously. Suddenly, inspired by the ghost of an idea, Dickens raised his pen to write:

Professor Marley was dead, to begin with, no doubt whatever about that. The Professor had lectured his last at the Learned College of Animal Studies. The register of his burial was signed by his clergyman, the undertaker, and even Professor Scrooge himself. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. And Scrooge, Professor Marley’s scholastic protégé?

Oh, but he was a hard-hearted model of cold, hard scientific thinking, Scrooge! The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his bombastic addresses to his students, stiffened his professorial gait. He iced his office in the Dog-days, and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Clenching his jaws as strains of “Good King Wenceslas” reached his ears from Christmas carolers below, Scrooge threw open his office window. “Off with you! Off, I say!” The frightened carolers fled, bumping into two freshmen collecting for Animal Shelters, who hopefully knocked on Professor Scrooge’s office door.

“We’re collecting for the Animals at the Shelter, Mr. Scrooge. The poor Dogs seem to feel their want more keenly, this festive time of year.”

“Anthropomorphic drivel!” yelped Scrooge. “Feel? Dogs DON’T feel! They’ve simply learned to make unpleasant noises in order to get food; a mere Pavlovian conditioned response.”

.“Yes, Professor, we’ve heard your lectures. But we will be grateful for any amount you may find it in your heart to give. What sum shall we put you down for, then?”

His hackles raised, Scrooge yowled “Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”

“Oh, we understand, Professor Scrooge. You wish to be anonymous!”

“I wish to be left alone! Dogs don’t think, they don’t feel, and they don’t smile. We research their behavior for the sake of science, that’s all.”

“But, Professor!” the Collectors entreated. “The Shelters give the Dogs a chance to be adopted. Without the Shelters, many will die.”

“They’d better do it, then, and decrease the surplus Canine population. It’s enough that we study those Animals for science. Good afternoon!” barked Scrooge. “Cratchit, see these women out!” Slipping the Shelter Collectors a few dollars, Scrooge’s secretary, Bob Cratchit, ushered the students to the door.

“Well, Cratchit!” snarled Scrooge. “I suppose you’ll want the whole day tomorrow, to be with your overly large family, and that sickly mutt you got from the Shelter, what’s-its-name, ‘Tiny Tim’, on Christmas. Just another mouth to feed, more medicine to buy! Well, I myself will be here in my office on Christmas Day, earning an honest living.”

“Yes sir! Thank you. Merry Christmas, Professor Scrooge!”.

“Good afternoon!”, growled Scrooge.

“And a Happy New Year!” added Bob under his breath, as he slipped out the door.

The bells of college chapel having chimed Five, Scrooge threw on his greatcoat, donned his professorial top hat, and trudged out into the snow. The yard of his house was so dark, that Scrooge was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold, but in truth it was only a huge black Dog with glittering eyes, which rose and disappeared into the snowy night.

Now it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. With little fancy about him, Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on his former mentor, Marley, since the latter’s demise. How, then, did it happen that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, not a knocker, but Marley’s face?

Entering, Scrooge peered about. “Pooh, nothing here at all! Nobody under the table, nobody in my dressing gown. Humbug!” Suddenly, bells began to ring as a Ghost dragged his long chains toward Scrooge.

“Marley’s Ghost! It’s humbug still! Mercy, Dreadful apparition, what do you want from me?” cried Scrooge.

“Much!” moaned the Ghost. “I wear the leash I forged in life, I made it link by link. Around yourself you gird a chain more ponderous, I think!”

“Speak comfort to me, Jacob!” whined Scrooge.

“I have none to give. In life, my spirit never visited an Animal Shelter. I never had a Dog Companion; I only lectured about Dogs from the books I read.”

“But you were always good at Animal research, Jacob!”

“Research! Dogs’ feelings, Dogs’ love for their Human Companions should have been my research. Charity toward their Shelters, mercy for their homelessness, learning to understand their loyal ways, all should have been my research! Hear me, my time is nearly gone.

Scrooge, you have three chances yet, the path I tread to shun. Prepare to greet a Spirit on the stroke of One! Expect the second next hour, upon the stroke of Two…Await the third next hour as stroke of Three reverberates from the tower! Look to see me no more…Remember!”

“Oh, woe is me!” howled Scrooge. “I’ll lock all the windows and doors…and close my bedcurtains…”

When Scrooge awoke in his dark bedchamber, he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled One. Scrooge girded for the sound, but there came only a soft whimper…The curtain of Scrooge’s bed was drawn aside by a paw, I tell you. It was a soft, small paw, with fur the color of…the scruffy little Dog of Scrooge’s young childhood. “Fluffy!” cried Scrooge, an unfamiliar mist of memories clouding his eyes as he reached to lift the little Dog up.

“I am your Ghost of Christmas Past”, smiled the Dog as he licked a tear off Scrooge’s cheek. “You thought I ran away and left you, but it was bitter cold that night, and Old Age took me: I couldn’t come back to tell you goodbye!”

“Yes, I thought you left me because you no longer loved me, and ran away to find some other boy,” Scrooge remembered. “I vowed to never care about another Dog as long as I lived. Since then, I’ve always believed that Dogs are unfeeling, uncaring: ‘Dogs Don’t Smile’, I’ve often told my students! Oh, please don’t leave me again…” but the little Dog had already jumped off the bed and vanished.

Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and finding himself still in his own bed, Scrooge felt he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time for the second messenger dispatched through Jacob Marley’s intervention. But again he was unprepared, as a giant Saint Bernard bounded through the curtains onto Scrooge’s bed, offering his thick fur for warmth as they whirled out into the snowy night.

“I am your Ghost of Christmas Present!” bellowed the enormous Dog. “Look down, and see the Animal Shelter where your secretary, Bob Cratchit, is taking home that poor, sick Dog with the bandaged leg.”

“I’ll call you Tiny Tim, my little Dog, and you won’t have to walk: I’ll carry you everywhere, and my family will all love you, and you’ll get well!” vowed Bob Cratchit, hoping for a miracle.

“Spirit, tell me if Tiny Tim will live,” pleaded Scrooge.

“I see a vacant Dog bed by the chimney corner, and a little Dog collar, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, the little Dog will die.”

“Oh no, kind Fur Spirit! Say he will be spared!”

“What then?” the Saint reminded Scrooge. “If the Dog be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus Canine population.”

Scrooge looked about him for the Saint, and saw him not. But he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting his eyes, beheld a huge black Doberman, eyes glittering, padding like a mist along the ground, toward him.

“Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas yet to come?”

The Doberman made not a sound: A blast of white breath from his nostrils, like steam, was his only affirmation.

“Ghost of the Future, I fear you more than any specter I have seen. Will you not speak to me? The night is fast waning, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!”

Another blast of the Ghost Dog’s great breath, and Scrooge saw the Cratchit family tearfully gathered around a small grave, where a little Dog collar rested on Tiny Tim’s gravestone.

“Tiny Tim is dead? Oh no, no, no Dark Spirit, it just can’t be!”

The Doberman snorted, blowing clouds of white breath into the dark winter air.

“Yes, yes, I see that you want me to look at that other grave. But before I do, answer me this: Are these the shadows of things that will be, or may be, only?”

Glittering eyes locked with his as the black Ghost Dog pawed the frozen ground by the second grave.

“Spirit, hear me! I am not the man I was. I will honor Christmas in my heart, all the year ‘round. The Spirits of Fluffy, the Saint and the Doberman will strive within me. I will not be like this poor stranger whose sad end you show me…” Scrooge brushed the snow from the second grave. “This Ebe…aah! Ebenezer Scrooge!!” he shrieked. Holding his head in despair, Scrooge dove under his blanket.

“I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future,” Scrooge repeated. The Spirits of all three Dogs shall strive within me. I…” Suddenly, Scrooge recognized his surroundings. “My own bedroom! Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven and the Christmas-time be praised for this! I say it on my knees! A Merry Christmas to everybody, a Happy New Year to all the world!”

Flinging open his window, Scrooge bellowed, “Hallo! Have I missed it? What day’s today? Eh, my fine fellow, Christmas, you say? I’ll go and buy the vegetarian ‘turkey’ at the Whole Health Store, and the medicine Tiny Tim needs to get well, and the very best dog food… I’ll take it to the Cratchits today! Hoho!”

Donning his top hat, Scrooge ran out into the snow of Christmas morning, so overjoyed with anticipation that he careened right into the arms of the Shelter Collectors, who were still doggedly collecting donations on this day of days. “How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. Allow me to ask your pardon…by writing you this modest check. I will stop in later to see my new Dog family! Now hurry home to your families: Off with you, I say!” cried Scrooge, feigning his old gruff tone. The Shelter Collectors, discovering the enormity of the check sum, hugged each other, screeching for joy as they took off over the frozen streets for home.

Laden with gifts, Scrooge knocked on the Cratchits’ door. Once the family realized the total transformation that had miraculously taken place in Bob Cratchit’s employer, they persuaded Scrooge to sit at their table for Christmas dinner. Scrooge held forth jovially, all the while patting and caressing Tiny Tim, who had been lifted to a chair of honor beside him for the special occasion. Finally, Bob Cratchit, emboldened by Scrooge’s new and obviously sincere humility, found courage to ask: “Professor Scrooge, are you really the same Mr. Scrooge for whom I’ve worked so long?”

“I am in all but this, Bob”, replied Scrooge: “That today I feel full of good Spirits, and wish to begin spreading them!”

Scrooge was better than his word. He wrote and lectured widely, at the College and other places of higher learning, about how deeply Animals think and feel, and about the life-transforming bond of Human/Animal kinship. Often, he brought Tiny Tim with him, concluding his speeches with the words he knew the little Dog would want to say to everyone, everywhere, if he were able: “May it truly be said of all of us, that we know how to keep Christmas well. God bless us, everyone.”

“Professor Scrooge!”, one of the students in the audience would often call out. “How do you know that that is what Tiny Tim would say, if he could?”

Whereupon, Scrooge would gently raise the little Dog so all could see him. “Look here, you can see for yourself what he would say to you all: You can see every word of it in this little Dog’s beautiful smile.”