Rick Bragg’s dog has died, and the Alabama author has been mourning the loss of his beloved pet that had been the subject of a bestselling memoir.
“Speck died,” Bragg said in a conversation Thursday with AL.com. “He was the most famous dog in the State of Alabama.”
Bragg chronicled his friendship with the canine companion in his book, “The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People,” published by Knopf in 2021.
“Without any exaggeration, people ask me every day how he is,” Bragg said. “Or, knowing the nature of dogs to only be with us a short time, they’ll say, ‘Whatever became of Speck?’ And I was always so proud to say, ‘He’s still here. He’s still raising hell. He’s still chasing off stray dogs and terrorizing the cats.’”
Speck died recently, and only now is Bragg able to talk about him without choking up, although he still struggles to tell it.
“About a year ago, we got a diagnosis that he had cancer, up in his nose and his scent glands, that was headed toward his brain,” he said. “It just broke my heart. He was supposed to last only a little while, but he lingered for 10 months. He did not suffer. He walked and even ran a litte bit and he ate like champion. I spoiled him. He got an 8-count nuggets from Chik-Fil-A three times a week. If I got a little steak somewhere, he got three-quarters of it. He got all my bacon. Whenever I went to eat breakfast, he got all my bacon. People just started wrapping it up for me. Me and Mom, who loved, him, we spoiled him rotten.”
Things took a turn for the worse recently.
“He was having trouble getting up,” Bragg said. “Having trouble standing. He lost his voice completely, his bark. He seemed to be a little bewildered sometimes.”
Speck’s left back leg had been reconstructed because of an injury, and progressive arthritis set in on that leg and his good back leg.
“He couldn’t rise,” Bragg said. “He couldn’t get up. We babied him and hand fed him. I would roll him over.”
The misery was becoming too much to bear. “It became clear he was just in hell,” Bragg said. “We put him to sleep a couple weeks ago. I buried him in – I’m trying not to cry – in the prettiest place in the middle of the pasture, between the cabin and the pond under a giant oak tree.”
Then he covered the grave in white gravel. “He’ll get a stone,” Bragg said. “He wasn’t some regular dog. I hadn’t had a dog of my own since I was a young man, and I won’t ever have another one.”
But it wasn’t the dog’s relationship with the author that mattered most to him.
When Bragg’s older brother, Sam Bragg, became sick with cancer, the dog was drawn to him. Sam died in 2021.
“Sam hated him at first, because he was a troublemaker,” Bragg said. “As Sam began to fail, Speck would sit at his knee for hours, and Sam would rest one hand on his head, and rub between his eyes with one finger and say over and over, ‘Who’s the best boy?’”
Speck has also had a special relationship with Margaret Bragg, who is also mourning the loss of their dog.
“Momma just kind of stole him,” Bragg said.
“For almost a year, He and my Mom would go out at sunset and sit on the front porch,” he said. “She would sit in a lawn chair. He would lay down beside her so she could put her hand on him. She would sing him two songs.”
That was the gospel standard, “Life’s Evening Sun,” and the country music classic, “You Are My Sunshine.”
Then they’d both go in the house for the night.
Speck came to the Bragg homestead outside Jacksonville as a near-death stray dog.
“I found Speck starving to death on the ridgeline, up behind the house, 8 years ago, maybe 9,” Bragg said. “He was in awful shape. He was an Australian herding dog, beautiful coat. I toted him down that hillside. From that day, except for going to the vet, he never left the 40-acre triangle of our land.”
Bragg nursed Speck back to health, but it was a dog adoption he sometimes second-guessed.
“He just immediately started making my life miserable,” Bragg said. “He would run off and get into fights and show up tore all to pieces. He terrorized the cats, he created stampedes with all the livestock. He was just awful. But he was my dog. Only near the end did he slow down and become a gentle dog. He slept every night at the foot of my bed.”
The jury was always out on whether Speck was a good dog, or a bad dog, or kind of both.
“He was a rascal, and trouble,” Bragg said. “He was a fighter. He kept the coyotes run off. He kept the packs of stray dogs away. He terrorized the cats but he never hurt any of them. He was so smart. If I went on a trip, he would get angry and run away. When I’d come back, he wouldn’t come near me for an hour, then he would forgive me, and he’d be my buddy again.”
Speck turned out to be the best boy.
“It’s kind of empty around here,” Bragg said.
“He knew how to make people feel better,” he said. “I won’t ever have another dog.”
Bragg and comedian Roy Wood Jr. will be honored as Alabama Humanities Fellows by the Alabama Humanities Alliance on Dec. 2, 6:30 p.m., at the Alys Stephens Center Jemison Concert Hall. Tickets are available here.
Rick Bragg’s latest book, “The Speckled Beauty,” was published in September 2021.
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