Gayle has intended to post this story in the past but couldn’t readily find where she had squirreled it away in her numerous storage tubs of memorabilia. Now, after a hiatus of 67 years, it is finally getting published on this blog! As far as she knows this was her first attempt to write down a story and she is pretty proud of her first efforts, despite the extremely slanted lines, childish but rather cute errors in grammar and spelling, yellowed cellophane tape “binding” and less-than-awesome artistry. Even then, however, she made a good attempt at sharing an engaging autobiographical story and finding a suitable, descriptive opening and closing.

The story was written in 1950, probably around November since Gayle would have turned eight on the 11th (and Doreen and Barbara would have been six and five until the next spring) and hunting season for ducks would have been in full swing. The setting is a house on Central Avenue in the small town of New Rockford, North Dakota.

Note that Lady has a docked tail and Spotie’s tail is normal. A lot of waterfowl hunting dogs at that time had their tails docked to prevent wagging tails giving away the hunter’s hideouts in the reeds to birds as they approached a wetland site. Odd that Spotie has no spots and that the three girls look more like dressmaker’s forms than little girls! The spelling of the puppy’s name is also unique. “Spotty” or even “Spottie” would probably have been better choices.

But for the existence of this little story, the incident of the new puppy would probably have been lost as their parents have been dead for years and Gayle’s younger sisters, who were 5 1/2 and 6 1/2 at the time, have little recollection of what happened. None of the three can remember what eventually happened to the new puppy either. Only Gayle (who was a “grown-up” eight year old at the time) remembers that they later discovered that Spotie was deaf. He only reacted to touch and not to sound.

Spotie’s mother Lady was the same age as Gayle, so eight years of age when she gave birth to Spotie, who was her only offspring. Gayle also recalls that Lady had been hit by a car some months before Spotie’s birth, though she hadn’t seemed to be injured. Mom Mildred and Dad George had later surmised that the hearing of the puppy fetus had not developed properly as a result of the car accident. We know that Spotie did not grow to maturity and Gayle has a vague recollection that she was hit by a car and killed, probably in her first year of life. (The trauma of that death most likely contributed to the girls’ poor memories.) No photos of Spotie seem to have been taken, surprising when recalling how many photos and 60-mm films their daddy took over the years. There are numerous photos of Lady, however, and Gayle is sharing one of those, as well as photos of the girls from around 1950.

The three girls were very close in age. Gayle was 16 months older than Doreen who was a year and three days older than Barbara. Lady and Spotie were American Water Spaniels, a breed begun in Wisconsin in the early 1800s who were bred as hunting dogs. George Moore, their daddy, was an avid hunter who brought home many wild fowl and deer over the years. The Moores’ freezer was always full of wild duck, wild goose, partidge, prairie chicken, grouse, pheasant and lots of venison. They lived in central North Dakota, in the Central Flyway, a haven for hunters of migratory waterfowl. The surrounding prairies were also teeming with other game birds, Whitetail deer and elk.

Although no photo of the new puppy exists, Gayle has chosen the above photo from winter 1948/49 of Lady, the mother water spaniel, and herself. About a year and a half later she wrote the story about Lady’s new puppy.

Because of his name, the new puppy “Spotie” was obviously spotted, as was Lady. Included herewith is a closeup of a vintage online photo of an American water spaniel puppy.

In the photo below the three little Moore girls pose on their parents’ bed in their “clown pajamas” for what became the Moore family’s Christmas card of 1949. They are from left to right, Barbara Ann, 4; Doreen Joyce, 5; and Gayle Irene, 7 .

The only photo from 1950 that Gayle could find is the below shot of Gayle reading the “funny papers” to Doreen, who would have just started school and probably wasn’t yet able to read them for herself.