Tiger Beat Spectacular - Spring 1970

My Animal Luvs

If you saw Bobby on "Brides" when his co-star was a cuddly bear cub, you probably already know how well Bobby gets along with animals.  Today, he has a new animal friend named Dopey.  In his past, Bobby has had many favorite animals.   Here, in his own words, Bobby remembers some of them.

If there's one weakness I have, I guess I'll have to admit that it just must be my love for animals!  And that includes both pets and barnyard animals, and wild animals too!   I love to have lots of furry, feathered, or finny animal friends around me, no matter where I may be living.  They seem to always have a way of making me smile if my spirits might happen to be low.

And they're very generous with their love, too.  If they like you, they're not one bit shy about coming right out and showing it with lots of wagging tails and purrs and licks on your face.  I used to wonder why this is so, and then one day when I was about six years old, I discovered the secret of having animals like you!

BOBBY'S SECRET DISCOVERY! - You see, babe, animals think they're people!  Sure they do!  Just stop and think back to your relationship with your favorite pet.  Doesn't that little animal act toward you just like the most perfect best friend you could every want?  And I'll bet that little furry fun-buddy even tries its very hardest to talk to you!

Maybe it can't say words, like we humans do, but a cat or a dog can be pretty good at getting their message across when they really want to!  And they like to be treated with kindness, just like people do.  It's really easy to hurt a dog's feelings, just by shouting at him. And cats, and even canaries, are the same way.

BOBBY'S KINDNESS TO ANIMALS - I always feel especially sorry when I see an animal hurt or treated in a mean way.  I get the feeling that the poor little creature usually doesn't understand what it's done to deserve cruel treatment, and in a way, it is helpless to defend itself against the humans who are hurting it.  I guess you'll probably think this is silly, but when I see a western move, I feel more sorry when a horse gets hurt than I do when I see something happen to a person.

BOBBY AND JERRY - When I was about eight or nine, I had a canary named Jerry.  He used to sing up a storm every morning when my Mom would take the cover off of his cage, give him some nice clean warm bath water, and put his cage in the sun.   He must have known every song in the canary songbook, because it seems to me that he never sang the same song twice.

He wasn't too afraid of me when I'd put my finger into his cage once in awhile, although, as you know, if you've ever had a canary, they're a lot shyer than parakeets, and they won't hop on your finger unless they're trained to do it.  Jerry lived for about four years, and he sure brightened our lives while he was with us.  I buried him in the back yard in a pipe tobacco tin.

BOBBY'S FAVE CAT, "HONEY" - For as long as I can remember, our family has always had a cat.  When I was really little, before I went to school, we had an Angora cat named "Tippy."  Tippy was a boy cat, and like most Angoras was pretty, but mean-tempered, and he didn't have much patience with the little toddling four year-old me who used to carry him around by his back legs because he was too big for me.  He would put up with me for about ten minutes and then he'd just scratch me, really deep sometimes.  Finally, my folks got tired of that, and Tippy had to go to live with my Aunt.

But the perfect cat of all cats, for me, was a little Tabby kitty I had just a few years ago.  Her name was Honey, and she had the softest coat and a really outasite pussycat personality!  She would look right up at me when I'd come home from school or wherever I'd been, and the way she'd mew, there was a sound in it that seemed exactly like a question, the way her voice tone went up at the end.  It was as if she was saying "How did it go today, Bobby?"

Honey had a whole box full of kittens, and I gave them to all my friends as soon as they were old enough.  They were every bit as sweet as their mother, and my friends were really lucky to get such good cats, in my opinion, at least!

Honey was hit by a car in front of our house one day, and I buried her out in the back yard underneath a rose bush.  I always felt, when I saw the roses bloom on that bush after that, that somehow Honey was smiling brightly at me with her little green kitty eyes, just the way she used to do, out of the prettiest rose on the bush.

BOBBY AND HIS STRAY DOG, "SUSIE" - Once, when I was about eight or nine, I guess, I was all determined to become a carpenter, and go to work every day during the summer like all the grownup men did.  They were putting up a new gas station near my house then, and every day I'd go down there and "help" the workmen, taking a lunch with me that Mom would fix, just like theirs.  They used to let me hammer nails in left-over boards, and things.  I thought I was really helping!

Well, one day, when we workmen were sitting around having our lunch, a cute little girl dog came along and started begging to share my sandwich.  I gave her some (it was peanut butter and jelly, but she loved it!) and before long, the little lost pup had followed me home and we had adopted each other,  I named her Susie, and she stayed with me until I was fourteen!  She will always occupy a very special place in my heart, no matter what other dogs I've had since then, or will have.

BOBBY'S BOBBY - But of all the pets I've ever had with me, I guess the one I'll always remember most and with a very special feeling of love will be a small miniature collie I got when I was about fifteen.  I had been reading a series of books from the library all about collies then, by Albert Payson Terhune.  (You should read them.  They're really great!  Ask your librarian about them!)  My favorite of all those wonderful collie books was the one called, "Lochinvar Bobby," and so, when Dad got me a collie of my own, that's what I named him.

BOBBY THE COLLIE'S BEAUTIFUL MIND - Bobby was the most intelligent animal I ever met.  And when I say animals think they're people, I always have Lochinvar Bobby uppermost in my mind.  He was so unusual, not like any other dog I ever knew.  When sometimes I couldn't let him come along with me to wherever I had to go, I didn't have to yell at him or pretend I was going to spank him if he didn't stay in the yard, like most of the other guys had to do to their dogs.  No, all I'd have to do was talk quietly to him and say "I'm sorry, Bobby, but you can't come along this time."  He'd look up at me as if he was wondering why, but if I said so then that was good enough for him.

BOBBY'S WONDERFUL HOME - Bobby and I had many wonderful adventures together.  There was the time that he stood guard over the kittens next door during that whole day that their mother cat was lost.  (She finally came back.  Somehow she'd gotten locked in the trunk of the family car!)

Cars and pets always seem to add up to heartbreak, and Bobby's story, just like Honey's, ended under the wheels of a car that came speeding through our neighborhood one summer evening, hit my sweet doggie, and didn't even stop.  Bobby didn't suffer, and I was grateful to God for that.  But just before he died in my arms, Bobby looked up at me just as if to say to me, just as I had said to him,  "I'm sorry, Bobby, but you can't come along this time."

Well, Bobby, and Honey, too, are gone to where all good doggies and kitties go, and I guess I'll never see them again.  But if dogs have a Heaven, there's one thing I know.  Honey and Bobby have a wonderful home.

Peace and Love,
Bobby Sherman