There was one other time Zander got himself in big trouble, but it didn't last long, and I'll tell you why.
My mom had gone off to visit some of her lady friends, and when she came home Zander got to sniffing her left shoe like there was no tomorrow. He just wouldn't take his nose away from it no matter what. We never knew what she might have stepped in and couldn't we see anything on it, but Zander seemed to be pretty impressed with it, whatever it was! He wouldn't leave her alone no matter where she went in the house, and he about drove her nuts about it. Finally she took off her shoe and just let him sniff away while she got herself another pair to put on.
After a while, she noticed her shoe wasn't where she had left it, so naturally we all thought Zander must have carried it off sonewhere. Sure enough, my dad came in saying Zander was burying something out in the side yard and wondered if we'd given him a bone since that was his favorite bone burying area. My mom's eyes got real big when she realized it must be her shoe he was bruying, so we all lit out there like the house was on fire, and sure enough, there he was putting the finishing touches on it by kicking the last bit of dirt on the spot with his hind legs.
My dad told me it was my dog, so I'd better get the shovel and dig it back up, so I did. Well, Zander was pretty good at digging, and it was deeper than I thought, but I found the shoe all right. It was pretty dang dirty, but it wasn't ruined. My mom was still mad at Zander though. The funny thing was, I saw something shining there in the dirt under where the shoe was. I cleared away some more dirt and pulled out some kind of coin, and showed it to my dad.
At first he just glanced at it, but then he looked more closely, and a real serious look came over his face. He told me to give him the shovel, then he commenced to digging even deeper. A few more of them coins showed up in the dirt, along with some splintery pieces of wood, like there had once been a little wooden box buried there with coins in it but it had rotted mostly away.
Well, I didn't know anything about coins, but it turns out there was a family story about my dad's grandpa burying some money in the yard which no one had ever found. Mostly we thought the story was just a story, but dang if this didn't make it seem like it was really true.
Well, there weren't very many coins in there, but it turned out they really were worth something, being old and all, so my dad took them into town. He was gone a long time, a lot longer than we thought he would be, and my mom got a little worried when one of his friends showed up driving my dad's truck back up to our house by himself. Me and my brother and my mom all went outside to find out what happened to my dad, and the man said he'd be along in just a bit.
Sure enough here comes my dad driving a big shiny new tractor and wearing a big smile on his face. He'd been looking at that tractor for quite a few months, fixing to buy it next year when he had the money, but those coins were worth enough that he was able to sell them and buy that tractor early, and boy was he pleased about it! Now he wouldn't have to always be working on the old one to keep it going, and the new one could do more besides.
Well, we had a big dinner to celebrate, and Zander got some tasty meat scraps as his reward for finding us them coins, and I tell you what, my mom forgot all about being mad at him! We all loved that dog.
