My neighbor, Harlan Smith,  told me about a friend who could and did talk to dogs.  The neighbor , Cruse Talley, never met a dog that wouldn't talk.  He said Cruse came home from a trip to Lordsburg all excited about his latest dog adventure.  Harlan said he'd heard so many of Cruses's experiences, that he wasn't to eager to spend time listening, but when the story was told he was glad he'd been polite.

   Cruse said he was driving his new 1932 Ford Coupe down the Lordsburg road when a strange dog ran out in front of the car and just kept going back and forth across the road.  Cruse said at first he just slowed and expected the dog to go off on the shoulder, but instead it still ran back and forth.  Because Cruse felt he could talk to the dog, and understood dogs he decided that dog wanted something and he wanted it desperately. 

   So Cruse, being Cruse, and the West being the West, drove his new car onto the shoulder and asked the dog what it was it wanted.  Cruse said the dog would run into the field a ways and then come back and bark and go again.  Cruse said that meant the dog wanted to be followed.  So he left his new car parked and followed the dog. 

   Cruse said he should have known what to expect, but he was surprised to find the dog's master lying on the ground, badly hurt--actually it looked terminal. 

However, Cruse rushed back to his car, and another person had stopped to see why a new car would be parked there unattended.  Cruse explained and the second man rushed into Lordsburg and sent and ambulance and a doctor.

   The man was taken to the hospital and with the help of the medical profession his life was saved. 

   A couple of days later, Cruse visited the man in the hospital.  He stopped to speak to the Doctor, people in the old west did that, and  he said that he was the Doctor had saved the life of the fallen man. 

   Cruse said the Doctor looked him right in the eyes and said:  "Don't thank me.  I did what any Doctor should do, but thank that dog because he saved the man's life."