Letters from Vietnam 

By Joe Fulda 

One of the least pleasurable aspects of a military career is the extended family separations. The agony of saying good-bye to my wife, Mycki, and my son was compounded by the fact that I nearly always had a favorite dog that required (or at least I thought so) my sitting on the floor and explaining that Dad had to go away for a while, but would surely return. Such was the case in 1970 when military orders directed me to Vietnam and I had to break the news to Roulette, our one-year-old miniature poodle. 

Non-dog people raise their eyebrows when I tell them that dogs understand more of our speech than animal behaviorists give them credit for. Roulette understood. I watched her eyes and expression as I told her I was going away and she showed a sadness that I didn't see again until the final days of her life. When I promised to write often and return in a year, she acknowledged this with just one slow and deliberate wag of her tail. Then she sighed deeply and laid her head in my lap. That moment remains indelibly imprinted in my mind.

After my arrival in Vietnam, I wrote home two or three times a week. But Mycki soon began to complain that I wasn't writing very often. She told me that at first, my letters arrived at intervals of a week to ten days, but now there were often no letters for two weeks at a time.

I was puzzled and began to imagine all sorts of things, including the idea that the Viet Cong were shooting down all mail planes carrying my letters.

My wife knew from previous experience that I was a pretty faithful correspondent. Even when sent to remote areas, I always managed to find a postal drop somewhere. So she was as puzzled as I was about what was happening to my letters.

Over time, Mycki began to notice something odd. It became clear that if she was actually at the front door of our house when the mail came through the slot, the probability of a letter from me was greater. Puzzled, she decided to experiment by monitoring the front door more closely around mail delivery times. Things began to fall into place when she noticed that a little four-legged critter seemed very irritated when "momma" got to the mail first.

Our postman usually arrived between eleven o'clock and noon, and the next time he came up the walk to the front door, Mycki hid behind a partition where she had a good view of the front door and the floor of the entryway.

As Mycki peeked around the edge of the wall, she saw Miss Roulette saunter up to the several pieces of mail that had fallen on the floor beneath the slot. Roulette sniffed at a couple of items and then gently, with one front paw, pulled an envelope out from the stack. She gave a quick glance around and then scooped up the letter in her mouth. With a mixture of mild outrage and stifled hilarity, Mycki followed Roulette into the living room. She was close behind the pom-pommed tail as the poodle rounded the end of the couch and slipped in behind it with the letter.

"The game is over, Missy — get out from behind the couch," Mycki ordered. But Roulette was not a dog that responded immediately to orders. Moving the couch away from the wall, Mycki sternly requested, "Come on Rou, out of there." Reluctantly, like a momma dog protecting her pups, Miss Roulette rose and cautiously left her clandestine lair, revealing several letters where she had been lying.

The mystery was solved, but for Roulette, the game wasn't over, not by a long shot. With each subsequent mail delivery, it became a race to the door between Mycki and Roulette to pick up the mail. If Roulette won, a chase ensued unless of course, Mycki was busy or not at home when the postman arrived. Then it became a matter of search and seizure.

Roulette tossed in another twist that made the game even more interesting. Whenever Mycki received a letter, she would retire to her recliner in the living room to read it. But if she left the letter on the end table afterward, the artful dodger would strike again. Even when Mycki left the letters on the kitchen table where she did much of her writing, Roulette managed to appropriate them as soon as Mycki's attention was elsewhere. No place Roulette could reach was safe for my letters. Mycki finally resorted to storing them in a shoebox and putting the box inside her armoire.

Roulette retaliated by attempting little hunger strikes. Mycki really became concerned until she found out that Roulette was actually conning her — our son was sneak-feeding the little letter-napper at night in his room.

When Mycki explained all this to me in one of her letters, I had to laugh. It was rather nice to have two ladies fighting over me.

But things reverted to normal pretty quickly when I returned home. Roulette suddenly lost interest in the mail. However, while packing and preparing to move to our next duty station, we did discover a few more postal hideaways containing unopened letters from Vietnam — a reminder that as far as a dog's nose is concerned, a small object sent by a beloved human that travels nine thousand miles, though handled by dozens of other people, still bears a treasured message. I had never realized during all those months when I thought I was writing just to Mycki that I was also sending a uniquely personal greeting to one smart and a sharp-nosed little poodle.