WHO WE ARE

My name is James Paul. I'm 57 years old and I've been driving truck since 1971. I'm an owner-operator. That means the truck is mine, and so is everything that goes wrong with it.

I run a maroon 1996 conventional with a big sleeper. A conventional is the kind with the long hood out front. The sleeper is the little room behind the seats. I pull a dry van, which is a plain box trailer, wherever the freight goes. That comes to about 120,000 miles a year. I get home every two or three weeks for a few days.

Home is Joplin, Missouri. My wife Jo keeps the books for the truck and runs the house, and she does both of those better than I do my one job. She has her own part at the bottom of this page. Read it last. She'll want the last word anyhow.

My CB handle is Show-Me. If you're from Missouri, you don't need that explained.

The one riding shotgun is Tink. She is a toy fox terrier. White, with a black-and-tan head, a short smooth coat and big ears that stand straight up. She weighs five pounds. She was born in the spring of 1995 and she has been on the truck since that summer.

Being an owner-operator, I can take a dog. A lot of company drivers can't. I don't take that for granted.

This page has been up since June of 1997. This year Jo got a scanner, so now it has pictures. Every one of them was taken with my 35mm, parked. I don't touch a camera with the wheels rolling, and you shouldn't either.

STOP 1: WYOMING
Wednesday, January 20, 1999  ·  I-80

Tink on her seat, keeping an eye on the lot.

Snow on the ground, a gray sky and a lot full of trucks. We were parked off I-80, and Tink sat up on her blanket and watched every truck in that lot like she had a list of them. She's wearing her red sweater. A five-pound dog with a coat that short doesn't have much to keep her warm, so in the cold states she wears it. She doesn't fuss about it either, which is more than I can say for some people I know and their coats.

That's my sleeve on the right. I held the camera out as far as I could reach and still got my elbow in it. Tink didn't turn around. She was busy.

TINK'S ROUTINE

People ask what a dog does all day in a truck. Mostly the same thing I do. She sits and watches the road. But she has her habits, and she sticks to them better than I stick to mine.

• She rides on a folded blanket on the passenger seat. That's her seat. If anybody else sits in it, she sits on them.
• Every fuel stop, she gets a walk. Rain, snow, three in the morning. No exceptions.
• Her water dish rides in the cupholder. My coffee gets the other one.
• She sleeps at the foot of the bunk. Mostly. See Stop 2.
• She barks at every scale house. That's the little building at the weigh station. She has never once let one go by without telling it off.
• She hates car washes. A truck wash is just a big car wash, and she knows it. When the brushes start she gets down off her seat and puts her head under the blanket till it's over.

Her bag rides behind her seat. In it:

• Her food
• A towel, for wet feet and worse
• Her sweater, for the cold states
• Her leash

STOP 2: THE SLEEPER
Sunday, March 14, 1999  ·  Late

Caught at the wrong end of the bunk.

This is the sleeper. A bunk, a cupboard, a reading light and a shelf for my clothes. It isn't big, but it's home most of the year.

Tink sleeps at the foot of the bunk. That's the rule, and she knows it. One Sunday night in March I went in the truck stop for a shower and came back to find her up at the pillow end, dug in under the comforter with just her head and ears sticking out. She looked at me like I was the one in the wrong spot. I got the camera out before I got her moved, and the flash about blinded the both of us.

She went back down to the foot of the bunk after that without being told. She knew.

STOP 3: TEXAS
Sunday, June 6, 1999  ·  Sunup at a truck stop

The morning walk. She leads. I follow with the coffee.

Sun just coming up, the lot full of trucks idling in rows, and the two of us out on the strip of grass at the edge. This is the walk. Tink goes first with her nose down and I go behind with my coffee. She has to smell every inch of that grass before she'll do her business. I learned a long time ago not to rush her. It doesn't work, and it makes us both grouchy.

Another driver out walking his own dog, a big black one, took this for me. Tink barked at that dog once, to show him who was boss, and then didn't look at him again.

Leash on, every time. A truck stop lot is big and busy, and the man backing out of the next spot can't see a five-pound dog. I can barely see her, and I know where she is.

TIPS FOR DRIVERS WHO WANT TO TAKE A DOG

I get e-mail from drivers asking about it, so here's what I tell them.

1. Talk to your carrier first. Before you get the dog, not after.
2. Keep a leash on at truck stops. Every time. See above.
3. Carry water. Your dog can't go in and buy a pop. Tink's dish rides in the cupholder so it's always right there.
4. Never leave them in a hot cab. Not for five minutes. Not for one. If you wouldn't sit in it yourself, don't leave the dog in it.
5. Give the dog a spot that's hers. Tink has her blanket. A dog that knows where she belongs rides easy.
6. Walk them at every fuel stop, whether they act like they need it or not. You'd want somebody to do the same for you.

STOP 4: COLORADO
Thursday, July 29, 1999  ·  A pull-off in the mountains

The two of us and the truck, up in the high country.

Bright day, blue sky, pine trees all the way up the slopes and snow still on the peaks at the end of July. I pulled into a gravel turnout just to look at it, and Tink wanted to look too, so I carried her. A man in a motor home offered to take our picture with my camera. Then he asked me if she was a Chihuahua. Everybody asks that. She is not. She is a toy fox terrier, and she would like you to know it.

That's the truck behind us. 1996, maroon, the same color as the headings on this page, in case you wondered.

Jo says this is the only picture of me she likes, because I'm smiling. I told her I was squinting. She put it on the refrigerator anyway.

TINK'S STATES

By this September Tink has been in 44 of the lower 48 states. That's more than most people, and she's only four. Here's the list. The yellow ones she hasn't been to yet.

Still to go: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island. I don't get much freight going up that way. If anybody has a load for Maine, I know a little dog who'd take it.

THE BELL

Tink rings a bell when she needs to go out. It's a little bell on the dash, on her side. I taught her in a week, back in 1996.

Here's how. Every time I took her out, I rang the bell first, and then out we went. After a couple of days I held it down by her nose and waited. She bumped it, it rang, and out we went. By the end of the week she was standing up on her seat and ringing it on her own.

Now she rings it when she needs to go, and once in a while when she's just bored. I stop at the next place I can either way. I can't tell which it is, and I'm not going to find out the hard way.

People at truck stops don't believe it till they see it. She'll show them for a piece of cheese.

WHAT TINK HAS TAUGHT ME

I drove a lot of years alone before she came along. You get used to it. You don't notice how quiet a cab is until it isn't.

Here's the thing. Tink waits for me. Every time I come back out of a truck stop, a shipping office or a phone booth, she's up on her seat with her ears up, watching the door I went in. Four years, and she has never once made me late. Not once. I can't say that about many people, and I can't say it about myself.

So I try to be worth waiting for. That's about all I've got to say on that.

ABOUT TOY FOX TERRIERS

Since everybody asks. A toy fox terrier is a small terrier with a short, smooth coat. They were bred down from smooth fox terriers, with some toy breeds mixed in. They're quick and bold and easy to teach, and they're good company. Farmers have used them for mice and rats, and they've been in circus acts because of all the tricks they'll learn. The United Kennel Club has registered them since 1936.

That's what I know about the breed. About this one, I could go all day.

LAST STOP: HOME
Sunday, September 12, 1999  ·  Joplin, Missouri

Tink saying hello to Jo, about a minute after we pulled in.