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Saturday Stories

July 7, 2018

The bear cub wrestled the bloodied dog to the ground. His claws came out for the final kill.

Then, something almost blinded him. A Siamese cat had leapt at him and began scratching his eyes. His wails were heard by his mother.

Suddenly, a huge grizzly was there, roaring. She came towards the semi-conscious dog and the defiant cat.

As if out of nowhere, another dog appeared, growling ferociously – ready for battle.
 
I just had to read Shiela Burnford's 1961 classic The Incredible Journey because I love the second movie version. 

So I'm happy to find Archive.org, an online library where people can borrow books for free. It seems you are turning the pages when you tap or click the screen. So cool.

This is the unforgettable story of an old English bull terrier named Bodger, a young Labrador named Luath, and a Siamese named Tao, as they made their long and dangerous journey through the northern Ontario wilderness to get back home.

They live with Jim Hunter, a school teacher in Canada, but Tao really belongs to his nine-year old daughter Elizabeth, and Bodger's master is his eleven-year old son Peter. But Luath "belonged," writes Burnford, "in every sense of the word, heart and soul to their father."

One day, Jim got an invitation to do a series a lectures at Oxford, which means staying in England for a couple of months.

His friend John Longridge, a reclusive writer who lives two hundred and fifty miles away, offered to take Bodger, Luath and Tao until Jim and the children return.

So it was arranged, although it is heartbraking to see them so lonely and homesick.

Then came duck hunting season, and John had to go to his brother's cabin beside Heron Lake as he does every year. He couldn't take them because he and his brother would be going on a canoe, so he asked his housekeeper, Mrs. Oakes, to drop by his house and take care of them.

Bodger, Luath and Tao stood in the driveway as John drove off. Mrs. Oakes was still on the way. For twenty minutes, everything seemed normal.

Luath was the first to move. Bodger followed, then Tao. "Presently," writes Burnford, "all three disapeared from sight down the dusty road, trotting briskly and with purpose."

The first movie version, The Incredible Journey, came out in 1963, narrated by the famous cowboy Rex Allen.   

The second version came out in 1993 and also from Walt Disney, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, the one I've seen and enjoyed so much when a friend gave me a BluRay copy a month ago. There was even a sequel in 1996, Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco.

This version is a lot different -- they talk. Their wise leader is Shadow, a Golden Retriever voiced by Don Ameche, and the cat is a Himalayan named Sassy voiced by Sally Field .

And the narrator is a free-spirited and happy-go-lucky  American Bulldog with a traumatic past named Chance, voiced by Michael J. Fox.

Chance was the first to appear in the yard from the woods when they finally found their way home. The family was so overjoyed.

Then came Sassy.

Peter waited for Shadow to appear. Waited. And waited. His parents tried to console him. He began to walk away.

All of a sudden, he felt the urge to look back.

And he saw Shadow coming out of the trees.

"As he had never run before," goes the book, "as though he would outdistance time, Peter was running towards his dog."
 

Photo courtesy of Amazon.ca