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would also keep some for their own use—the milk was separated into cream. Margurita also made butter in a churn, after she had separated the cream from the milk.

When Ivan was older, he would spend much of his time helping to milk the cows. He also had a dog named Hunter. Ivan would talk to the dog as if he was a person. He had trained Hunter to help round up the cows in the pasture. Ivan would only have to say, “les vaches” (the cows) and Hunter would pick up a stick and run to the meadow with Ivan to take the cows home for milking. Hunter would follow Ivan everywhere he went. Ivan would often give him a treat of molasses cookies. When there were no cookies Ivan would give him bread and molasses. Hunter had developed a preference for this treat and would chose molasses over a meat bone. During his growing up years Ivan and Hunter became inseparable. Where one went, the other would follow.

Hunter had a bad habit of taking sticks from the woodpile, so one particular day Alphy gave the dog a good scolding. Hunter was very obedient. He began to understand that he wasn’t supposed to take the wood from the woodpile. On the day that Alphy had scolded him, when Ivan said, “Les vaches”, Hunter looked around for a stick. He knew enough not to take the stick from the woodpile. When he couldn’t find any other stick, he grabbed a cardboard box with his teeth and started running, following Ivan to the pasture. He managed to hold on to the cardboard box until they came to a barbed wire fence. Hunter tried to squeeze through the fence with the box, and it got caught. He struggled trying to get through, still clinching the cardboard in his teeth. Finally he got through, but most of the cardboard tore and stayed on the other side of the fence. By now, Hunter had only a small piece of cardboard left in his mouth, but he gritted down on it with his teeth, holding it tightly so that it Wouldn’t escape. He held on to it until the last cow had come home.

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