Growing up in rural Georgia in the 1960s, folks were too poor for a lot of things. I daresay that if any of us had seen a raincoat on a dog—we would have laughed. Where we lived, people could not afford raincoats even for themselves.

Many pet owners never took their animals to the vet. They couldn’t afford that either. Our 4-H Club sponsored a rabies clinic once a year so folks could get their animals vaccinated. For a lot of dogs it was the only time in their lives that they saw a vet.

It probably stems from the “Lassie” TV series we watched as kids, but I have a lifelong love for collies. As a child, the closest I ever came to owning a collie was a neighbor’s black and white border collie that kept following me home until the owners finally let me keep it.

Then there was Prince, a part-collie stray dog that showed up at our house and stayed. He saved my life when the Hester’s horned cow cornered me against the side of the barn and charged. Prince leaped between us with ferocious growls and frenzied barking and bit the cow on her nose.

Along with “Kicker,” the killer cow, the Hesters were given a gorgeous tri-colored collie. I was jealous. I had wanted a collie dog like “Big Boy” for as long as I could remember. Somehow, Big Boy got hit by a car. He survived, but with a limping gait and an ugly cut across the end of his nose. Big Boy wasn’t my dog, but I loved him. He was a collie. I knew he needed veterinary attention, but the Hesters didn’t have money for that. In fact, in all the years I knew them none of the Hesters went to a doctor either. Their solution for injured animals was to spit tobacco juice on the wound or cover it with purple horse liniment. I begged my parents to let me take Big Boy to the vet since the Hesters couldn’t afford it. But my parents couldn’t afford it either.

People wearing ruined blue jeans that they purchased that way new confounds me. In my 1960s rural Georgia, we wore jeans like that because we couldn’t afford anything else. We wore our clothes until the holes would no longer hold a patch. I often went to school wearing tennis shoes that were held together with the thick rubber bands off the Sunday newspaper. It wasn’t “cool” or fashionable to wear jeans with holes in them—we were embarrassed—but we wore them anyway because it was all we could afford.

How times change. Nowadays, folks choose to wear ruined clothes—and pay big bucks for them—and dogs wear raincoats.

It is comforting to know that not everything changes. “For I am the LORD, I do not change.” Malachi 3:6.

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