"...Once I had a yaller dog, his name was Towser Jenkins.
The butcher cut his tail off with a cleaver...
Towser had his trademark on every cat in town,
And when he spotted one, he'd never leave her.

He wore his legs off stumpy, chasin' milk carts 'round the country.
Had bunions on his knees from jumpin' ditches.
Had all the hair wore off his ribs
From chasin' cats around the corn cribs...
But empty is the doghouse, Towsers poisoned.

No more he'll look for liver down beside the Suwanee River,
No more will boys baptize him in the sewer..
No more homeward will he wail, with ten cans tied to his tail..
For empty is the doghouse...Towser's poisoned."

...from a Folk Legacy album by Harry Tufts.


It is strange...no matter how 'straight' I sing this, it often evokes chuckles in the first 2 verses, which seems to keep many from reacting to the sadness of the third. Maybe there's just no way easily react to the ending..... In some ways, we take cruelty to animals harder than wholesale slaughter of troops in battle.