“Tuk With A Red Scarf”

Now living in Chico, Judy Blishen Soto, “a Native American of the Ohlone tribe” made Paradise her home. She writes that she was “an entertainer, singer, songwriter…. I had over two hundred creative works, poems, short stories that I had written and were getting ready to publish, plus songs I had composed.” Everything was destroyed in the Camp Fire.

She started again, this time with a family story about their beloved black Lab. It really happened, she writes in an author’s note, and “none of the names or events in this story are fictitious.”

Designed for kids six through eight, “Tuk With A Red Scarf” ($10.95 in paperback from Austin Macauley Publishers; also for Amazon Kindle) is a delightful tale (ahem) of a dog who brought a little miracle to pass.

“It all started out to be a normal day, giving my husband and three children breakfast and seeing them off to school and work.” The family had two pooches, Scottish terrier Scotty, and Tuk with a red scarf. Weirdly, this morning only Scotty came to eat; the gate was open and Tuk was gone.

Soto waited until the children got home from school but no Tuk. So they piled in the car to drive to the pound, a half hour away, before “my husband got home from work… We had two and a half hours to look for Tuk and get back home to make dinner and pretend all was well.” 

They didn’t find Tuk, but, strangely, there was another black Lab--wearing a red scarf--named Leonard, who (sadly) was going to be put down the next day since he had not been claimed in weeks. 

“We could save this dog’s life. Children let’s decide, should we take Leonard home and maybe your dad won’t notice it’s not our Tuk with a red scarf?” You know the answer, and off they went with Lenny. “We still need to pray for Tuk,” Soto told her children, “that nothing happens to him and that God will keep him safe and bring him home soon.”

What comes next is one of those unexpected twists that no one would believe unless it actually happened.