According to the science fiction Dune series of novels, I have one of the rarest

dogs in the known universe or at least among “the million planets.” I have a Futar.

Futar, rhymes with… ah, well, nothing in the English language rhymes with Futar. That’s just how rare he is. Let’s go with Foo-Tar. He’s been called “futon,” as in the cheap daybed you buy when you don’t have the money or the space for a real bed and couch, and “tofu,” as in the soybean mush you eat instead of real meat. He’s even been called a FUBAR, which is a military acronym that cannot be defined in a G-rated magazine or polite company.

Futar is a big yellow dog with beady yellow eyes and an eraser nose. Futar is a rescue dog that came to live with me at a low point in my life and for the past eight years has held his head high despite what life might throw at him, including hit-and-run cars, packs of coyotes, snake bites, heartworms, broken legs, a small hole in the top of his head, and dog catchers. But for the most part, he has led a life of freedom, coming and going in our neighborhood in the Carolina Foothills. Times change, and so must he.

For past few weeks instead of running free through the peach orchards and woods with his companion BeBe, he has been on a leash, either tied to a shade tree or me, or in the house just lying around. I’ve been installing an underground electric fence around a portion of our backyard that will hopefully, by the time you read this column, outline his new reality… a reality that will include a new collar that will vibrate and beep when he gets close to the perimeter of his boundaries, a collar that will give him a harmless but painful shock if he attempts to walk past the row of little white flags that follow the invisible fence line. Little white flags that remind me — and hopefully him — of having limits.

I first met Futar in 2008, the year of the Great Recession. It was a weekend morning during the spring, and I was doing yard work. At some point, I turned to notice a not fully grown yellow dog in the yard, just standing there looking at me, as if lost from no place in particular. I don’t usually approach dogs I don’t know, but he looked harmless enough, no aggressive behavior. As I approached him, he accepted my hand without question. Actually, he extended his paw first, something he continues to do when meets a stranger. He seemed to instantly trust me. So I rustled up some people food, because at the time we didn’t have a dog or any dog food, which he gladly ate. And he stayed.

Our children had both just recently reached that age of leaving home to make their own way in the world, leaving my wife as the foster parent of my daughter’s house cat. I’m not a cat person. I didn’t think I was a dog person either. For whatever reason this strange yellow dog with yellow eyes stayed in my yard, not bothering anything, not asking for anything, just curled up by the stoop or following me around as I came and went. He obviously had no place to go and liked where he was. I kept feeding him. And he stayed.

It didn’t take long for me to want him to stay, and began to think he needed a name. Those strange yellow eyes intrigued me, and I recalled an obscure character in a book I had once read, Chapterhouse, one of the great many novels in the Dune series by the late Frank Herbert and his son Brian. The Dune series is one of the great works of literary science fiction, spanning thousands of years in a universe of imagination, where the most valuable commodity is a spice drug somehow produced by giant worms on a desert planet. From that concept hundreds story lines have been created with some of the most incredible characters ever to be conceived.

A piece of that story line includes a guild of witch-like nuns called the Honored Matres who play rough politics with the universe’s aristocracy and several other human and non-human societies. It all gets very complicated, but the Honored Matres don’t mess around when it comes to taking over the known universe. About the only characters in the book that can ever get the best of them is the Futar, a genetically engineered half human/half cat creature that is rather dim witted but extremely macho. They are few and far between. Sort of the strong, silent and furry type. The Futar were created by another race of beings, who like everyone else, was at odds with the ruthless and power-hungry Honored Matres.

Thing about Futars is that they only come in the male variety; there are no female Futars and about their only function is to oppose the Honored Matres, often in a weird love/hate relationship. The Futars have yellow eyes, and the dog in my yard had yellow eyes, and no matter how much my wife, daughter, mother, or any other woman has badgered me into having him fixed to curb some of his natural male tendencies, I just can’t bring myself to put him under the neutering knife. You are not the first person to wonder about the underlying psychology messages being established here.

Like most dogs, Futar has his faults, one of which is chasing select cars, such as loud white trucks that pass by my house. He likes to check out the neighbors. He’s a regular and welcome visitor at the nearby golf course. He’s part of our neighborhood. But about a month ago, the county dog catcher came by to issue me an official warning: Keep your dog on your property or else. Yes, Futar had chased the wrong person at the wrong time, and someone complained. I get it: no one likes being chased by a big barking mutt. Since then, Futar has been tethered, and I’ve been digging a shallow trench and laying yellow electrical wire. He watches and wonders: Why am I tied to this tree? What is Steve doing? Why is there a circle of little white flags in the back yard? He will soon find out.

Futar is a good dog. He never fails to greet me with the greatest enthusiasm and after a few friendly licks, he will settle down and extend his paw to me. He just wants to shake my hand. He somehow finds comfort in my holding his paw for a few moments each day. They say a dog is man’s best friend. I guess they’re right.

Steve Wong is a regular monthly columnist with Life In Our Foothills magazine. He readily admits his columns are usually all about himself, but he strives for readers to find something revealing about themselves in his words. He can be reached at Just4Wong@gmail.com.