REQUIEM FOR A JUNKYARD DOG--

Bill Dierker doesn't lock up at night. Which at first might seem odd. After 
all, Dierker's garage-British Automotive Specialists in Peoria, IL-is in the 
middle of the mofo 'hood, a rusty and decomposing landscape of scrap yards, rail 
yards, and factories so squalid it's practically radioactive. Dierker's 
160-by-160 foot lot, surrounded by chain link fence, is equidistant from three 
housing projects-"in the heart of the wine country," he says. On a clear day you 
can hear the gunfire.
    And yet he fears no evil. For Dierker has Ned, the biggest, baddest 
junkyard dog in the valley. If not the world. 
    Understand, the AKC doesn't register the breed-Canis Rust-oleum, perhaps? 
-so it's hard to be definitive, but if Ned is only runner-up, we don't want 
to meet the winner. Weighing a girthy and ill-tempered 251 pounds, Ned is a 
mixed breed of Great Dane, Saint Bernard and Buick.
    His veterinarian, Dr. Scott Demanes, describes Ned's head as the size of 
a "microwave oven." 
    Now a ripe old 14 years-very ripe by all accounts-Ned is gray in the 
muzzle, overweight, with a touch of arthritis. He has lost a couple of steps on 
his hole shot toward the fence. "We use him mainly as a deterrent," says 
Dierker. "He doesn't have to do much but growl."
    As the "Director of Security Operations," Ned leaves most of the chasing 
and barking to the six younger dogs under him. They include an epileptic Irish 
setter named Fitz and a Chinese Shar-Pei-English bulldog mix named God Is She 
Ugly. When not prompting involuntary bowel evacuations on the part of 
startled passersby, the dogs hang out in Ned's private office, the only heated and 
air-conditioned room in the garage.
    But woe betide the burglar who underestimates Ned, says Dr. Dave Harvey, 
an emergency-medicine physician who is friends with Dierker. "I've seen Ned 
get angry, and it's quite impressive. He takes his guard-dog duties very 
seriously."
    Ned's legend began 12 years ago at another junkyard after he badly 
damaged an employee there. The victim, a prisoner working on a furlough program, had 
been spitefully spraying Ned with a water hose. "Ned hates to be sprayed with 
water," Dierker notes absolvingly. Ned backed up into his doghouse until the 
offending trustee got within striking distance. Then Ned charged him and 
nearly bit his arm off.
    "Ned broke both the bones-the radius and the ulna-in the guy's arm and 
did all this nerve damage," Dierker recalls. The prisoner had to have his arm 
put back together with metal plates. In 16 years of trauma medicine, Dr. Harvey 
has never seen a major "crush injury" from a dog bite.
    Bad dog! Down, boy!
    That junkyard went out of business, and Dierker inherited Ned, along with 
a doghouse, some tools and a rusty '79 Toyota. "All's gone by the wayside but 
Ned," says Dierker.
    Since then, Ned has faithfully earned his keep, watching over a yard that 
at the moment hosts three MG TDs, a Mini Cooper S, a Morris Minor station 
wagon, and a Triumph Herald. Dierker's private collection includes an Austin 
Cambridge and a Triumph Mayflower-"cars that if they're kept very nice, and very 
clean, in many years will still be worth absolutely nothing," Dierker notes.
    And yet Ned guards everything as though it were a vintage Bentley. Among 
his more notable-ahem-collars was the interloper he treed on top of a Jaguar 
XJS. "Ned tried so hard to get at him, we had to repaint the entire car," says 
Dierker. More recently, a burglar trying to break in the back door turned to 
see Ned and his security team zeroing in on his groin area. The perp ran 
through the chain-link gate, breaking it off its hinges.
    For the most part, though, crack-enhanced entrepreneurs give Ned a wide 
berth in this city where he has achieved near mythic status-with a little help 
from his friends. Dr. Harvey, having treated a man whose hand was blown off by 
a pipe bomb, brought a picture of the mangled limb to Dierker's garage, where 
it was posted near the door with a sign indicating it was Ned's work. Local 
police contributed to the story. In their version, Ned's jaws were locked on 
the victim's hand, and it took three cans of Mace to get him off. That sort of 
thing gets around.
    Ned enjoys considerable perks of canine celebrity. A local grocer brings 
him gallons of ice cream, the butcher shop brings along weekly allotments of 
raw meat and rib bones. The cops bring him chili dogs. The Goodwill thrift shop 
brings him couches, one of which he eats through every two months. 
    "From a veterinary standpoint," says Dr. Demanes, "his diet is pretty 
scary."
    In the midst of a late-life voluptuousness worthy of Jake LaMotta-who 
also ate couches-Ned cannot last much longer. In fact, to get him to the vet's, 
Dierker now has to borrow Dr. Harvey's 1970 Citroën "safari" station wagon, 
because Ned can't jump into a truck, and no one's about to try to lift him. "I 
let the suspension on the Citroën bottom out and then put out a ramp for him to 
walk up on." 
    Ned is one chili-dog-induced infarction away from eternity. 
    Bill Dierker will miss him. But Ned's protégé is waiting in the wings. A 
cross between a Rottweiler and a hydrophobic rat, this dog got his name when 
he attacked the otherwise harmless Thievin' Gene, who had come to the garage to 
sell a stolen battery. Gene, trying to run and still carry the battery, the 
dog hanging off his pantleg, kept screaming, "Do he bite?! Do he bite?! Do he 
bite?!"
    So, naturally, Dierker named him Dewey.

-End-

Bill Kenyon  
Global Centre Consulting
3336 Birmingham Drive
Fort Collins, CO   80526
Tel: 970.207.9586   New Cell: 970.980.6373

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