Recently a TV commercial included a line from an old country song about an egg-suckin’ dog. It reminded me of what trouble egg-sucking dogs caused when most farmers, and some town dwellers, had a flock of hens.

Our farmhouse stood an eighth of a mile from a crossroads hidden by a small hill, a choice location for dumping off an unwanted dog. It would show up at our back steps, where we put out scraps for our dog and cats, or down at the barn, where my father poured milk into the cats’ pan after milking each evening.

Over the years a few dogs made it through the probation period and stayed with us. Several turned out to be egg-suckers. They would sneak into the hen house, chase a hen from a nest, and break the eggshell enough to suck out the contents. That may not sound like a problem to people used to buying eggs by the dozen in stories, but farm women counted on eggs for feeding the family and for selling in town.

An egg-suckin’ dog wore out its welcome overnight. Once a dog had the habit, you couldn’t break it. The dog had to go. The tough part was figuring out where. You couldn’t take a dog to the pound in those days, and no one wanted an egg-sucker.

We had several strategies, the preferred one being returning it to whoever had dumped it on us. My father worked as a substitute rural mail carrier and knew the county well. Sometimes he’d seen the dog on a farm. We’d drop the animal off close to home. No one ever had the nerve to bring it back.

Another favorite strategy was to leave the animal at the home of someone we knew dumped animals or trash on our or other farms.

The least favorite alternative was to choose a farm with no chickens so the dog wouldn’t be a costly pest. If no dog ran out to bark at my father when he stopped at the mailbox, that improved the chances people would take in a stray.

Even an egg-suckin’ dog has the right to a decent home.