The Year the Dog Died

I can’t say that I remember exactly when things took that kind of a turn for the tragic. A writer once professed to prefer tragedy to sadness. Perhaps she has a point.
I lived at the foot of a mountain by the edge of the sea, in a rain forest, on the Northwest End of North America. It was raining in my life, had been for a while.
Like a country song, when the truck breaks down, jobs disappear, the lover leaves you for the best friend. Then as an underlying reenforcement of how awful it really is…the dog dies. Because the dog dying is one of the ways that life can bring you to your knees without ever falling.
The dog loved the beach as much as I did, we walked far from each other, but I could track him because of his tail, it would stand straight up like a plume of Pampas Grass. He was a good boy, smiled when you told him so. When he jumped over beach logs his ears took flight as if they were crucial in the task of gliding above the log gracefully.
He was the kind of good dog that would grab your heart and build his cave within it before you even thought of giving him a name.
His nails clacking on the wood floors where the reassuring sound of home, where he lived and guarded its safety with a loyalty so fierce you would have thought him to be a killer beast, not the twenty pound tiny light weight he truly was, he was in fact a minuscule alarm on four legs, nothing and no one got past him, he made me feel safe, and therefore the place of my true comfort, my hearth, and his domain.
His passing was by far not the first time I experienced deep grief, life imposes such lessons without prejudice. Instead I can say that the end of my pal was the end of an era. The closing of a long story, not just a chapter. Life as we had known it in our long friendship was no longer possible, we both spent the last year of his life in exile. He in the family home, me adjusting to life in the city. Adjusting to life without him was grim, visiting him on short jaunts by ferry when time allowed, he would see me and run around the house to let me know I was worthy of a victory lap.
What I can say of his death? well his timing was impeccable, only a few short weeks before the house we had shared all that time was handed over to its new residents.
Looking back it is not surprising, he was ready to move on, and as always, the dog was a master at orchestrating his death as well as his life.
His pedigree although impressive meant little in the big scheme, I was never one to care for these things. It was his noble, defiant and magic heart that won the day. Like me he was a child of early tragedy who was not about to let rough beginnings deter him from the good life. He was my families rescue project, we schemed and theorized about his breakout, his escape into a family, and a better life happened on a dark night. By the light of a slivered moon he was granted passage into our lives and his life long freedom. He never wore a collar, he was a freemen, an original, a one of a kind, never sick, always game for the next adventure.
My young daughter first brought attention to his sad existence. He chose us, not the other way around. In those early days of puppyhood he was living a brutish existence, having lost his original master he had been left in the care of someone who was never around. The lad was either left locked in the house for days, or escaped to harass specific population demographics who passed by his post on the secondary road beside the ocean. He would only lunge at buses, motorcycles, infirm elders, or young mothers with baby carriages, and of course the favourite, motorcycles.His behaviour, as E.B. White would write about his own dog “left his sanity open to question” The neighbours reviled the tiny monster, rolled their eyes at his incessant racket . My daughter, new to the neighbourhood and its prejudices against him saw an opportunity to win his frozen heart.
She slowly won him over with hot dogs. by the end of the second week of her attention and conversation he had stopped barking at her. Not long after he would sit across the street and stare into our house with the the aplomb and spiritual force of a Tibetan monk. I could be going about my business in the house, and feel a strange force. I would look up and there he would be, still as a statue, smiling his rakish grin, only one side of the lip up, his eyes would get dewy and I would be transported into a parallel universe, of bodhisattva roves and incense.
Cherished by monks in almost all monasteries in that land. Blood lines were carefully managed and puppies were exchanged between communities, during the festival season and embraced by children and adults alike. Tibetan Spaniels exude self confidence and high self esteem. This was his legacy for 15 years, he moved through his life with the aplomb and countenance fit for a great statesman.
Life has changed now, no need to mind his bed close to the fire, or keep track of the time for a beach walk. There are no substitutions for a true heart, I won’t be getting a dog any time soon.
I once had a companion who could read minds and hearts without words. We buried him on the knoll where he could guard the house and hear the ocean, the place where he had roamed and remained free for his entire royal life.