Happy trails, old friend

He was never a cuddly dog, never a fan of giving kisses or getting his ears scratched. He never mastered fetch or shaking hands or anything very impressive. He never quite seemed to get the hang of the stairs. He was always a finicky eater, always had a sensitive temperament, always hated the rain almost as much as he hated getting his picture taken. He came to live with us in 1993, the last of his litter, passed over by who knows how many families because he'd never be able to father puppies. They sold him to my parents for $50, and we brought him home, named him Wolf because my dad had always wanted a Husky named Wolf.


He was odd, standoffish, not very friendly. Mom always figured he hadn't been "properly socialized" and Dad said he was weird, but said it with affection. We joked that he was more like a cat than a dog, pretended he was a human trapped in a dog's body and embarrassed to be seen in his furry form. He used to ride with us in the mornings when Mom dropped us off at school. He'd sit in the front bench seat of the fifteen passenger van with his muzzle wedged in the opening of the wing-style window. He loved going for walks more than anything in the world. Dad would always say, "That dog, he'd rather walk than eat," and it was true.

A year or two later, we brought home another dog that a friend of a friend had found in a parking lot and decided to give away after they realized their plan to sell him wouldn't get far without his AKC papers. When he moved in, everything changed. Our grouchy, aloof dog was suddenly playful, funny, much more affectionate. One summer, Mom felt bad for them, bearing Arctic coats and living in Southern Indiana. She bought them a kids' wading pool and filled it with water. They steadfastly ignored the pool until it was dry, and then invented a game that we called "Pool Tag." One dog would run and run and run, with the other in hot pursuit. Then the one being chased would leap into the empty pool, usually skidding in it a few feet across the yard, and the chaser would wait. Finally, the chased would leap out of the pool and the whole thing would start over.


Eventually the little pack grew to include another Husky and a Pomeranian with a bad case of short-man syndrome who seemed to think he was a Husky. Even though I feel a little bad admitting it, Wolf was always my favorite.

In the winter, I'd sometimes throw snowballs for the dogs, and they'd catch them gleefully in their mouths, crushing the packed snow into powder and then looking all around for the ball that had vanished. In the years before my parents abandoned their garden after realizing it was never going to survive the onslaught of eight rampaging paws instead of four, twelve paws instead of eight, sixteen paws instead of twelve, Wolf used to steal green tomatoes off of the vines. He'd never eat them, just pull them delicately from the branch with his lips and then roll them around a little. He used to hide out in a little den under the blackberry bushes and harass the birds.



I used to watch The X-Files up in my parents' room, on a tiny little black and white TV with all the lights turned off. One Friday, I watched the episode with the teenaged Native American boys turning into werewolves. Once it was over, I went down to the living room to watch TV with the rest of the family. I settled down on the floor in front of the couch, and tried to convince myself that I wasn't creeped out. Then, a cold, wet, wolf-like nose pressed itself to my ear and went "Whuff!" I had forgotten that Wolf was behind me on the couch. I have never jumped that high in my life, before or since.

The pack has dwindled in recent years. First Kojak, our second Husky and Wolf's best friend, just stopped eating. My parents tried everything, but not even cooking him hamburgers could recapture his interest. Non-invasive tests showed nothing, and no one felt it would be fair to put him through exploratory surgery, especially since it would probably only reveal something dire, like cancer or disease. Once Koj was gone, Wolf assumed the mantle of alpha dog, and became the watcher, the one who never played unless an outranking human was in the yard to guard over his charges. Shadow, the Pomeranian, died suddenly in his sleep a few years later. Wolf and Tasia, the only girl of the pack, pressed on, living much longer than we ever expected.


We had to say goodbye to our old man yesterday. In people years, he was 98 years old. His heart was still willing, but his body just couldn't keep up. He had long given up on the stairs, relying on Mom to carry him up and down. His front legs still wanted to dance and bound and go for long walks, but his back legs weren't so sure. The vet assured my parents that he wasn't in any pain, that it was just nerve damage keeping the signals from reaching his back paws every time that made him walk so unsteadily. Sometimes he would fall, and when he did, he couldn't get up without help. It was time.

I feel certain that he's somewhere nice, somewhere where it never rains, where it's never hotter than 70 degrees in the summer, where there's always someone around to throw snowballs. He never has to go up and down stairs, and he never has to get his photo taken. A place where this guy has been waiting, only to bound up joyfully, saying, "Hey, old friend...what took you so long?"