WTF just happened???

Usually when people ask me what breed Argos is, I feel a frisson of pride as I tell them, “He’s a Belgian Malinois.” It’s hard to escape that feeling that if I have something exceptional in my life (and Maligators truly are exceptional) then I must be exceptional too, right? Yeah, I know it’s not logical – but go ask any guy with a Ferrari about his Ferrari, ask any kid about their new shoes with sparkles, and you’ll see they feel exactly the same way. We display the things we love in part to tell the world who we are.

Sometimes – but less and less often, thanks mainly to that damn movie – I have to explain what a Malinois is. That they’re completely amazing, but not really pets. That the dog who jumped out of a helicopter to help take down Bin Laden was a Malinois. That the only reason I have him, because this is not an ideal breed for a slow-moving fat girl, is that he was a rescue and I meant to rehome him, but we fell in love.

Bumpy or calm, he’s my shipmate on life’s ocean

More often, these days, the response goes, “Ooh, I so want one! And look – people say they’re dangerous, but he’s such a sweetheart!” Because he is. Argos is a total schmooze. When we’re out and about – and he goes everywhere with me – his reward for good behavior is to get to “say hello” to whatever random stranger asks, “May I pet your dog?” He walks up close to them and stretches his neck so that his nose is pointing up against their body, and he leans in for loving as though he never gets any at home. And I have to explain that this is not typical behavior for a Mal; they can be unpredictable, even dangerous. That they tend to be too hyper-focused on whatever stimulating smell-sound-spook captures their attention to be much interested in casually benevolent strangers. That they’re not family dogs, and you’d better not try to live with one unless you have a lot of time and energy, and are willing to spend almost all of it on training and just keeping them occupied.

Whatever the project, he’s always available to help.

Somehow all this makes me look like something special, as opposed to merely a slave to my dog.

Only not today.

Today, when the emergency room tech asked, “What kind of dog was it?” I flinched away from the question. “Malinois,” I muttered, adding defensively, “But he’s not typical of the breed! He’s never done anything like this! And he adores her!”

These statements can be rated True As Far As It Goes, Somewhat True, and Totally True.

He is typical in some ways. I mean, his real name isn’t Argos. I named him for Ulysses’ faithful hound, because that’s what I wanted him to be. I gave him that name because, when he came into my life, I was in burnout after about six years of 24/7 dog rescue. And in fact he and Destra did faithfully haul me through the flames – one driving away the Black Dog that wanted to see me burn, while the other dragged me out into the fresh air. Nonetheless, his real name is GODDAMMIT YOU ASSHOLE (always written in full caps), because he’s a Malinois, and – full disclosure – with rescue I’ve been too busy dealing with other people’s canine catastrophes to give my own dogs all the attention and training they need.

What’s not typical is how much he loves making friends with new humans. Just one example of many: one hot evening last summer the Hubbit and I were sitting at a table outside an ice cream shop, slurping coolness and feeding a small vanilla ice cream cone to Argos. This enchanted a not-well-socialized, possibly “challenged” small boy. I describe him this way because he squealed a lot and moved in a jerky, uncoordinated manner, which is relevant only because most dogs would have found it disturbing. Argos allowed the child to tickle his ears and tug on his tail, and planted a vanilla smooch on his cheek … and ever since then I’ve been playing with the idea of training him as a therapy dog and taking him to cheer up kids in hospitals.

That idea pretty much blew up today. From here on out he’ll be wearing a muzzle when he’s around other people, and he won’t be hearing me tell him to “Say hello”, and when people ask if they can pet him I’ll say, “Yeah … better not. I’m sorry.”

Actually, I’m more than sorry. I’m heartbroken. I have so loved watching him loving to schmooze, and it’s just going to hurt to not let him do that anymore.

He’s never even hinted that he might bite a human – apart from a few occasions when he’s suggested via a lifted lip that I should back off and let him do what he wants, and I’ve explained that things don’t work that way around here, and then he’s put his lip back in place and that’s been the end of it. He’s always been a tad unpredictable with the other dogs – not that he damages them; after eight years of constantly biting down on bones and tractor tires, and carrying large pieces of lumber from one area of our property to another, his teeth are worn down to nubs. But he snarls and grabs hold and scares them, and when I yell and banish him he sulks and refuses to be sorry.

Today, when I screamed at him, “For fucksake what have you done?” he seemed as shocked and upset as I was. When I left him alone in the car to rush Nikkola into the ER he was scared. After I left her with a nurse and went back out to park my car properly, he was worried and tentative, needing reassurance.

Nikkola is one of his favorite people in the whole world. She doesn’t drive and she’s currently needing to visit a lot of doctors, so Argos and I pick her up often. He starts his happy dance as we turn into the parking lot at her apartment complex, and when she gets into the car it’s all I can do to keep him in the backseat and out of her lap. He shoves his big old head over her shoulder, and she pets him and he kisses her neck and cheek, and they carry on like a couple of teenagers for the first few blocks of our drive.

That’s basically what they were doing this afternoon. Argos and I had swung by a coffee shop drive-thru after dropping her off at the doctor, to pick up my usual 16-ounce single-shot hot soy latte and his usual puppy whip. Then we’d returned to the doctor’s rooms and hung out in the parking lot, Argos chewing on something in the backseat while I sipped my latte and listened to a This American Life podcast about how covid has killed school as we used to know it. Then Nikkola texted that she was done and we picked her up, and Argos tried to climb into her lap but I stuck out my arm and blocked him. I found a shady spot and opened the calendar on my phone to enter the dates of her next appointments, while she giggled and petted him and he smooched up and down her neck.

And then he snarled and BIT and she screamed and clutched her face, and humans have thin skin, unprotected by fur, that even blunt teeth can pierce.

Blood was running through her fingers, drenching the crocheted shawl she was wearing and the blouse beneath it. I thought he’d taken out her eye.

“What have you done?” I screamed at him, and he leapt away, cowering against the backseat.

We were just two blocks from the ER. I slammed up to the curb, rushed around the car to open her door. The blood continued to pour, dripping onto the sidewalk. I remembered the hoard of tissues and napkins the Hubbit keeps in the console, grabbed a handful, and told her to hold them against the wound. She staggered as I helped her to the entrance, and I yanked a wheelchair out of the array set out there and pushed her into it.

They didn’t make us wait – not even to test for covid.

I filled out a form and left her with a nurse and hurried out to park the car across the road. I sat for a few minutes with Argos, just crying into the thick, soft fur on his neck. Then I stuck my finger into his ears, first one and then the other, and he flinched and whined.

Could he have earache? Maybe a broken tooth, way back? There has to be a reason for this! He hasn’t acted as though he was hurting … but I’ve been distracted lately. Did he tell me and I didn’t get it? Or has he just been too busy being a Malinois, and he didn’t bother to notice something hurt until Nikkola tweaked it in mid-snuggle?

I went back into the ER. They’d moved Nikkola to a room and cleaned her up. Her eyes were swollen from crying, but whole. She had one puncture wound and some abrasions up above her hairline, and a bruised graze on her cheek. She had to get one staple, a hefty dose of Tylenol, and precautionary antibiotics. I had to fill out a Health & Human Services form about the Bite Incident.

I called the vet and made an appointment to have Argos checked out tomorrow. He’ll be muzzled until he’s sedated.

I called a friend who is an animal control officer, to ask how I can protect him from a most horrible possible consequence. She reassured me, but I’m still afraid.

Back in the car he kept trying to love on Nikkola. He sniffed her hair, wanting to clean away the blood. I made him lie down. We stopped at a pizzeria to pick up dinner for her, and there we hit a snag. Legally, based on the paper I’d signed at the hospital, he wasn’t supposed to be out without both a leash and a muzzle, but he couldn’t come into the pizzeria, and Nikkola is afraid of him now so he couldn’t wait in the car with her, and she was too sick and shaky to fetch the pizza herself. I put him in a sit-stay and made him wait outside the door, and he was just so good, so calm and polite. All the people passing him to come inside smiled at him and at me, and many complimented me on what a good dog he was.

He is a good dog. I mean, sure, he’s an asshole. But he really is a good boy.

He’s never found a stick that he didn’t want to bring home.

Time out to rescue me

They come in waves – swampy breath in your face, on the back of your neck. They bump against your knees to shepherd you away from a threat, slam into you during a wild game of tag, leap to snatch your attention. They snuffle at you – a cold nose in your ear, a whiskery muzzle against your cheek, the quick lap of a tongue swiping your fingers.

This is what it means to offer yourself up for rescue. There are so many dogs, and there are always more, and you want to write about each one – capture the who and the what and the why of each, but as one leaves the next comes and there are always more, clamoring. How does one write about that? How do you capture the essence of each individual dog in such a jostling crowd?

But writing is what I do. Even when I don’t do it, it’s who I am. This blog is my journal. In part, it’s my story garden,  to harvest as I gather the ingredients of my longer story of Henrietta Gurdy – my imaginary love child, my heroine, my nemesis. Henrietta and I have only one thing in common: we rescue dogs. If Henrietta were in fact writing her story it would have been done long since. She has her flaws, but procrastination and disorganization aren’t among them. So she’d be well into the series by now, instead of struggling to pinch out the time and creative energy and butt-to-chairness required to finish the first book.

So … this is my goal for today: to write about the daily round of dog rescue, preserving the stories of a few particular dogs and also capturing the relentless pressure of even a small rescue effort. This is more about the who and the why, than about the high drama of acts of terrible cruelty. Those acts do happen, and one deals with them as best one can, but mostly rescue is about a dog, and then another dog, and then another, one after another slipping a leash around your heart so that you have no choice but to take them home.

Zeus

Right now, I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Walla Walla, waiting for the vet clinic to call me to pick up Zeus and Violet. Do you remember Zeus? I told you about him, first here, then here. He needed all kinds of vet care before we could send him home, including having a broken canine extracted. He is the sweetest, most loving boy … but Zeus is a cop, and sharing a home with Argos, my Malinois and our resident delinquent, was an exercise in stress and vet bills. So it was a relief when he went home a few weeks before Christmas! He settled in well with his new Momma, Goldie, who rapidly became a friend to me as well, and flooded me with happy updates about how well he was doing.

Unfortunately that didn’t last. But before I tell you what happened, I should tell you about Daisy coming back. I’ve never told you about Daisy. She needed a temporary place to stay while her family moved house, so the Hubbit and I offered to take her in. That happened last summer, before Zeus arrived. You still with me? We had various dogs, including Daisy, during summer … then Daisy left and Zeus arrived … then Zeus left and Daisy came back.

Daisy

Daisy was a mess when we got her in summer. Her nails were so long that her toes were starting to dislocate. She had a roaring ear infection. And she was half out of her mind with the need for a job, and attention, and something to do, and to run, and to sniff, and loves, and to be seen, and and and just … more! She is a hard-driving, excitable working girl … and her designated owner was an angry teenage boy who thought he wanted a hunting dog, insisted on a purebred puppy, and then didn’t train her, wouldn’t walk her, left her at home with his non-dog-savvy family while he went out to hang with his friends. She grew lanky and wild and desperate for attention, and he grew surly and wild and refused to pay attention, and by the time Daisy came to me she was out of control (and so, apparently, was he, but that’s no concern of mine. I’m not in the business of rescuing, or indulging, teenage boys.)

So for the six weeks I had her I put her through biweekly visits to a groomer for nail trims, and took her to the vet to treat her ears, and let her run and didn’t let her be rude. I also lobbied the boy’s parents to give her up for adoption. It was maddening! They acknowledged that they weren’t a fit for her, but they couldn’t bring themselves to take her from the boy, and he insisted he loved her (although not enough to visit her, or take her for walks, or call to ask how she was doing). So eventually she went back to them, and a week or two later later we got Zeus, and it was only a few weeks after that that Daisy’s people called to confess that they’d realized life was better without her constantly wanting attention and exercise while they wanted to watch TV, and the boy was never home, and the fence he built so she could be out in the yard had fallen down, and his sisters were having to take care of her which wasn’t their job, after all, and would I take her back and find her a new home?

So after Zeus went home I fetched her. She was frantic. She couldn’t understand why she had to lose her people again. She was scared to go far from our house, but desperate to run. They’d failed to keep up with the toenail trims so her feet were hurting again. She tried to play with Argos and he was still pissed off over Zeus beating him up, so he beat her up. She tried to play with the other dogs and they snapped at her to chill the fuck down! She tried to play with the horses and they threatened to stomp her. She tried to play with the cat and I spanked her. She tried to play with the chickens and I dragged her away by the collar and wouldn’t even let her keep the feathers. At last she went home – to people with another hard-bodied happy-go-lucky girl in need of a playmate, and no cats, chickens or horses, and miles of trails leading from their back door – and we heaved a sigh of relief and promised each other to take a break.

But then the vet called. One of her clients had found an abandoned Shar-Pei … Would we help?

Donnabella

We don’t say no when a vet who helps us asks us for help. First she was spayed and had surgery to correct entropion, so she was a sad, sore, scared, skinny beast when I brought her home. She’d had puppies and was still lactating – they weren’t dumped with her – so we couldn’t feed her as much as she wanted, because her poor little body needed to stop producing milk. She had to wear a cone, and she was in any case a weird-looking dog with her skinny body and squinchy eyes and great hippo nose. Even our blase pack treated her like a pariah. But over a few weeks she healed. Most importantly, she healed inside. She learned to trust us, and to play, and to ask for snuggles. It was time for her to go home.

Usually it’s a relief to hand off a dog into someone else’s care, as long as I know I can trust them. It was different with Donnabella. I knew she’d be safe and loved – I’d not have left her otherwise. But she was so afraid, when she saw I was leaving. She had given herself completely to me, by then – her squinchy gaze, her crumply smile, her starved little heart: they were all mine … and then, just as she believed herself safe, I left her with strangers. I acted in love but in the moment it felt like cruelty, and I sobbed all the way home.

Mind you, that might have been because I was so, so tired. Rescue is hard! You see such stupid-ugly things, you think such angry thoughts! And then there’s the pee, and the poop, and the visits to the vet, and the giving of pills, and the shed hair that you never have time to vacuum, and the house smells like a kennel, and your own dog gets resentful and starts acting out because he can’t even with all these damn strays!

Kuja and I agreed, and I promised the Hubbit: No More! We’re taking a break!

Pearl Fuzzybutt

But a few days before Christmas we got a call about eight husky cross puppies, only five weeks old but weaned so they had to go immediately. By the time we got to them, a couple days later, they’d already given away four, so we brought home four pups from that litter (we nicknamed them the Fuzzybutts), plus Bambi, a pup from a different litter in the same house. There were also a great many cats, but we found someone else to help them, and we had most of the adult dogs remaining in the home sterilized and vaccinated. We found a foster home for the four puppies; we did the vet stuff – vaccinations, microchipping, deworming; we took pictures and posted them online to be adopted as soon as they were eight weeks old.

And while all that was going on, just before New Year, we took in a litter of seven Labrador mix pups – the Snugglepot litter. They urgently needed to be removed from their home, but we didn’t immediately have a foster home for them, so they spent their first three days in the Hubbit’s and my spare bathroom, pooping enormous, tangled piles of worms like scoops of hellish spaghetti out of their grossly swollen bellies. They perked up pretty quickly once they were done with that, and soon learned to come running, full tilt, when I called “Hey puppypuppypuppeeee!”

Oreo, Tucker and Lucy Snugglepot

The next few weeks were a frenzy of processing applications for Fuzzybutts and Snugglepots, as well as little Bambi. That’s no small task, the way we do it. First, we write very detailed profiles of all our dogs, which we post on Adopt-a-Pet and Petfinder. That generates email inquiries – fewer for “less desirable” dogs (like adult Chihuahuas and Pit Bulls) but the floodgates open when puppies are on offer. Our application forms are around five pages long and comprehensive, and when they come in we follow up with online background checks, and phone calls to landlords, vets, references, the adopters themselves, and sometimes home visits. We’ll choose the best homes we can, and write to disappoint the people who didn’t get to adopt them. We’ll follow up after the adoption to make sure all is well , and advise if it isn’t, and post upbeat pupdates on Facebook to ensure our supporters don’t get bored and drift away, taking their wallets with them

Dax

The last of the puppies went home about a week ago, but by that time we had Dax. You know how some dogs just make you happy? That’s Dax. As best we can tell, his previous owners bought him for their teenage son (what is it with people giving ridiculously unsuitable dogs to their least reliable family members?) and then, when the son lost interest and didn’t bother to feed him, they let Dax go hungry. Eventually when that failed to accomplish whatever the hell they were aiming for, they advertised him (the dog, not the kid) for sale on Craigslist. One of our young volunteers was foolishly browsing the pet listings (I say “foolishly” because she can barely support herself, her kid and the dog she already has, never mind daydreaming about rescuing another one) and she was horrified by the sight of this poor skinny puppy, so she emptied out her bank account and went to get him. Then she called us, and voila, the Hubbit and I got to have another German Shepherd living in our house.

Actually, Dax was easy – a sweet, happy boy who gained weight fast and got on with everyone, even Argos. We all took a deep breath. He’d be easy to rehome, and then we could take a break, right?

Nope.

A few days ago the people who gave us the Fuzzybutt pups called us to take another two pups and Lola, the mama – now, now, NOW! – because Lola had killed a goat and Papa was getting ready to shoot her and her verminous offspring. How dare they insist on eating? Did they not realize they were only dogs? I took Lola to be spayed on Monday (she wasn’t done with the others in the house, because at that time Papa was determined to breed her to a husky and make lots of money) and yesterday a delightful couple of husky-lovers drove all the way from Bellingham – six hours at least from our small town – and took her home with them. They’ve offered only to foster her, but we’re hoping they and their husky boy will fall in love and invite her to stay for good.

The two new Fuzzybutts are pretty girls and will be easy to place in good homes … but Kuja is barely keeping it together, and I’m dragging so badly my tail is muddy. We handed them off to another rescue group that we trust.

Meanwhile, I got a call from Goldie, Zeus’ adopter. She was hysterical. Out of the blue, with no provocation and no visible warning, after six weeks of living together in harmony, he’d just tried to rip her other dog’s head off. He was also threatening to kill the cats.

So I told her to bring him back. I decided to put him in boarding for a week to recalibrate while I girded my loins for a prolonged period of juggle-the-dog – because obviously he had to come back to me for reevaluation, but equally obviously he couldn’t be trusted with any of our dogs until we figured out what was going on with him. I met her at a park to let him stretch his legs before we dropped him off at the boarding kennel … and while we were there, what should we find but a happy, friendly, pretty puppy. Of course I took her home – what else could I do?

Goldie named her Violet. I have no idea why, but I was too tired to argue. In any case, she was in good condition, so I figured she’d escaped from her yard and would be claimed soon.

Sometimes when an adoption fails you know it’s the adopter’s fault. Somehow you missed something about them, during the interview process. And after living with a dog 24/7 for several months, you know the dog. But in Zeus’ case … no. There had to be something else going on. He’d been through an enormous amount of stress – not just being dumped and then all the vet stuff while he was with us; within two weeks of his adoption, the family had been hammered by two deaths and a sad Christmas with people they don’t much like. But I think the root cause of Zeus’ behavior is some undiagnosed physical problem.

So I persuaded Goldie to quit beating herself up, promised to figure out what was wrong with him and place him in a “better” home … and gave her Dax. I get almost daily updates about him, and they invariably make me smile

Violet

Violet, meanwhile, has turned out to be a disrespectful, destructive, jumping-up, counter-surfing, pushy, loudly opinionated, completely clueless, piddle-anywhere pain in the butt. It’s very clear that she didn’t run off – she was dumped – because, after all, when you get a puppy you expect it to be fun and cute and cuddly, not to grow into a big clumsy beast who needs training! Right?

People make me tired!

Anyway, as I write this she’s being spayed and vaccinated. Soon she’s going to a foster home where there are kids, and cats, and younger, energetic humans who will teach her manners. Then we’ll find her a home.

Meanwhile Zeus is back in our home, living in my study (while Argos reigns supreme in the bedroom). We’re putting him through an array of blood tests. So far everything looks normal, but we’re waiting on results for his thyroid test. And right now he’s back at the clinic that extracted his canine, because it turns out they left a chunk of it behind – which is something that can happen with canines, but dang I wish I’d known this one had broken during the extraction! It’s entirely possible his behavior was due to a sudden twinge of toothache! Bits of broken tooth were pushing up through his gum – can you just imagine? And … can you imagine if it had twinged when Goldie’s seven-year-old son walked past him, rather than her dog? The thought gives me the cold horrors!

Anyway, he’s with us now, and we’re working with a behaviorist and figuring it out. Hostilities between him and Argos continue, but he’s comfortable with Jim’s four, so managing the war zone is less complicated than when he first returned. And after the thyroid test results come back, and we know whether that’s something that needs attention, we’ll post him for adoption again … and this time, I hope, we’ll get it right.

I’ve just received a text from a woman I loathe and despise. She’s a backyard breeder of Belgian Malinois – a breed that only a few hardy souls, outside of the police or military, should even think of owning. (Yes, I have one. No, I really shouldn’t. But … I had one before, and they’re addictive!) She sells them for a royal sum to whoever will write her a check, and when her dogs are no longer cute, entertaining puppies, and start tearing up their homes and threatening the neighbors, they flow into our local shelters and rescues. Anyway, she wants to know if we “still take dogs”. I don’t pretend to be friendly. “Why?” I ask. She’s “in overload”, she says, is “thinking about rehoming one”.

I’m not encouraging … but … It’s a Malinois. What will happen to her if I don’t take her? I tell her, “If you decide you want to, contact me.” I hesitate, my finger poised over my phone, then hit send. I’d like to jump through my phone behind the text and bite the silly bitch! If she must breed something, why not Golden Retrievers? It’s inexcusable to pick a breed every damn fool out there wants (because so smart, so much drive) and most can’t handle (because too damn smart and in perpetual overdrive).

The vet just called. It’s time to pick up Zeus and Violet and head back home.

This was good, taking time out to write, even if all the time went to a blog post instead of the novel. I promise myself to take more time, and next time to work on the book, not indulge myself by blogging. Because rescue matters, it’s important … but writing stories is why I’m here. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. Somehow … somehow, between the waving tails and lolling tongues, I have to find timeouts like this.

So long, sweet and crazy

My beautiful girl left us tonight.

Destra came to us as a five month old puppy who needed a safe place to recuperate after breaking her leg. She’d been in the very early stages of training for a career with the police or military when she broke her leg while playing with her trainer. The trainer was going to have her euthanized but a rescue stepped in and arranged for her to have surgery. After a month of crate rest they asked us to take her in for a month of R&R while she finished her recovery.

A few days after she arrived we started seeing bloody footprints all over the house. It took a while to figure out who had been injured – she wasn’t limping, because either the initial accident or the surgery had damaged the nerves in her leg and she couldn’t feel anything. By the time we figured it out, she’d run the pads right off her foot.

Nine long months of fighting infection followed. Every morning I’d throw a blanket over my dining table and she’d jump up onto it and flop over onto her side with a sigh of resignation, and I’d clean and treat and dress her foot, and then all day she’d fuss and beg to be let out to play with the big dogs. I tried to keep her occupied with games and toys; she loved “packaged meals” – I’d wrap up her kibble, a few bits at a time, in layer after layer of newspaper, each layer thoroughly duct taped, and she’d get to spend a glorious fifteen minutes shredding her way through it. But every few days she’d sneak out, or brazenly break out, and go running in the pastures with the big dogs, and come back with her tongue lolling with joy and her paw bloody. Sometimes she ran it clear down to the bone.

So of course she developed a bone infection, and it didn’t get better no matter what remedies I tried – and I tried everything from a poultice of raw honey to various creams and unguents the vet recommended, in addition to pills that had to be rammed down her throat because she never, ever, ever consented to swallow them, no matter how deliciously disguised or carefully wrapped. She’d nibble off the tasty stuff and spit the pill on the floor. The vet recommended amputation. The rescue that had been providing for her care cut off funding; they said it was time to euthanize. We didn’t have the money for surgery, but we found another rescue that did.

Her amputation surgery was scheduled for a Thursday afternoon. I called the next morning. “So … how is she doing? May I visit her? Maybe bring her something to chew?” She loved to chew almost as much as she loved to run. They said I could, and on my way in I stopped at our local butcher. It was late fall, the time of year when butchers are usually very busy cutting and wrapping farm raised beef, but they didn’t yet have ours. I rushed inside and demanded to speak with him. “My dog just had her let amputated and she needs a really big bone!” I informed him, and after only the briefest pause for bewilderment he gave me the biggest, juiciest, meatiest bone I ever saw.

At the vet I sat in the little consulting room, waiting for them to wheel her in on a trolley (they’d warned me, before the surgery, that she might need help learning to walk). Well, she’d heard my voice and came barreling through the door, dragging the vet tech behind her, and flung herself joyously into my lap. They told me they’d knocked her out after the surgery, wanting her to have a good night’s sleep, but when they’d come in that morning she’d been standing up on her one remaining hind leg, tail wagging, waiting to hear what fun was planned for that day.

She spent the weekend at the vet, working her way through that bone, and by Sunday afternoon she was well and truly ready to come home. We pulled up at the gate at the end of our long driveway. One of her favorite tricks before the surgery had been to jump out of the car and take off up the driveway, her feet hammering the gravel and ripping her pads to shreds. She’d always got into trouble for that. But as I pulled through the gate I asked her, “You want to run?” She looked at me, not quite believing. “Go on. Run!” I said.

She leaped out of the car and took off up the driveway, and she didn’t care one iota that she had only one hind leg to hammer. That was my girl … Her focus was always on what was in front of her. Hind legs? They were history, and she paid them no mind.

We were still planning to give her up for adoption. I loved her, but even with only three legs she was capable of so much in terms of training – and I was so taken up by rescue that I didn’t have the time to give her what I felt she needed. But then she let us know that she really didn’t like kids – she said they were creepy, stunted and weird, and needed to be bitten. The Malinois rescue that had taken her on had a zero tolerance policy for aggression – and rightly so; Mals can be dangerous. So we kept her; we don’t often have kids visit, and after a few years she decided maybe they were okay after all and the issue went away.

She remained a complete lunatic – really smart, quick to learn how to please, even quicker to learn how to get away with murder. She slaughtered a couple of my goat kids and numerous chickens. She shrieked with excitement, bossed the other dogs, made me laugh every day, and drove the Hubbit crazy.

I wish I’d done more with her. I think she’d have enjoyed being challenged more. But life was good all the same … For most of her life she went everywhere with me, and right up to a few weeks ago she loved going to the river. She loved to swim.

Over the years, inevitably, she slowed down. Her forequarters, which did most of the work when she ran, grew big while her hindquarters became skinny. Her spine twisted into an S-curve. She needed heavy doses of medication to manage the pain of arthritis. She still liked riding along but needed help getting into the car, and being in unfamiliar places began to bother her. She shared car-dog duties with Argos, and increasingly was content to be left at home.

The vet found a lump on her throat, an inoperable tumor, probably thyroid cancer, about a year ago. It didn’t seem to slow her down, though – no more than she was already slowing down just from being old and achy. We’ve been monitoring her health; last time she had blood work it looked pretty good, and she was due to go in for another test around about now. She collapsed a few weeks ago and I thought then that she was on her way to the Rainbow Bridge, but she rallied and has been her usual self – bossy and impatient with the other dogs, but eager to eat, play, get loves, ride in the car,

She went down this evening, though, and an hour later she was gone. She’s on her cushion near me as I write this. I look at her every now and then, and even though I know she’s gone, it’s hard to believe she really isn’t breathing. I stare at her ribs and they seem to move. I know I’m just imagining it, but all the same when the Hubbit suggested moving her outside for the night I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her out in the cold.

Tomorrow we’ll bury her in the yard in front of the house, and in spring I’ll plant a tree on her grave.

And that’s all there is to say about that, really. I feel this post hasn’t done her justice. I’ve spilled out a whole lot of words and, in the end, they don’t say much. I haven’t told you how soft her coat was, or how intensely alive she was, or how maddeningly shrill her bark was, or how funny and smart she was, or how totally she didn’t give a shit about being a tripod. I haven’t described how, when I took her and Argos to the park and threw the ball, I’d have to keep her on a leash so she didn’t hurt herself trying to beat him to it, and every now and then I’d make him sit/stay and toss the ball close by so she could have a turn without hurting herself. She would never bring the ball back to me and if ever I tried to take it from her she’d be so excited I’d get bitten, so I learned to wait until she decided where to drop it, and then Argos would fetch it. And when she was tired she’d take the ball back to the car, and that was the end of our outing to the park.

I guess that’s what happened this evening. She got tired, so she grabbed the piece of my heart I threw for her and she’s taken it to the Bridge. I’ll get it back one day, but there’s no hurry. It’s hers, after all.

Please talk to me. There’s no easy way to lose a friend, but sometimes shared stories help.

When rescue fails

Last week a thing happened, and I feel.

The problem with words is, we talk too much. They get overused and shabby, and when you really need them to say something they’re worn out and not up to the job.

But something happened, and I must tell, and words are what I have.

Where to begin? I’ll start with this text from the Hubbit, received while I was at a writer’s conference in Seattle in September. That’s as good a place as any.

“Scarlett died unknown causes. Suspect the food as several dogs don’t wanna eat it. Am buying new food.”

There was also a photograph. If I hadn’t read the text first I’d have thought she was sleeping.

Scarlett – what she really looked like.

Scarlett was one of our rescues … I’ve told you I rescue dogs, right? Kuja and I started a small group last year. So far we’ve rehomed around 75 dogs and 30 cats, and also helped owned pets that needed vet care, food, and so on. Anyway, Scarlett was a beauty. Her mother was a Belgian Malinois, daddy was a German Shepherd / Husky cross. She was the last pup left from an accidental litter, and when she came to me she was around eight months old and still didn’t have a name. Her people hadn’t been cruel to her, but they’d never wanted her, and it showed. She was pretty shut down, and I figured she’d be a good project for Peter Pan.

I’ve mentioned Peter Pan but never explained his place in the Took menage. He showed up several years ago with a teenage girl we knew. They pitched a tent in the backyard and all was roses for a day or two, then early one morning I saw her spinning her wheels as she roared down our driveway, and I went outside to find him forlornly folding his tent. That’s when I learned he was homeless. He was just a boy – 22 years old, and had spent the years since he aged out of the foster system couch-surfing and drifting back and forth across the country.

Well, he stayed for a few days, which turned into weeks, then months, until he was ready to move on in spring of the following year. I was sorry to see him go and missed him – both the help around our farmlet and the laughs. He’s high a lot, which makes him giggly; this annoys the Hubbit, who is sternly anti-weed, but amuses me. He showed up again a few months ago – I told you how happy I was to see him. Anyway, he took his puppy training responsibilities seriously. Scarlett didn’t warm to him – she was a shy pup, easily scared – but I kept encouraging and advising him, and he kept her with him all day as he went about his work on the farm.

Then we took in Cairo, a a gangly, goofy Malinois pup produced by a backyard breeder who sold him then wouldn’t take him back when the buyer changed his mind. (Mals are like velociraptors – not for the fainthearted.)

I already had my hands full with our other foster, Cojak, a German Shepherd designated “dangerous” that I’ve been rehabilitating. But it was no problem – it’s as easy to play with two puppies as one, and I hoped Cairo would bring Scarlett out of her shell. Peter Pan started going around the farm with two puppies prancing around him. He got less farm work done but I was good with that; the dogs were more important.

It saddened me that that none of the dogs really liked Peter Pan. He tried so hard to win them over, coaxing and loving on them … I felt bad for him. It didn’t help that Cairo got banged up in an encounter with one of the cows when he was out in the pasture with Peter Pan and got too close to her calf, and also both pups got badly stung by yellow-jackets while out in the shop with him. They were miserable, with their swollen faces and crusty, oozing sores, and they clearly blamed him for the hurt. I kept reassuring him and offering advice – “Don’t force it – let him choose to come to you and then reward him” … “Don’t try to bribe them; just let them know you keep treats in your pockets, and wait for them to come and ask” … “Give her space – she’ll come to you when she’s ready”. My advice was good – it worked. Puppies love treats.

Then it was September, and the conference, and before I could go I had to process a pile of adoption applications for a commotion of chihuahuas we’d rescued from a hoarding situation. So I was distracted, and when Peter Pan mentioned that some of the dogs were off their food I didn’t pay attention.

By the time I received the Hubbit’s text he’d already buried her, and he flatly refused to dig her up again for a necropsy. (Yeah, I’m that wife. But I was right this time.) Peter Pan had found her just before she died, and when I spoke with him over the phone he sounded devastated. Cairo was also sick; they rushed him to the vet, where he went onto a drip and had a bazillion tests, all of which came back looking scary but inconclusive. We sent the food off to a lab to be tested, and I fantasized angrily about the costly vengeance I would wreak upon the manufacturer … but then those results came back negative.

Cairo had a series of follow-up visits with the vet, but remained a sad, sore, floppy puppy. X-rays revealed two broken ribs and a cracked vertebra – an ugly shock; my cows aren’t friendly but they’re not mean – it didn’t make sense that she’d hurt him that badly. The vet prescribed crate rest and various medications, but there was a grim set to her jaw, a look in her eye that told me that, after more than ten years of taking my dogs to her, I had been judged and found wanting.

Cairo’s misadventures continued. He snapped his lower left canine, revealing raw nerves, and developed a hematoma on his left ear. I didn’t know how – snagged the tooth trying to break out of his wire crate? Hooked it in a bone and yanked it out with excessive force? (Everything a Malinois does involves excessive force.) Smacked the ear against something while playing too hard during one of his brief bouts of normal Malinois energy? It was strange and frustrating, but a broken tooth and a hematoma could be identified, diagnosed and fixed. My attention was consumed by more bewildering questions.

The vet noticed that he “walked funny”. “There’s something else going on with this dog,” she muttered. Could he have panosteitis? His face was still swollen, the lesions on his nose weren’t healing properly, and the lymph nodes in his throat were swollen. Could it be juvenile cellulitis? But when I tried to discuss it with her she wouldn’t quite meet my eye. She suggested we hand him off to another, bigger, wealthier rescue, because we’d already run up a sizable bill, we couldn’t afford all the diagnostics she wanted to do, and she wasn’t offering any more discounts.

Back home the other dogs were doing well on their new kibble but Cairo wouldn’t eat, so I started cooking for him – elk, home-raised eggs and veggies, home-made bone broth. He began to get better. I thought gentle exercise might help, so once again he was out with Peter Pan as he worked around our farmlet.

Destra

Then Destra collapsed. Destra is my girl – my first Malinois – an 11-year-old I’ve had since she was a puppy and came to us to recover from the injury that eventually cost her a hind leg. She has an inoperable thyroid tumor wrapped around her throat, so we’ve known for a while her time was limited. She threw up everything in her gut, but once that was done she wasn’t in distress. She just wanted to sleep, wouldn’t eat, and couldn’t really walk. I googled “how to tell my dog is dying”, and all the symptoms checked out. So I made her comfortable, kept her company, and left the care of the other dogs to Peter Pan. Eventually I snugged her up to a hot pillow and went to bed, expecting her to be gone by morning.

She wasn’t. When I sat up in bed and looked at her, she was sitting up and looking at me, and she made it clear that getting her outside to do her business was my most urgent priority. (She didn’t like to be carried but looked very regal in a wheelbarrow lined with blankets.) By the next day she was moving under her own power. I started feeding her the same food as Cairo, and she quickly recovered.

Reading over this I see that I’ve left out so much – but it’s already too long. I just don’t have the space to tell you about the cat Peter Pan found lying dead in the south pasture, or the three perfectly healthy hens that dropped dead without warning. I don’t know if it’s relevant that we brought home a Chihuahua mama and four puppies born by emergency c-section and two of the babies died. One was the runt but the other … I was sure he’d make it. But neonates die, after all – especially after a too long labor, when their mama is still exhausted and too stoned to keep them under the heat lamp.

And then there was Argos. I told you what happened to him. He survived that first night. A test for toxoplasmosis came back negative. The leptospirosis test needs to be confirmed but is a probable negative. Yesterday’s follow-up with the eye specialist revealed that he’s doing well. His eyes may recover fully, but if they don’t … well, he’s a Malinois; he’ll figure it out. Only it makes me crazy that we have no idea what happened to him. We can run test after test, we can speculate about trauma, but we can’t know.

And that’s true for this whole horrible story. We can add 2+2 and pick a number. We can speculate, extrapolate, assume. But there’s not a lot we can know.

Yes, okay … I skipped over the thing that happened last week. Fine. Let’s end this.

I was out, and the Hubbit called and told me to get my ass back home because he’d just caught P beating Cairo. I passed P on the way home and my foot lifted reflexively from the accelerator. He looked so lonely, such a gangly, lost boy walking an empty road on a gray day. “I can take him into town, or to a friend – at any rate, someplace warm,” I thought. “We can talk in the car. There has to be an explanation.”

But then I let my foot drop back onto the accelerator pedal, because the truth is we’d started to wonder about him before that day. The Hubbit had never trusted him but held his peace until I confessed my fears. Then we’d found a private place and prayed together: “Lord, please reveal the truth, and give us the wisdom to know what to do.” We’d borrowed a motion-activated infrared camera and hoped to borrow more, so we could monitor the house and workshop. I’d begun to watch him more closely with the dogs, intervening when they didn’t want to go with him, feeding them myself rather than asking him to do it. I told Kuja, “It feels like we’re cursed. Like there’s something evil loose on our property. And really I’d rather encounter some Halloween-style ghost or ghoul than…” I didn’t want to say it, but she knew. And she knows one doesn’t abandon someone, whether they have four legs or two, without a clear and certain reason.

So anyway, the Hubbit and the Cool Dude walked into the house and heard Cairo screaming. They rushed to him and found that P had somehow folded himself inside the big wire crate to get at the puppy, who was crammed up against the far end. P was stomping Cairo with his army boots. He scrambled out, made some asinine excuse about Cairo having pooped in his crate (there was no poop, and anyway, what the fuck?)

That was five days ago. Since then, I’ve taken over most of P’s chores. One of them was to put out food and water for the invisible barn cats and clean their litter box. I find they’ve gone from being invisible to not there at all. The food and water I put out is untouched, the litter box unused, and mice scurry boldly all over the shop.

On the other hand, Cairo has gone from being a sad, listless puppy to a wonderful lunatic, leaving a wake of destruction wherever he goes.

Cairo. This is from a couple months ago, before he got sick. In fact I think it was taken just a day or two before the horrors began with the wasps. Can you imagine hurting this?

So that’s what happened, and I feel ashamed that I didn’t pay attention when Cairo and Scarlett tried to tell me they weren’t safe. I feel stupid that I was so slow to figure it out. I feel betrayed. Sickened. Abused. Disillusioned. Angry.

I think of the lost boy that I thought I knew, that I thought I could trust, that I thought I could rescue, and I feel bereaved.

Let’s talk. Have you ever trusted someone, and thought you and they were walking the same trail, only to realize the person you trusted may never have existed outside your imagination?

Night watch

It’s nearly 5.00AM. I’ve just wakened Argos. In 15 minutes I’ll rouse him again, and again 15 minutes after that, and again, until the Hubbit wakes and takes over for a while so I can sleep. Argos is irritated by this. He grumbled at me the last time I woke him, 15 minutes ago, when I stroked him and called him a good boy. He hurts and he’s tired and he just wants to sleep, but the vet said he might have a concussion and can’t be left to sleep for 24 hours.

It might not be a concussion. We’re not sure what it is – whether he ingested or inhaled something toxic, or ran into something spiky, or stuck his head into a bush or a hole and got clawed by something – we just don’t know. But the vet thinks most of the signs, although confusing, point to a head injury, so that’s what we’re going with, for now.

Here’s what happened. I was sitting at my computer, working my way through Trevor Noah Steven Colbert Seth Meyers interspersed with random actual fake news bits and also dog rescue stories, because sometimes you just have to have a happy ending…

…and Peter Pan, who won’t try to talk to me when I’m wearing headphones, put a scrap of paper on my keyboard.

“Argos is running into things. I just noticed this 5 minutes ago. Not sure what’s wrong. I just saw him do this as I went outside for my little walk.”

I ran outside and found Argos cowering on the edge of the veranda, an embarrassed look on his face, his eyes swollen and bloody.

The vet I trust wasn’t answering her phone, so I raced to the emergency clinic. His eyes are scratched and bleeding, with abrasions and puncture wounds in the inner eyelids. He has a puncture wound right in the middle of his forehead, but no other bites or scratches anywhere. He is blind. His blood pressure was high, his heart rate was slow and irregular, and he is still lethargic.

The very young vet was baffled. She had never seen anything like it. (There are probably quite a few things she has never seen anything like. She is really very young – not just by comparison with me. It terrified me that she and her array of beeping machines was all there was between us and an intolerable outcome.)

She flushed out his eyes, treated him for inflammation and pain, put him on an IV drip and ran blood work, then disappeared for a long time. After a while I asked whether he was coming back, and a tech told me she was “doing research”. This didn’t entirely reassure me.

And it didn’t help. When she reemerged she still didn’t know what was wrong with him. I called home and demanded that the Hubbit haul Peter Pan out of his shower to answer questions. That’s when Peter Pan mentioned that Argos had been hassling the cattle and Vos, my big old horse. He might have been inside the corral with them. (I have no idea how he gets into the corral, but he does – and no amount of fence-fixing stops him. He’ll go for a little bit of forever without bothering them, and then he remembers How Much FUN It Is, and he notices that my attention is Elsewhere, and he figures out or creates another way through the fence.) Anyway, I passed the information on to the vet, who decided he’d been kicked in the head. She wanted to do x-rays but I said no, ignoring her disapproval, hammering down my guilt, because there’s not a lot we can do about a bad non-human head injury in this town over a weekend (specialist care is at the vet school a couple hours drive away), and $350 was too high a price to satisfy her curiosity. I said we’d simply assume he was concussed and proceed accordingly.

Then I turned down her invitation to keep him under observation. More hundreds of dollars that we don’t have, and for what? He wouldn’t tell her if he felt worse or different. I brought him home, where he belongs. He followed his nose unhesitatingly from the car to the front door and for a moment I thought he was okay after all, but then he tried to go onto the grass to pee and fell off the veranda. He still can’t see.

It’s getting harder to wake him. Last time I called him several times, then petted him, and finally took his collar and shook him before he raised his head, searching for me in the darkness of my brightly lit office. (It’s possible that he’s ignoring me; he does that, sometimes. That’s the hope I’m hanging onto.)

The vet said if it was a bad head injury, he might become increasingly disoriented, even have seizures. He might never regain his sight. He might die.

I’m pinning my hope on the fact that he’s too darn stubborn to quit.

He’s loud and pushy and he won’t listen to anyone who isn’t me. He’s covered with scars because he won’t quit challenging the other dogs – he thinks it’s all fun, a game, getting up close and screaming and whacking them with a toy or body slamming them until they can’t stand it any more and try to rip his head off. If he gets out when the Hubbit is on the tractor he screams with excitement and bites the tires (and then I get mad at the Hubbit for not bringing him back inside, because if he managed to sink his teeth into the rubber and the tire kept rolling it could break his neck), and if we take too long driving through the gate he bites the front of the car (he’s broken his teeth mangling the number plate ). He’s mean to the Hubbit’s little princesses and ignores the chickens right up until I decide I can trust him (I can’t) and he won’t-won’t-won’t take his stare off the cat. He sneaks onto our bed when we’re asleep, and spreads out and makes himself heavy until I wake with a cramp all the way from hip to toes. When he’s outside and wants in, he stands up and hammers so hard on the french door and windows with his scimitar toenails that he’s scratched the glass. When he’s inside, sometimes he covers my head with kisses to let me know he wants out … and sometimes he just pees on the furniture.

He really is an asshole, and he’s a lunatic, a terror, a deranged genius, and the Hubbit can barely stand him.

He’s my ally. My comrade. My first defence against the Black Dog. Life without him is inconceivable.

And he’s not a quitter.

He’s not a quitter.

He won’t quit.

Let’s talk. Whom do you love that makes you crazy, makes you laugh, and keeps you focused on what matters? Have you ever been sick at heart at the thought you might lose them?