“There is a cycle of love and death that shapes the lives of those who choose to travel in the company of animals. It is a cycle like any other. To those who have never lived through it’s turnings or walked it’s rocky path, our willingness to give our hearts with full knowledge that they will be broken seems incomprehensible. Only we know how small a price we pay for what we receive; our grief, no matter how powerful it may be, is an insufficient measure of the joy we’ve been given.”-Suzanne Clothier
The pleasure of a dog is that they devote themselves completely to you. The pain of a dog is they don’t live forever. Today I lost a once in a lifetime dog. I’m incredibly attached to all the canines that I call mine. You need only to look at my facebook or Instagram to see that, though you will see precious few photos of the dog about which I write, unless you go back a few years in my facebook photos. Today Takoda said goodbye. At 13 I knew it was coming, though he never lost his love for food and ‘talking’ the moment he realized he was fixing to be fed, his body had grown old and weak and his balance was off. The legs that at one point seemed to be able to run forever no longer supported him well, particularly the back ones. Instead of propelling him across the yard they dragged behind him.Frankly, every morning I woke up to him still alive is a moment I was surprised. He’s slowed down considerably in the last two years. The past two summers I assumed he’d not make it through the end of the year, but he proved me wrong, but the old man has been stubborn as a mule since the day I brought him home.
Takoda was the dog that taught me patience. Not that he was unruly and untrainable, in fact he was quite the opposite. He was the first dog I clicker trained completely and if asked would perform each command like he was reading them off an order. You see, Takoda was a once in a lifetime dog because I waited ten years to bring him home. That is how the dog that I pined and prayed for taught me what it meant to be patient and wait. I am by nature a patient person. It is in my bones to go into things with a plan, and spontaneity scares me. But, waiting for him was a long process. You see I grew up in a home full of dogs, hunting dogs in the form of treeing curs (one of which was my own tiny ginger female Pebbles) , Great Danes, and Labs. None of them was the dog I wanted as bad as Takoda. If you’ve been around a few years you may or may not realize that Disney made a sled dog masterpiece long before Togo hit the streaming platform. Iron Will debuted in 1994 and has, since its inception, been my favorite movie (though Togo has since joined the ranks it really was masterfully done and seeing the real hero dog get his day was fantastic).
A mere few years later I would read a book that birthed a desire in me that I would nurture for a decade before it came to fruition. KAVIK:The Wolf Dog was more or less responsible for my wanting a sled dog of my own. Funnily enough, the dog half of the protagonist was actually Malamute, not Siberian Husky. With much pleading, and waiting, and research, and reading I squirreled away books that are at this point now fifty years old or older, breed histories that I’m incredibly fond of. I would casually drop them in a basket at the book store and walk off.
Then, one day at eighteen I saw an ad in the classifieds for a litter of puppies. For the first time we actually went and looked at a litter and though I had planned on coming home with a female (I wanted a male, but dad wanted me to get a female) I came home with Takoda (he was actually picked by dad and was the largest of the bunch). He let me know quickly he didn’t like concrete and it took about two weeks before he would walk on it without acting like he was being tortured. He got his first booster shot and slept for almost two days except to eat and use the bathroom. As a puppy he would find the oddest places to sleep and until he got too large to fit would sleep under our old secretary that sat by the front door. Then he started sleeping under the coffee table and occasionally he would sleep on the coffee table. He was always a strange thing.
I don’t know that we’ve had a more child patient dog, multiple cousins learned to walk holding onto his fur. Though as he aged his patience for other dogs wore thin and he wanted nothing to do with the others when they wrestled. He acted like a puppy whenever it snowed and when it got cold once we moved to the farm he refused to come in the house. He pulled me exactly two times on a toboggan because I didn’t have a real sled. Like I said, he was stubborn. He knew what he wanted and generally did exactly that. There was the time that he got his head stuck in a yoohoo box (I’ve got photos of that one). That stubbornness was the reason for our burying our fenceline in concrete before we moved because he dug out multiple times. Though he never tried once we did get the farm. He killed a few chickens that didn’t coop up when they were supposed to, an ode to his instinctual prey drive. I did my best to camp with him but he refused to sleep in a tent or do anything but run around the backyard at night while I tried to sleep. True to his stubborn nature he did what he wanted until the last breath. Instead of laying calmly after getting the anesthesia he did his best to get out and see the horses in the trailer beside the car even without the use of his back legs.
He was also the first dog I taught to use his nose for something that wasn’t a squirrel. I taught him to search. He was a slow and methodical searcher. When he was first learning I used my own clothes as scent articles and hid a pair of boxers in an open baggy to keep them from getting covered in dirt but allow the scent to travel around the yard. I thought they were hidden and let him out to the bathroom while the scent aged, he found them and brought them to me sans baggy looking incredibly pleased with the work he’d done. He found Haylee and Ashlee multiple times including one Christmas. They were always up for being shoved into weird places or hiding in the dark in the yard for him to be let out to find. He loved to search and the petting and treats that ensued when he found the people he was looking for.
The love of that crazy dog also helped me meet one of my favorite celebrities although by most worldly standards she would not be considered a celebrity. One year the Siberian Husky National Specialty was held downtown at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. I met Karen Ramstead at the show. I’d followed her for years on her website and blog being regaled by Iditarod and training run tales and fawning over beautiful “pretty sled dog” pictures. I got to talk to her in between her showing dogs and manning a booth selling Northwapiti things (I bought a hoodie that I still have it is somehow still in great condition despite being worn fairly constantly for a number of years.
Man, I loved that dog. Takoda will probably be the only Siberian Husky I ever own. The furry, wolf like dog that I waited for forever was quite the course in dog ownership and helped me learn to train stubborn dogs. Much of what I can do now with other people's dogs is because of him.
Thank you for being a once in a lifetime dog old man. You were well worth the wait. If I had a choice I’d wait all over again to bring you home. You’ll be missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment