May I Never Know The Cold

This time of year reminds me of important moments in my dog life.  I have had many teachers, and my dogs have been some of my best.

The first dog that was truly all mine, was Spunky.  I'm not sure if he was genuinely going to be killed the day my mom said I could adopt him, but I remember the day, being on the phone, the pressure that if I didn't say, "Yes," to this English Setter I hadn't even met he would be gone, and the exhilaration of having my very own dog.

Spunky and His Girl

At the time Spunky entered my life, I knew very little about the responsibilities and skills required for caring for a dog.  I was nine years old, had always had a family dog, but had never had a dog solely dependent upon me to meet all of his needs.  Spunky taught me.  I remember going to the library at Decker Elementary and asking if there were any books on dogs.  The librarian directed me to books that were fictional, and I said, "Actually, I need a non-fiction book on how to properly raise a dog."  I recall the response being, "Uuuhhh…," so my mom took me to the Walled Lake Library from which I borrowed a humongous stack of dog training books.  I read them all, and got to work.

One of the things I never considered training out of Spunky was his love of fruits and vegetables.  We lived on a 7-acre island, and had a large garden tended to by my Gram and the rest of us by her direction.  Spunky LOVED green beans. He would not pick them off the vine himself, but would patiently wait for me to pick one off, feed it to him, and move on down the row.  The wild strawberries though were easy for him to pick himself, and since the raccoons and squirrels and deer and other wildlife also ate the wild strawberries, I never corrected Spunky when he would eat them off their vines.

My brother had a different idea.  He thought Spunky should stay away from the wild strawberries, and without my knowledge, shot Spunky with a BB gun to "teach him a lesson."  When I noticed this wound on my dog's left flank, I approached "Dr. Curtin" (my dad) on what to do.  Dr. Curtin seemed to know what to do right away.  He told me to tell Spunky to lie down and stay, and for me to hold this huge flashlight.  With one hand, Dr. Curtin maneuvered Spunky's wound to reveal a BB, and with the other, used a powerful magnet to extract the magnet from the wound.

Once the BB was removed, I lost my marbles and screamed at my brother for shooting my dog, and ranted about how lucky my brother was that Dr. Curtin was always on duty and that Responsible Dog Owner Leanne was aware of her Spunky's health, and that my brother better never come anywhere near my dog again, "No. Joke, Sir.  No. Joke.  Tell him, Dad.  Tell him I'm not joking."  My dad said something like, "We're all lucky you taught that dog to stay still."  Country living, folks.  Country living.

Gram aiming for a snake.  Seriously.

One behavior I hadn't mastered with Spunky was keeping him on The Island, and Spunky was hit by a car on December 2nd, 1980.  I was with him as he took his last breath, and I promised to never let this happen again.  I promised Spunky I would never lose a dog due to my lack of love and devotion to training and safety again.  I thanked him for loving me and being such a wonderful teacher, and then he was gone.  Brutal pain for anyone.  Nearly unbearable for an 11-year-old.

My next great teacher was Woof.  He was a rescued puppy from a litter with some very sick siblings.  Woof was healthy, and I had my first, and only since, experience with raising a dog from almost the very beginning.  Woof was going to be named Sir Lance of Spencer after Lance Parrish and Lady Diana Spencer, but his nickname of Woof just stayed, and I called him nothing else.  Well, Woof was also known as Woofer, Woofie Honey, Woofie Wookiee.

Woof had his own whistle pattern to which he came, and he never went over the bridge crossing the water that made our home The Island.  He would wait at the bridge every day as I walked to the busstop at the end of our 1/4-mile-long driveway, and he would wait there for me after school, knowing when the school bus was arriving or when cheerleading practice was over.

We did everything together from picking up sticks before cutting the grass to ice skating to chopping and stacking wood.  Woof killed woodchucks, but left the snakes and chipmunks for the family cat.  When I would swim out to the raft, he would swim behind me, and if he saw something across the water that he wanted, when I called him, he would turn around and swim back to me.  I never had to look to see where he was, I knew he was right next to me.

I have no pictures with my human Prom date,
just this one with True Love, Woof.

He couldn't come to college with me, and that was one of my biggest heartbreaks.  For the first time in my life, I was without a dog.  It was after grad school that it was obvious Woof was ready to go.  We had had to live apart for several years, and once I was all grown up, and he was about 14 years old, he had to say goodbye.  Letting him go, even while being with him in the moment, was another of those big heartbreaks.  I thanked him for all he had taught me, and apologized for our time apart.  I promised I would never be selfish like that again.  I would never again choose my wants over my dog.  I promised I would always work around my dogs' needs, and I prayed that my dog and I would never know separation again.  In the Winter of 1994, I felt the chill to my bones of being dogless.

Even without snow this December, I feel the Winter.  The Winter of Doglessness.  It is a cold with painful depth.  It is a cold warmed only by my Luna, and my Foster, and my Atticus. It is a cold I pray I never have to know again.