Tomorrow marks the beginning of National Dog Week. For me, every week is National Dog Week. I’m a “dog” person.
I have owned Poodles- both miniature and standard,- Yorkies, Afghan Hounds, Bassets, Dobermans, English Bulldogs, Scottish Terriers, and German Shepherds.
I’ve had good dogs, and great dogs, and naughty dogs, and brilliant dogs, and push-button dogs, and dumb dogs, and dogs who had borderline personality disorder.
Some I raised from puppyhood. Some I adopted full-grown from rescue organizations.
Some were “step dogs” I inherited when I married their masters.
Some lived to ripe old ages. Others, suffering from incurable illness, had to be put down before their time. I was with them for the pain-in-the-neck crate training and the tedious house-breaking, and held their paws at the final heart-wrenching visit to the vet’s office.
And I’ve learned something important from every one of them.
Killarney was a “step dog.” A gorgeous silver and black Siberian Husky with eyes of cold, blue steel and a ruthless, hungry hunter’s heart to match.
She had come into my life along with my husband, Mike, an Aspen ski instructor. I can’t say that he owned her. You can’t own a husky. They are a law unto themselves.
I had come into the marriage with two semi-adult children and an adorable Scottie named Andy.
At first, Mike and I were nervous about blending our families. What if the dogs didn’t get along?
(We weren’t worried about the kids. Natasha liked Mike more than she liked me and Nick was jazzed to have someone in the family who could explore the untouched powder of the back country with him.)
But we needn’t have worried. It was puppy love at first sight. Andy adored his canine big sister and she felt protective of him. Killarney had his back. She regarded him with aloof amusement. By her standards, he wasn’t of her species at all.
If you check out the timber wolf habitat at the zoo, and watch their behavior, you’ll see what I mean. The Siberian Husky is as close to her feral ancestors as any dog can be.
Killarney was a wolf in dog’s clothing. There was nothing sweet or sentimental about her. She respected and (mostly) obeyed Mike. She condescendingly tolerated me only as a food- dispensing device. Her heart was with the pack. She was a free spirit, the alpha female, and nobody’s bitch.
She could disappear in a nano second. One minute she’d be gliding silently by your side on a walk around our golf course. The next moment, gone. She could fade magically into the background like a phantom.
(Note to leash law police: We lived in a very undeveloped, underpopulated, scenic, gated community. At that time, there were NO people around to complain about our dogs’ unleashed freedom. There were elk, geese, coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, lynxes, rabbits, owls, hawks, and on several memorable occasions, golden eagles. But few humans. Which is why we lived there.)
One minute there. Next minute…nothing. And she’d be gone for hours. She had things to kill.
Calling her, heck, trying to find her, was to no avail. The only way I could get her to come home was to jump in the car and head for City Market, Colorado’s answer to Jewel.
When I’d return and start unloading the groceries into the house, she’d reappear. Every time. She could hear the rustle of a shopping bag from ten miles away.
As Killarney got older, the hunting got shorter. It took her days to recover from her lastest sortie instead of hours. She slept in the garage for a day or two until she had gathered her strength for her next foray. She refused to come in the house for anything other than a meal. She just didn’t want to be inside- ever.
(Andy, on the other hand, never slept anywhere but our bed. Why would he? Every night, our legs became paralyzed from his dead weight as he blissfully dreamed of chicken, social outings, and all the new people he had yet to befriend. He had the personality of a glad-handing politician. He never met a man he didn’t like.)
And then Killarney developed diabetes. And that was a game changer.
From now on, her roving days were over. Like it or not, she would have to be monitored and given insulin shots on a schedule.
The joke was on both of us.
As a kid, I was so needle-phobic that my mother would have to lie to me to get me into her car, then pull me kicking and screaming into the pediatrician’s office. My little brother, Kenny, would bravely roll up his sleeve and say, “Look, Ellen, it doesn’t hurt,” as the entire doctor’s office would sit on me in order to administer the booster.
And now I was going to be doing the injecting. After all, the dog’s life depended on it.
I learned to give her a shot twice a day while she was eating. Luckily for both of us, she never seemed to mind as her attention was entirely riveted on her breakfast and dinner.
Soon I was an old pro with the hypo. I could roll the bottle of insulin, fill the syringe, flick it to get rid of any air bubbles, and shoot her up faster than you could say “Man with the Golden Arm.”
Did you know they sell insulin over the counter? It was kept in a cooler in the pharmacy section of the grocery store. It’s the needles you need a prescription for.
The first time I had to go buy it, I couldn’t remember if Killarney needed Humalin H or Humalin N. So I lined up with the other customers in the pharmacy and waited my turn.
Other forgetful patients asked to use the phone to call their doctor with some scrip question. When my turn came, I asked if I could call my vet. All the heads in line snapped around, I can promise you.
The insulin kept her alive and she still roused herself once in awhile to chase something.
But she was failing. And Mike couldn’t let go. And when he was called back to New York because his father was sick, I couldn’t bring myself to take that last sad trip with her.
Killarney wasn’t suffering. She was just falling apart. And she was Mike’s. He adored her and how would he feel if I put her down?
So week after week, she hung on. Old, thoroughly worn out, ready for the ice floe. At long last, Mike came home.
And she died in his arms. She had waited for him.
See what I mean about learning something?
