All throughout the hustle and bustle of everyday life, human beings often find themselves in some form of a caretaker role. If we have children, we look out for them; protecting them from harm as we attempt to raise them as best we can and provide them with the knowledge and skills they will need when they strike out on their own. If we have pets, we try to meet their needs to ensure they are healthy and happy, sometimes as if they are the fin, fur or feather embodiment of our own. As we progress through the cycle of life, we ourselves progress from stages where we need to have someone looking out for us to where we look out for ourselves, then finally reverting to a stage where we once again need someone to watch over us as our lives wend to a close.
We see and understand the cycle of life. It has been part of our understanding as long as our history and beyond. Like the animals we often tend who understand at least the fundamentals of birth – infancy – childhood – adulthood – seniority – death, we also understand the need to nurture, protect and watch over the precious parts of our lives.
Our children, and sometimes our pets, grow into roles of eventual caretakers. My wife and I have traveled this path, and are still on it: we care for her mom, who is still a hot ticket in spite of the malady that slowly saps her strength and memories. We also shared in the care of Missy, our “big dog,” as her life slowly came to an end in the second week of May – just one short month ago. Our caring and protection of Missy didn’t end with the passing of our great fuzzy friend, as related by my previous piece “The lady vanishes…again.“
And now, we’ve learned that her caring and protection of us has apparently not ended, either.
Missy came into my life over nine years ago; as previously mentioned, I was her fourth “owner.” She was five and half years old – full adulthood for a member of the canine species, and a time where most Malamutes have established their place in their families and become comfortable with their roles and responsibilities. I was caring for a friend’s Mal (and her kitty) at the time. I’d known that the time would soon come when I would have to part with them as her renovations were almost complete, and I’d learned just how special a breed the Malamute was. In anticipation of finding companion that would hopefully serve to be even half the friend that Smoky – my friend’s male Malamute – had been, I began to think about finding a Malamute puppy to raise as my own.
No sooner had I begun to contemplate this I was presented with the apparent opportunity: a man who had a malamute that he wanted to breed saw me walking Smoky, pulled over, and asked if I’d be willing to breed him to his female. I had no doubts that Smoky would be a willing participant, but I first asked my friend if it was OK with her – she laughed and saw no problem with it. And so we went off for Smoky’s big adventure, meeting Missy for the very first time.
She thought Smoky was great. She also appeared delighted to see me, running around in maddeningly small circles at high speed and then happily throwing herself, full speed, into my knees in greeting. All apparently went well.
Four months later, her owner called. He said the litter had been lost, and that his family had to move and couldn’t take Missy. I bought her. She was not the pup I’d hoped to get, and she’d shown some signs of a little abuse from some earlier point in her life, but she was mine. I couldn’t have made a better decision if I’d had the opinions of the top ten breeders in the nation. In fact, I doubt that I could have made anything close to a good selection just because of the factors that would have weighed against her.
Missy loved to spend time with me. I traveled a lot at the time, and although she wasn’t a “car dog” the same way Smoky was (he’d often sit in the passenger seat and watch the road like a human, while Missy generally slept in the back or stretched across my lap), she and I criss-crossed a good portion of the nation. She was welcomed at most of my clients. She attended writer’s conferences with me. She visited out-of-state friends with me.
When I had to spend most of a week literally at work for a major software conversion, she stayed in the house alone most of the time. A mutual friend brought her out for walks, played with her, kept her food and water updated and spent time just socializing with her so that she wouldn’t be lonely. Missy seemed to know that I was nearby (I worked six minutes from the house), so she didn’t fret too much over the absence. The last day of the conversion project came, and I got to go home at 2:30 am for a few hours sleep in my bed before returning to wrap it up and taking the rest of the day off.
When I got home, I was greeted exuberantly. We played for bit, and then I went to bed. About 20 minutes later, I awoke to find that Missy had climbed up on the bed and was staring intently at me, wooing in a strange and melodious way. She interrupted her wooing abruptly when asked her if she was ok, and looked taken aback by my question. Lifting one very large paw from the bed, she slapped my face back down to the pillow. I (stupidly) raised my head again, concerned, but she repeated the action. This time, however, she didn’t raise her paw until my eyes were closed. (Took me a minute to figure this one out.) She then began her strange little melody again.
She was singing to me in my sleep, watching over me and caring for me as a mother would care for her children. She was worried about me.
I still remember that song.
Any time Missy has been ill since then (she fought off cancer several times, successfully – after the final bout, about 2 years ago, there was no sign of it returning), I would lay down by her side and do my best to “woo” the song back to her. She really seemed to appreciate that, and take comfort in it.
Missy also had another habit, one that got her into a bit of mischief now and again.
She could open nearly any door or gate.
When I went to visit some extended family (not family by blood but by close friendship), she was unable to come into the house (it was tick season). She was placed in the fenced-in backyard, and I went into the house. A short time later, however, my friend’s said that Missy was on the front porch. I’d forgotten to tell them they had to lock their gates; Missy was opening them (she didn’t care if the animals with her in the back got out). As I moved around inside the house, Missy “followed” me, staying near whatever wall drew the shortest line between her and I.
She did this many times, in many places. Some of my computer clients who’d invited me to bring her along due to their own fenced-in yards and love for dogs exclaimed in surprise when they’d be washing dishes and see her, up on her hind legs, peering into the kitchen window to catch a glimpse of me. Sometimes she even opened the door to the house and peered in, although she never actually entered without permission. She seemed to know that if she opened the door and stuck her head in, the client would invariably decide to let her come in and be with me.
Folks might think that with her advanced door skills, she would have to be crate-trained in order to travel effectively. Many hotels – of the ones that permit pets – don’t allow pets larger than 40 lbs. As far as dogs are concerned, they must be leashed at all times, and if ever left in the room alone they must be both crated and quiet. Missy was unique, in that her 85-lb size still won over many a concierge, gaining her entrance to several hotels that would have excluded her otherwise. I never crated her; she knew to wait until I returned. Only once, when there were a lot of kids playing outside the room when I got back from a day way, did I hear her mournfully howling in hopes of rescue and playtime. It sounded like the Discovery Channel doing a segment on wolves in the wild.
On one of our many trips together, the maid service ignored the sign on the door and the explicit instructions on their chore sheets not to enter the room; two women came in, cleaned the room, changed the bedding, and left without noticing Missy just lying there watching the whole show. As they left, one of the women almost forgot her key. She pushed the closing door back open, walked in and scooped it up…and saw Missy watching her for the very first time. She shrieked and ran. The other woman with her saw Missy’s head rise and look from one to other with disinterest as they freaked.
They got a good scare, self-induced. When I got back later, and Missy and I encountered the women as the shift changed and they left for the parking lot, she brought me over to greet them. They were chuckling at their fright, and relayed the whole story to me. It was amusing. Even Missy grinned and woo-wooed as the story was told.
Missy made a lot of friends during the course of our time together. Often, people remembered her better than they remembered me. Our last trip to a writer’s conference illustrated that point well: people mentioned to me as I walked through the lobby that some guy had brought his big beautiful dog with him. They even knew her name, and several of them had met her. Not one of them remembered me. Heh…
When I met my future wife, she was a little taken back by Missy’s size, but shortly after they got to know each other I would find “Wifey” cuddling up to “Woo woo girl” and using her as a pillow – a practice Missy encouraged.
When Missy could no longer climb the stairs to check on Mumsie at night or to let Ember in to wake her in the mornings, she’d sometimes lay at the foot of the stairs and gaze up toward “Yia-yia’s” room. Other times, she’d slowly meander the house, following a circular route on the first floor that took her primarily around just beneath Mumsie’s bedroom floor. If Mumsie got up in the middle of the night and began rummaging (a symptom of her illness), Missy would come over to the couch and get me, or – if it was a rare time that both Wifey and I had gone to bed upstairs – she’d “woo” quietly up the stairs to get our attention. (Note: “Woo” and “quietly” don’t normally go together in a sentence.) She took her “job” and responsibilities for safeguarding her family very seriously.
Now that she’s gone, we find ourselves reminiscing about her daily. I still wake up to find tufts of her fur either on my head or immediately evident on a table surface. We’ve vacuumed the house completely, removing all the stray hair we could find, and yet tufts of her undercoat still show up unexpectedly. I shared some of reflections on some of these phenomena in “The Haunting of Woo House“; our friends have mentioned that Missy must still be watching over us.
Now, it appears that circumstances have conspired yet again to tap us lightly on our heads with a 20 lb sledgehammer in hopes of drawing our attention to this possibility.
Missy had been a bit of a hardship dog – three previous families prior to meeting me, at least one set of abusive encounters, and work as a breeding factory for another owner (she’d had three or four litters when I got her). Our other dog, Ember (Border Collie / Australian Shepherd mix), was a rescue dog in a more traditional sense of the word: I adopted her off the streets of a major city, where she’d lived on her own for most of the first six months of her life.
It was due to the background nature of the dogs I had that I kept an eye open for other dogs – particularly Malamutes – in need of rescue. My wife and I had considered fostering rescued Malamutes a couple years ago. We had been in the habit of looking at one of the various rescue sites a few times a month, to see if any came up that we felt we could help. Many of the ones we’d seen were far off. The rescuers usually provide transportation, but we couldn’t justify moving any dogs so far cross-country just to be temporary foster parents for ’em. We were confident that the Mals we saw would be adopted a little closer to home – a belief that appeared to have been born out over time. As Missy deteriorated in the past six months, I had not bothered to look at the site. I was too focused on wanting to provide the best care I could for the time she had left.
Two days ago, on a whim, I chanced a peek at the site. There was a Malamute in need of rescue. And he was nearby.
He was at our town shelter.
We live in a small town. The chance of a Malamute showing up in our shelter seemed very small. Indeed, this one had transferred from a nearby, larger town. Still, we thought it was an interesting opportunity.
We noted his name – a name that held significance for me from past events and family.
We asked how long he’d been at the shelter. He transferred in on the day that we received Missy’s ashes.
He is three years old – adolescent. He is young, intelligent, healthy and trainable.
We visited him. He appeared to really like us. We brought in Ember – it was important that our “little” dog meet him, if we were to consider adopting him. They played and frolicked together, which Wifey found reassuring. We introduced Mumsie, bringing her in and sitting her in a chair in the shelter’s little foyer. He stood on his back legs, putting his paws on her knees (she laughed with glee) and pushing his big fuzzy face into hers. They hugged and gave each other kisses.
What were the odds, I wondered, that we’d just happen to look at the rescue site, which just happened to list a Malamute at our own town shelter, who had a name that stood out in particular for me and who had arrived on the day Missy’s ashes were returned to us? I’m not given to superstition, but I am a big fan of synchronicity. And, of course, I have faith in my very stubborn dog’s determination to continue to provide for us even after she’s gone.
We put in the application to adopt this big (150 lb!) puppy yesterday.
In 1926, Ira Gershwin wrote a song for the play “Oh, Kay!” called “Someone to watch over me.” It became quite popular: many modern-day musicians have performed it, two books (and movies, I believe) were made with those words for a title. After the (ongoing) events of “The Haunting of Woo House” and unexpectedly finding this young Malamute at the local shelter, the phrase “someone to watch over you” floated through my mind. I can’t say that I found the thought disturbing – it’s comforting to think that perhaps Missy has sent us someone special, so we’ll have a physical presence once again to make manifest the capacity of our former companion to ensure the safety and security of her human family.
It’s a comforting thought.
There’s a somebody I’m longing to see
I hope that she turns out to be
Someone who’ll watch over me
— from “Somebody to watch over me,” words by Ira Gershwin
Update: We were informed that our application to adopt the big pup was accepted, and today (6/12/2006) we brought him into our home.