Meet Jack.
Jack is a three year old Alaskan Malamute. He’s the newest member of the Hawk clan, and he came to us one month after the loss of our much-loved Malamute, Missy.
Missy passed away on May 9th of this year, when her nearly fifteen year old body could no longer contain her loving and powerful spirit. Even though Missy’s body is gone, her spirit remains, as has her influence and determination to continue to provide for us. That’s how we ended up with Jack, in fact.
Missy passed away May 9th, but I couldn’t put my thoughts and feelings into words until shortly after we’d received her ashes back from the vet a few weeks later — only to have them vanish for a day, as recounted in The Lady Vanishes…Again (dKos, ePluribus, Booman, StreetProphets). When June 6th rolled around, spurring commentary over the ominous portent of “06/06/06” and the possible ways that unstable individuals or groups could seek to exploit the treble-six, I shared a “ghost story” called “The Haunting of Woo House” (dKos, ePluribus, Booman, StreetProphets) that spoke of how our fuzzy guardian’s presence was still strongly felt by everyone here, including Missy’s now solitary former companion, Ember — the little brown dog.
Shortly after sharing that tale, events unfolded that inspired me to write another piece entitled “Someone to Watch Over Me…”, which detailed the discovery and introduction of our new family member, “Mr. Jack.” (dKos, ePluribus, Booman, StreetProphets). It appeared that our fuzzy former companion was tenaciously continuing her self-appointed job of guardian and matron of the home and family, and through method and means unbeknownst to us had managed to find a new “big dog” to fill her role in the physical world — a huge, happy and loving dog named Jack who needed a new family, one that would watch out for him and that he could watch over in return.
This is Jack’s story.
Perhaps more precisely, this is the introduction to Jack’s story, at the point where he entered our lives. The story itself is one that we hope unfolds over a very long time, extending far into our future and rich with the unique blend of color and vibrancy that we have come to know and love in our four-footed furry companions.
Jack was one hundred and fifty pounds when I first learned of him. The whole process of meeting him and applying to adopt him at our local shelter went surprisingly smoothly. Within a few scant days of learning of this big boy’s existence, we were informed that our application to adopt him was approved and we happily picked him up. 
The shelter gave us a little bit of information about his previous life — his owner had passed away, and he spent nearly four months in a kennel thanks to the generosity of an animal rescue worker. His generous benefactor was, like many of us, working with a limited budget, so had to opt for ensuring that a longer duration of kenneling was paid for at the cost of daily walks, in hopes that Jack would be adopted before time and funding ran out. By cutting the cost of the walks, which was an additional $5 or $10 per day (I think – not sure if that could be per week), Jack was afforded almost an entire extra month before any difficult decisions had to be made. He was transferred from the kennel in his home town to the shelter in my town prior to the exhaustion of his allotted time, and we stumbled across him there.
The shelter believed that his excess weight (approximately 25 lbs overweight) may have been due to the combination of little exercise, big meals and stress. They’d been working with him — he was on a diet, and getting extra walks — and he’d already lost some weight by the time I called to inquire about him. When we picked him up to bring him home, he was down to 149 pounds. He’s now down to 135, and beginning to look svelt. (An unforeseen advantage to this — I’ve dropped a few pounds, too; my lifestyle had become more sedentary and slightly more stressed, and it showed. Walking and playing with a 150 lb dog throughout the course of each and every day definitely starts snapping you into shape.)
Jack’s first reaction upon getting to our house was to happily acknowledge everyone, then go off on a sniffing/familiarization tear that was not unexpected. What was unexpected were his initial “ports of call” on his self-guided tour of his new home.
His first primary point of interest was the small sanctuary that Wifey had build to Missy, in our living room by a window. He went to it immediately, and gave a it a careful, if quick, once-over. He then turned and trotted upstairs. To Mumsie’s room. To the spot where Missy’s ashes had been hidden that day they “vanished” from the sanctuary. That was a tad spooky, perhaps.
His third stop was even spookier.
He trotted over to the room where Wifey and I sleep, and went straight ’round the bed to where Missy’s ashes, in the nicely polished wooden box, now rest atop my nightstand. He studied the box, with Missy’s collar gently laid atop it, for a long moment, then he leapt onto the bed facing the box, and lay down, gazing at it.
See what I mean? Spooky.
I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk, and he immediately got up, leaped off the bed and raced downstairs — I took that as a “yes” and followed, filing away his interesting manner of introducing himself to the former furry matriarch.
His adjustment has, for the most part, gone swimmingly. Like most malamutes, he’s exceptionally friendly to new people — some more than others, with a few folks apparently appealing to him based on thinking he recognizes them from a previous encounter. He’s vocal, although not as conversational as “The Woo” had been, and as his confidence in the stability of his new life grows, his vocalizing has also grown.
The little dog, by the way, loves her new “toy” — he plays, rolls over, makes loud sounds, and lets her slap him around a bit in their playful romps all across the living room (and the couch, and the dining room, and sometimes the bed — whether or not it’s occupied…). 
She’s not so sure about his taste in treats — he loves the crunch of carrots, while she prefers actual dog treats — but she does appear to like having him around. Most of the time. When she’s not too tired from playing. (She’s a bit over seven years old, lots of energy — but he’s still just a great big exuberant puppy, so she gets pooped before he does, and he doesn’t always understand, nor does he quietly accept “no” as an answer.)
In the initial adjustment week and half, we failed to notice something about Jack’s facial coloring that we now find significant. Keeping in mind that one can find significance in almost anything if they look hard enough, and the odd feeling we’d had that Missy may have had something to do with our new “pup” arriving and fitting in so well, it may not come as a surprise when I say that Missy appears to have put her mark on him through a serendipitous occurrence of genetic happenstance.
Yes, I know — you’re probably re-reading that line and saying to yourself “What the heck did that featherhead just say? What’d he mean by that?” I sometimes get overblown with my verbal descriptions and use of imagery.
Simply put, he has a fairly distinctive “M” on his face.
When you look at him directly head-on, it’s quite pronounced, whereas when you’re off the one side or another, the central inner connections fade to a grey and blen with the stripe running down the center of his face. Wifey and I started calling him our “Monogrammed Malamute.”
(I’ve been unable to get a good picture of it — like his predecessor, he knows what a camera is, and likes to move or shift just as the picture is taken, ensuring that if the lighting doesn’t go wonky then perhaps the motion would blur the shot. I’m attaching the closest one I’ve been able to get, which isn’t as pronounced as a direct face shot but it’s close — you can make out the suggestion of an “M” at least, and that’s perhaps the best I’ll be able to do until I can sneak up on him when he’s asleep, camera in hand.)
In my previous “doggie diary” — “Someone to Watch Over Me…” — I included an excerpt from the Gershwin song from which I’d taken the title. It was just two weeks ago that I played that song on Wifey’s computer, with the lyrics up on her monitor. That’s when I noticed it.
That’s when I pointed it out to Wifey.
That’s when she cried, and had to stop the replay of the song for a little bit to compose her, and that’s why she had to replay it later to hear it all the way through.
One line of the lyrics stood out, a line that I didn’t recall seeing before:
I’d like to add her initial to my monogram
The monogrammed malamute.
And at that moment, our monogrammed malamute made his way over to nuzzle Wifey gently, to see what was upsetting her and to reassure her that he was there, watching over her, and us, and keeping us all safe.
