For the love of a girl and her dog

Daisy pulls me north along the shore of Lake Michigan in the late-October afternoon. A breeze sends little chills through me. I am wearing only a light sweater over a sleeveless long dress as we walk through the grass and onto the asphalt. My jacket is inside the Theater on the Lake, as are all the other people who came to see Lauren and Sam get married. I get funny looks from people on the path, who must wonder what this woman in a formal dress and shoes, wearing a strange-looking garland of flowers around her neck, is doing walking a dog here.

Daisy. Photo by Lauren Frisch.

I would do pretty much anything for Daisy. The dog formerly known as TaDa! was my favorite of the eight sled dog puppies my mushing partner, Bonnie, brought home from Arleigh Reynolds’ kennel. I thought she was the most beautiful of the litter, with shiny black fur and lovely black-and-white spots and ticking on her legs, chest and belly. Her tail had a distinctive white tip that made her easy to identify among a team of mostly black dogs. Her siblings were wiggly and bombastic, but TaDa! would sit quietly with me, my arm around her, just hanging out together.

Daisy-TaDa!’s story is too long to tell here, but the short of it is that she ended up flunking out as a sled dog, and she also nearly flunked out of being alive because she would attack other dogs. I couldn’t bear losing this dog I loved, but I couldn’t take her myself. My friend Carol Kleckner put me in touch with Nicole Silvers, who specialized in working with aggression. I paid for TaDa! to be spayed, and I got used to the new name Nicole gave her: Daisy. 

The spay worked magic on Daisy’s temperament with other dogs. But she remained cool and distant to most people. A few potential adopters showed interest in her, but she showed no interest in them. I wanted her to find a home, and at the same time I dreaded the thought of losing her to some stranger. 

It turned out Daisy was waiting for Lauren. The day they met, it took about 30 seconds before Daisy jumped up on her.

I would do pretty much anything for Lauren. I would have flown from Alaska to Chicago, more than halfway across the continent, to attend her wedding even if Daisy hadn’t been there.

Lauren’s story also is too long to tell here, but the short of it is that she started out as my intern, ended up my boss, and in the process became one of my dearest friends. She had an outrageous sense of humor and a keen sense of play. She made up activities with the stuffed animals in my office, which only cemented my love for her. When Lauren adopted Daisy, I felt as if the universe had just given me the most astonishing and unimaginable gift.

Lauren doing Snoga yoga in my office.

A few years later, Lauren and Sam moved to Vermont, taking Daisy and part of my heart with them. Lauren sent photos on a regular basis. It was clear Daisy was living the best life a dog could ever ask for.

Daisy is supposed to be the flower dog in Lauren and Sam’s wedding ceremony. A few days before the wedding, Lauren texts me to see if I’ll come to her parents’ house to walk Daisy after I get to Chicago. She sends me a photo of Daisy lying in a chair, her body seemingly at rest but her eyes unsettled, not happy. Maybe too much high energy, too many things going on. She’s been on road trips before, she’s been to Chicago before. This is different.

When we get to the house, Lauren’s father answers the door. His face doesn’t even register—I am only looking for Daisy. She walks out the door and I go down on my knees, my arms around her. I hold her for a long time and bury my face in her neck, and give her kisses, and only belatedly begin to register anything or anyone else.

The plan is for Daisy to wear a garland of flowers and walk down the aisle with Lauren’s mom, Debbie. Debbie suggests that I sit in the front of the room so that Daisy will have a friendly, familiar face to walk toward. When the time comes, I sit cockeyed, turned half toward the door, waiting to be Daisy’s friendly target.

It is getting close to the start—maybe even a little after the ceremony was supposed to start. Debbie walks up and asks me to come with her.

Lauren is standing just outside the doorway, stunningly beautiful in her white dress. Daisy is trying her best to find the exit. Debbie says she thinks I will have to walk Daisy up the aisle. But Lauren knows her dog. It’s not clear that plan will work, and it’s very clear Daisy would be happiest back in the safety of someone’s car. How to get her there, though? The ceremony is about to start. I have no idea what car to take Daisy to, and to have Lauren’s mom walk her back out to a vehicle will hold up the whole wedding procession.

I can’t imagine what is going through Lauren’s mind. Her beloved dog, who was supposed to be part of the wedding, is freaking out, and there is no easy solution. 

Debbie looks at Lauren. “What do you want to do?” 

Lauren says, “I don’t know.” 

I’ll do anything to ease the look on Lauren’s face. I say, “Let me at least try.”

Daisy and I only make it a few steps into the room before she balks. I crouch next to her as she tries to turn around and bolt back out the door. I feel people looking at us while I hold Daisy in my arms. She struggles against me. I feel her fear all through her body. I can’t see her face, but Dave later tells me she looks panicked, mouth open, eyes wide. 

Sam and his parents walk past us down the aisle. People are looking at them, but also at Daisy and me. I stand up, turn around, and let Daisy take me out of the room. As I pass Lauren, I reach up and kiss her cheek and say, “I love you.” Daisy and I hurry down the hall and out to the safety of the lawn.

We walk around the lawn for a short while. I think the garland around Daisy’s neck is worrying her, but I don’t know what to do with it, so I take it off her and put it around my own neck. After a little while, Daisy seems to calm down. My thoughts are on the ceremony I don’t want to miss, and I wonder if we should try to go back in. Maybe if Daisy saw Lauren at the front of the room, she’d feel braver? 

We turn around, and Daisy willingly follows me back into the building, down the hallway of fog and spiders and cobwebs, and all the way up to the doors into the room. Her willingness gives me hope. But the doors are closed. The last thing I want to do is open those doors and make a spectacle. Someone comes out and I catch the door. Daisy and I slip inside. There are Lauren and Sam at the head of the room, silhouetted against the big windows that face the lake. Sam has just begun saying his vows to Lauren. I haven’t missed everything.

But Daisy is again in a blind panic. I whisper to her to look, whisper that Lauren is right there. I pet her, hold her, try in vain to calm her down. Nothing consoles her. We retreat again.

Earlier, before the ceremony, a fire alarm in the building went off, and the big fire truck that responded is still sitting out front. We turn away from it onto the path that leads along the lake side of the building, not realizing that this has put us in full view of the wedding attendees. Dave tells me later that Lauren remarks on her dog walking by. I hear a noise behind me and startle: the fire truck is right on our heels. Daisy and I jump off the pavement to let it by. Then she pulls me over grass and goose poop to the paved path that follows the shore.

We walk a long way down the path among bicyclists and walkers and runners. Daisy is not pulling hard anymore but keeping steady pressure on the leash. I look at my watch: 5:27 pm. The ceremony is probably close to over. I call to Daisy to turn around. She refuses. I tug at the leash. She sits down. This dog was born and raised a sled dog, and I know how to safely pick her up off her front feet and make her go where I want to go. But I can’t bring myself to do it. So onward we walk in the wrong direction, away from the place I most want to be.

I notice a break in the wall that separates the walking path from a concrete apron below it that runs directly against the shoreline. On impulse, I say, “Daisy, gee!” She turns right. We go down through the opening and onto the concrete. From here, if you’re a dog, you can’t see over the wall to the building or even the path you’ve been on. I say, “Daisy, gee!” again, and she turns right again, and she doesn’t realize we are going back.

By the time we get near the Theater on the Lake, I can see Lauren out on the lawn. Daisy and I come back up onto the path and head straight for her. After a happy reunion, the wedding photographer asks for photos on the lawn. She has some exceptional treats that make Daisy drool, and she poses willingly, to everyone’s surprise.

When the photos are done, Daisy is taken back to the vehicle she came in. She drinks a ton of water and then stretches out on her blanket. She is tired, but her eyes are calm. I tell her she did the best she could, and that I’m sorry about the scary room. I know I won’t see her again until next summer, and tears threaten, but I’ve only just met the people around me, so I stifle them. I tell Daisy I love her and say goodbye.

Later, at the reception, Sam and Lauren have transformed themselves into zombies. Lauren is an unsmiling bride with fierce dark eyes and black lips. The music is very loud and there is a lot of exuberant dancing. The band plays “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, and I have to go find Lauren because this song always reminds me of her. We dance briefly together, and she says something to me that I can’t quite hear. Something like, “You realize, don’t you, that…” and the rest is lost to the music. I smile and nod uncertainly, thinking maybe it has something to do with Daisy. She says again, “You do realize that, don’t you?” and whatever it is seems important, so I say yes.

Rissa

For Cindy. It was hard to find a short dog story with a happy ending, but here’s one.

The night I fell in love with Rissa, she was a scrawny, runty, some would even say ugly little thing. The tiny red puppy was already dwarfed by her brother at only 8 weeks of age. With her spindly legs and a funny-looking white stomach that was knobby with ribs and bulging with worms, I thought she looked a little like those photos of Biafran children. Back then, there were no hints of the lovely, delicate princess she would grow into. 

My friend Lynn was boarding the two as-yet-nameless pups for a local musher, and I’d come over several times to visit them. That night, when Lynn sent Rissa out of the house to pee, I put on my coat and boots and followed her out into the dark, just to keep her company. 

Lynn had four geese at the time who ran around loose in her yard. The hefty birds were staunch defenders of their territory and unfriendly to any interlopers, particularly little puppies. As Rissa clambered off the porch, the geese converged on her, hissing viciously. I knew it was Lynn’s policy to let the various animals around her house work out their differences unassisted, but Rissa was so tiny, and it was four to one.

I stepped off the porch and straddled Rissa with my feet. She was so small that my boots formed an effective barrier around her. Seeing their prey disappear from view, the geese turned their ire on me. They hissed and took several violent swipes at my knee caps. Luckily I had long underwear on, so I only felt dull blows, no pinching. I stood my ground. Getting no reaction, they eventually gave up and backed off, still grumbling and hissing.

Rissa had peed and was ready to go back in the house, but she didn’t want to leave the shelter of my legs while the evil geese still lurked nearby. So I picked her up. She buried her head in my neck and snuggled close. In that instant, I fell hopelessly in love with another man’s dog.

She is not yours, I told myself decisively. I tried to put her out of my mind after she went back to her rightful owner, but I couldn’t forget her. I heard that her owner named her “Wispy,” and I didn’t like it—it sounded too much like “Wimpy.” When I found out he was trying to give her back to the breeder she’d come from because she was too small, I heard myself say to Lynn that I’d love to get my hands on that pup, even now, months later. What was I saying? I was not supposed to get any more dogs. 

I don’t remember how I convinced my then-husband, Cal, that we should take on another sled dog after I’d agreed not to. But somehow “Wispy” ended up in my yard. I immediately renamed her Rissa after a bold, brave, daring heroine of a science fiction novel, hoping she would live up to it. (She didn’t, but she made up for it by being irresistibly sweet.)

Rissa and I spent the first evening of our new life together hanging out at Lynn’s house again. Rissa, now much older but still a pup, had been outside racing around with the other dogs, playing madly with Lynn’s menagerie. She was now plenty fast enough to evade malevolent geese, though she would always be a very small sled dog. 

I was sitting on the floor when Lynn let the dogs back inside. Rissa came bolting straight to me and climbed into my arms, snuggling in as close as she could and nuzzling my neck until I giggled. I thought I would overflow at the feel of this warm, wondrous girl who thought the best place in the world was my lap. My friend Karl laughed at me, all lovesick and mooning over my puppy, but it was a kind laugh. He said, “That dog sure knows where she belongs.” I smiled back, and hugged my dog, and buried my face in her soft, red fur.

Kluane: Afterwords

Fare well: June 24

I throw away the piece of toilet paper I tore bits off of to wrap her Tramadol, that vile-tasting painkiller. I parcel out between Willow and Tsuga (here with his brother Rubus for summer camp) the spoonful of coconut oil she didn’t eat yesterday, and divvy up her unfinished kibble between the three of them. I use the little scrap of paper towel to clean the spoons I’ll no longer use to drop coconut oil on her food. Tears baptize these last acts, the remnants of a morning routine that stretches back three years, that defined the beginning of each day.

No relief, no feeling of freedom accompanies the ending of my dog’s complicated life. Kluane needed a lot of care, but it wasn’t hard. I didn’t have to clean up after her. I didn’t have to carry her everywhere. I only had to give her pills and coconut oil, and that was easy once we figured it out. I only had to feed her twice a day, only had to persuade her to eat some of the time. I let her in and out of the house a lot. It was time-consuming, and sometimes it was hard on my heart, that’s all.

It was nothing compared to what Kluane gave back, this sweet, compliant dog of mine.

A snapshot: May 11

The early morning sun hits her, all slanted and golden, and it lights up her fur. Her black coat shines. The gold rays reflect off the lighter fur on her throat and the buff inside her ears. Her ears are perked, waiting to see what I will do, as I stand in the doorway. She is luminous.

I want to hold this snapshot of a beautiful dog.

I don’t want to write about the new malady that is making Kluane stumble. I don’t want to say that it seems the end rushes toward us as the stumbling so steadily worsens. She fell badly yesterday, and I helped her up. She can barely get in and out of her doghouse because her legs don’t fold properly. Her strange rocking gait now includes a back-leg swing because the leg won’t move straight forward anymore. It takes her a long time to get comfortable on her bed in the house, and a long time to get up.

She still seems happy enough, most of the time. But this can’t last.

How will I finally give up on this dog? I’ve spent three years learning not to.

And after: July 5

The answer I looked for was in Kluane’s eyes. All the way through May and most of June, she forged on, less and less functional but always quietly determined. She tripped, she went down, she got back up. One day she got stuck in a tiny hole because she couldn’t lift up her back leg even an inch. She worked at it and finally stumbled out. Another day all four legs went out from under her on the tile floor, and she splayed like Bambi. She got back up. She had to work harder and harder to lie in her kennel because her legs wouldn’t bend, but she just kept at it.

Through it all, I watched her eyes. They were always calm. I saw no trace of pain—although I did bump up her Tramadol to make sure.

Then one morning she looked unhappy. That night, she panted uncomfortably and in her eyes I saw bewilderment and distress. The veterinarian didn’t get my message right away, and for the next couple days I kept trying to find signs of improvement. When we finally made an appointment, I was still second-guessing myself. Even after living with the certainty of this ending, I knew hope wasn’t going to go out easy.

I don’t know what happens when dogs die, any more than I know what happens when we do. I have only seen that something changes at the moment when life ends. In the aftermath of the final breath, that which was present is gone. Kluane did not follow the rules, not exactly. You would think a dog so depleted, so skinny and ill, would go very quickly. But when the drug was injected, her heart kept beating much longer than the veterinarian or I expected. I felt hope flare one crazy, final time. And then, when the drug finally did its work and all should have been quiet and done, her body took a few deep, easy breaths, as if in utter relaxation and peace.

I know that this can happen, that the body can still react even after there’s no activity in the brain. But calling it quits on this dog was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. So here is the story I tell myself: Those last improbable breaths were because she had spent three long years being ill and several months becoming more and more crippled. She’d been bound to life by her own fortitude, but maybe also by my refusal to give up on her. Finally, she could be free.

Lessons from an IBD dog

Kluane eats all of her breakfast, along with her pills, coconut oil and probiotics. After, she stretches out in her kennel and snoozes on this lazy, foggy-wet Sunday morning. She loves weekends because she gets to stay inside all day. Come winter, we’ll see how she does staying inside while I’m at work. She’s far too thin now to be left outside once it gets cold.

We played fetch again last night in the dark and rain. Tsuga and Kluane raced each other to the ball as old Pepper tottered back and forth behind them, getting more exercise than he has in years. I wish I’d known, when Tsuga came to stay for the summer, how well this game would work. I never brought any toys into the yard because I worried about doggy competition and possible dogfights. I needn’t have. Kluane crabs at Tsuga if he gets too pushy, and he backs off. Willow doesn’t play, whether from bad eyesight or worry or something else, but she spends most of the time sitting on my feet or watching from the safety of a doghouse. If she does chase the ball, she defers to Tsuga with no argument, and she and Kluane are carefully neutral. Even the rare collisions between Tsuga and Pepper don’t result in bad words between them.

It took my dogsitter to teach Kluane to fetch. When I’d thrown the ball for Kluane in the past, she’d chase after it and then drop it. I tried to teach her a couple times to retrieve, but she’d invariably leave the ball and come to me without it. I gave up, figuring maybe she wasn’t smart enough. Olivia, with no preconceived notions of failure, taught Kluane to fetch in the house, using the hall in the basement for a runway. She said it took a few tries, but soon Kluane learned to bring the ball back to her. Now she retrieves beautifully, and she has even thrown the ball at my hands a few times.

Inspired (and humbled) by Olivia, I decided to see if I could teach Tsuga to fetch. To my delight and embarrassment, it was ridiculously easy. He already loved chasing the ball, so all I needed was a little patience. He’d circle me closer and closer until he got within reach. I’d grab him, take the ball, heap praise upon him, and throw it again. The light went on pretty darn quickly: Carol will throw the ball if I let her catch me, and then I can chase it again! Admittedly, Tsuga’s idea of the recall is a little offbeat: he either circles me until I grab him, or he comes over and gives me his butt, waiting for me to reach way forward and snag the ball out of his mouth. Not the most efficient, but it works.

So now I have a new, easy way to give my IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) dog a lot of exercise, which helps her appetite. She loves the game, I love seeing her play, and I especially love seeing her eat afterward. She’s still a skeleton covered with skin, she’s still sick, she’s almost certainly still on borrowed time. But we’re having fun.

I would give a lot to have my healthy dog back, to see Kluane as she once was. I hate what this disease has done to her: the bony ridges of her head, her ribs jutting out, her hips so prominent, no spare flesh anywhere. But I’ve learned many lessons from Kluane’s illness, too. I can’t be glad she got it. I can be grateful for what it’s given us.

When Storm had IBD and lymphangiectasia, it undid me. It was hell watching my one-in-a-million dog turn into a rack of bones, and even greater hell trying unsuccessfully to feed her day after day after day. At the end, I sometimes spent nearly four hours a day coaxing her to eat, one kibble at a time, my heart breaking every time she turned her head away. Even though she was still fairly active, she was steadily losing ground, and I was afraid I would wait too long to let her go. I was also at the end of my emotional rope. So I had her euthanized.

Too soon, as it turns out. Now, from Kluane, I know that Storm could have been kept comfortable, with good quality of life, for a while longer. Maybe only days, maybe just a few weeks, but a while. Long enough to have a few more really good times, maybe long enough for the warmer days of spring to set in, maybe even long enough for me to come to terms with her dying. (Maybe not.)

I didn’t know that then, and I could not bear to watch Storm die. Afterward, I could not bear what I had done. For months, I could not stand to even think about it, and even after a couple of years, I had not forgiven myself. It was torture to remember her last day, when we walked a mile together and she raced me home—and beat me handily.

Fury rose up when Kluane was diagnosed with IBD. What vile karma was this, giving me two IBD dogs in succession? When I found myself feeding Kluane by hand, kibble by kibble, I was dumbfounded with anger, resentment, despair. Why did I have to go through this again? I yelled at Kluane a couple of times. I slammed the kennel door shut, slammed bowls down on the counter. I cried and cried and cried. It seemed as if every time hope snuck in, Kluane would go downhill. Then I’d give up, think about putting her to sleep, and she’d rally. Updownupdownupdown. After a while, I wanted to put her to sleep because I could not bear the rollercoaster. I did not want to watch her die. I did not want to go through this all over again. It was too unfair.

I changed this summer in some profound ways. I’m still processing how and why it all happened, what it means, who I’ve become. My attitude toward Kluane, toward her disease, is one of those changes. I no longer get angry when she doesn’t eat. If all my tricks—sweet-talking, hand-feeding, dropping kibble on the floor, switching bowls—don’t work, I put her food in the fridge and tell her we’ll try again later. On a bad day, I sit with her longer and give her extra pets. I still cry, gentler tears that don’t twist up my insides. I’m grateful for the good days. I resist getting hopeful. My vet and I have done all we could, and we seem to have gotten Kluane stabilized, but there’s no evidence that she’s in remission. There’s little likelihood she will live for many more years, that she’ll beat this disease. My dog is here, now, and that has to be good enough.

I’ve spent a lot of time parked on the floor next to Kluane, thinking about her disease, thinking about Storm, facing things that for the longest time I tried to hide from. Watching how Kluane keeps keeping on, even after losing so much weight, has cemented my conviction that I gave up on Storm too soon. At the same time, I understand better now what drove me to that fateful last step. It was a love too fierce, too big, too blind. Sometimes you can love a person or a dog too much, to the point where you would rather amputate them quickly than watch them leave you slowly.

This disease requires my patience and acceptance. Clearly, even as a walking skeleton, Kluane is not at all ready to give up. I have to let things happen as they will. That kind of acceptance is so hard for me. I’m a rescuer, damn it, not a Zen master. But it also has given me a second chance. I’m working on forgiving myself for Storm, and I’m getting somewhere.

Someday I will write about Storm, about loving a dog too much. I’m not quite ready yet. Meanwhile, I throw balls in the dark and the rain and think of how grateful I am for these two, Tsuga and Kluane, running after that wet, slimy ball and bringing it back to me, over and over again.