losing dogs

Dottie and Sawyer went home yesterday. I had those old girls for nearly a year, and they taught me a lot about running and managing dogs and managed to get their geriatric little paw prints all over my heart in the process. The departure was as sudden as Rsta and Arwyn's two years ago. I had been halfheartedly trying to get in touch with their owner, but we'd mostly been playing phone tag. Yesterday afternoon, I got a call that she was in town and could pick them up in a few hours. And as suddenly as that my dog yard was nearly empty. I spent my evening raking up old hay and cleaning out boxes instead of feeding and poop scooping and cuddling.

one last snapshot of Sawyer & Dottie, in my truck on the way into town

Despite my mixed feelings at seeing them go, and returning to a nearly empty yard and frantically lonely Norrin, the timing was perfect. I have a few days to get the yard set up before this winter's batch of loaner dogs begin arriving. After all the uncertainty and lack of response to mid-summer inquiries, I contacted Jodi Bailey of DewClaw Kennel. She ran as a rookie in both the Quest and the Iditarod last year (the first person ever to make two rookie runs in one year, and has a great blog to boot!) and her partner Dan Kaduce is mainstay in the competitive distance world. I met her briefly this summer, but certainly didn't know her well enough to start asking for dogs from their close-knit kennel out of the blue. Yet my cold-call request for loaner dogs was greeted with support and enthusiasm and, after some discussion, four solid eight year old distance veterans! With the addition of a dog from Aily Zirkle's kennel, that puts our team up to seven - just a single dog shy of my pipe-dream winter goal of running and eight dogs.

I've spent a lot of the summer debating and worrying about the coming winter - our last in Alaska for a while; Should I go ahead and buy used dog houses off Craigslist as they pop up, just in case? Should I buy rope from the remainder bin at ColdSpot to make more lines I may never need? Do I purchase a load of bargain used harnesses from the retiring Quest racer at a yard sale, even though I don't know if I'll have any dogs, much less what size they'll need, in four months? Back when I was deeply steeped in religious subculture, I would have called this sort of thing "acting in faith." I don't think I ever actually acted in faith so wholeheartedly a single time in the religious sphere. Yet I did so all summer long on these dogs, though not without a good deal of anxiety. It turns out my blind hope that things would work out wasn't utterly futile after all. And ultimately, having the money trickle out on good deals over the warm months was probably a lot less traumatic for our bank account.  

a summer's worth of combing craigslist ... plus seven dog houses & an 8-hole dog box.

Now it's just a matter of picking up dogs, and waiting impatiently for snow.

This week, a friend's chocolate lab, only three years old, died unexpectedly of complications from a massive bowel obstruction. It was an awful thing to happen, both to such a young dog and to such a dearly adored companion. Molly is heartbroken, and watching her grief brought back some of my own horror and shock at losing my first dog Nyssa suddenly (though not nearly as suddenly) to lymphoma nearly a year and a half ago. I still tear up if I let myself think about her for too long, and I know Molly is going to be a wreck over losing Kahlua for a long time to come. I still miss the two young huskies I ran my first winter on the runners and wonder about their life now that they are four years old and working full time on a trap-line in the Brooks Range. And I know when the time comes to find Norrin a permanent working home, it is going to be so hard to let him go. These dogs work their way into our hearts and our lives, and we are better for them, and grateful to them for what they bring and what they teach us. The ever present corollary is that losing dogs is hard, harder when pets die unexpectedly, but also hard when dogs we build working relationships with go on to other things, or when fosters we love on and work with find a perfect home that isn't ours. Better though, always, to have had them in our lives.