My head was in another space. As it always is when I’m about to teach class. But it was a habit to check my phone before entering the classroom. After all, I had young children in school. It could be an emergency.
The text was from my neighbor.
“Your dog is sitting like a weathervane on the apex of your roof.”
My phone rang almost immediately after I read the message.
“Apparently your dog is on the roof. Your neighbor is trying to find you or Chris,” said my friend, and school administrator.
Great. Now the school is involved. My dog-mothering skills on full display.
This WAS a dilemma. The university was at least a 40-minute drive from home and my husband was flying. What could I do at that moment? The entire episode could be over before I reached home. I suppose I could cancel class.
Another text from the neighbor, “FYI apparently the fire department will not retrieve your dog from the roof.”
Could my retired neighbors lend a hand? Surely it was not their problem to deal with it. My ultimate decision warrants the back story.
When I first watched the film Marley and Me, which debuted in 2008, I had no idea that within a year, I would be living my own version of the film. In fact, no one who knows me well could envision it either.
“You got a dog?!” My sister asked, incredulously.
She knew how much I liked to lie, work, and workout on my carpets. She knew how much I detested “dog smell.” She knew I was not the kind of person to walk up to a stranger’s dog and pet it, let alone allow myself to be licked by it. Yep. I was not known to be a dog person. I had connected with a few furry pets of extended family and good friends over the years. But never did I imagine myself the full-time caretaker of such a creature.
Then came the children. And specifically the boy who started begging.
For years.
He made impossible promises I knew he could not keep, desperately bargaining for a dog.
I held strong to my convictions.
Until that dang field trip.
This time it was my younger son’s kindergarten class. I had volunteered to be a chaperone and the trip was to, of all the daggone, manipulative places, a pet store.
“How many of you have pets at home?” asked the daggone, manipulative pet store attendant, in the sickeningly sweetest voice one could muster to a room full of five-year olds.
As the children eagerly raised their hands, I saw my own little tyke squirm a little, clasping his usually fidgeting hands. I looked around the room. Surely we were not the only family without a pet! I scanned for just one other child in solidarity.
We were the hold outs.
The whole episode made me wonder, what did those parents know that I did not know? I wasn’t any busier than many of them. Was it that I did not want to lose control? Were my carpets more important than the joy a pet could bring to our family? I had a million very good reasons not to want a dog including a traveling spouse, a busy career, and a baby! And like kids, no one should ever adopt a pet if they don’t want one. But this episode (and the constant begging) made me explore why I was so reluctant to welcome a pet. As I mentioned before, I had some memorable bonds with loved one’s dogs. Was this really about smelly breath and carpets?
I relented.
My husband was more skeptical as he figured this would be another thing he’d feel guilty about missing. But in the end we committed and found a beautiful one-year old, rare auburn-colored Australian Shepherd, through the PetSmart rescue program.
“Bear” was already named. We figured he must have looked like an adorable bear cub when he was little. Within hours after meeting him, after signing the paperwork; absorbing quick lectures about walking him and securing fences; buying the crate, the bowl, the food, and the leash; we walked out to the parking lot where he proceeded to jump into our car as soon as the door opened.
He was home.
And life would never be the same.
He was crate-trained they promised at the store. We kept trying to believe them as he yelped and cried each night we returned him to the crate that first month.
“Is he jumping?” my husband asked in the middle of the night. The crate sounded like it was bouncing off the wood floor below.
“He’s crate trained,” I reminded him, “Try and ignore him and sleep.”
He got louder, and we needed sleep. So we uncrated him at night.
But we weren’t quite ready to let him roam when we weren’t there. When we came home from our errands one Saturday he had bent the parallel wires of the crate back and forth so many times he had created a sizable hole. My husband bent the wires back into place. He’s crate trained, remember?
I bought a crate with heavier gauge steel.
We left for a quick weekend to the lake. My dog-sitting cousin promised to uncrate him when he got off work. But when he arrived at the house, Bear’s head was stuck dangerously through the wires of the crate. Broken and spiked, if he dare try to move his head back into the crate, he would be badly cut. The wires already showed the distress of his labor–bloodied from his mouth.
That was the end of the crate. I envisioned a future of broken teeth. The next time we left for the lake we took him.
Bear loved the lake.
The wild terrain of this forested, Northern Idaho land allowed him to hunt all day long. He dug holes in the sand, chased chipmunks into rock walls, and terrorized prairie dogs to his heart’s content. His “Houdini” nature (a name my neighbors had given him on account of how many times he escaped our fenced backyard) was in its element. His herding instincts satiated.
So now the part leading up to the weathervane day.
Every summer at the lake we would treat our kids to a day at a nearby family-owned themed park, Silverwood. We’d leave Bear in the cabin. The first year we lost some old moldings around the door as he fruitlessly tried to scratch his way out the front door.
The second year we had just put in a new window in our bedroom. Having left it slightly cracked, Bear jumped on the dresser, nudged it open, and made his escape out and through the brand new screen. We were a bit disoriented to find him sleeping on the deck when we returned after dark.
The third year, we were smart enough to close and lock all the deck-level windows. Once again we came home after dark to be greeted by our 40- pound furry friend, who happened to be slightly limping.
“How did he get out?” we wondered.
After a frantic search inside the cabin, we found he once again nudged an old window open. Only this window did not lead to the surrounding deck. It was on the side that faced the lake that sat on stilts. He had jumped out the second story window!
That happened about two weeks before the call from my neighbor.
Yes, Bear had done it again. He went out an open window from the kids’ room. Why did we not think he would try this at home? Well, he hadn’t tried it. For three years. But his memory was fresh from the success of escape at the lake and so he made his way easily onto the roof. But perhaps because his memory was fresh with the aching hip he was still nursing from his 15-foot leap, he decided to stay put on the roof. On the very tippy top.
By the time I got that call I was a little exhausted with the antics of my Houdini dog.
He can stay on that damn roof ’till I’m done teaching.
That’s what I wanted to do. My village saved me from my worst instincts. My loving neighbor gathered a posse of retirees and they coaxed him down a ladder.
“Oh no, this is going to be my problem”, she confessed to me later when she first recognized that Bear was regally positioned on the pitch of our rooftop. (They forgot that they had a key to the house and could have probably encouraged him in on his own).
Life with a really smart, athletic, albeit angsty dog is filled with a million of these stories. There was the time he jumped out of the boat when we were distracted trying to teach our little ones to ski. He might have been missing for 40 minutes before we realized he swam two-hundred yards to shore. We both loved and hated him on the boat. He always wanted to be with us, but when the kids were swimming in the water, he barked profusely and desperately swam around them trying to herd them back safely out of the water. We outfitted him in a doggy life vest as we were sure he’d drowned from exhaustion trying to “save” us all.
Bear still paces the halls of our home at night checking to see that everyone is in their beds. And if you are a visitor, he will probably insist on sleeping in your room, head and paws facing the door in the event he may need to protect you.
We’ve all learned how to sleep with our bedroom doors open at night.
When we moved east a decade ago, we chose not to put up a fence. Our double electric and wood fence at the last house may have kept him in, but it was against his active nature. Our backyard was a war zone of trenches he’d dig in the absence of freedom.
Most of our neighbors tolerate this indiscretion. They call him “the mayor” as he insists on inspecting every dog and their walker before granting them passage by the house. A sniff. And a nearby pee. Now you may go, he implicates. Now that you know that Bear lives here.
The thing is, Bear is not going to be living here much longer. In August, we biopsied a walnut-sized lump on his back. The lump now exceeds in size both of my fully cupped hands. It has been pronounced benign twice but doubles in size every couple of months. He is more than fourteen years-old and we are loathe to put him through surgery. He does not appear to be in pain, though the lipoma is weighing him down. He waits for us to go down the stairs now. He doesn’t like to be carried, but he is more confident that his legs won’t buckle if we are right next to him.
He sleeps a lot and doesn’t seem to mind that these grown and nearly grown children want to hold him like a baby and solicit kisses more often than they used to. I’m amazed. That darn dog never kisses me. We have a thing. He lays near me, talks to me, paws me, and depends on me for almost everything. But he knows even to this day, I don’t like to be licked. He honors each of our idiosyncrasies.
My friends are warning me the toughest time is to come. My oldest son, now in the Navy, checks in frequently. His first question, “How’s Bear?”
Bear has taught me so much about myself, about love, and human nature. He assured me my child would be alright when he seemed to be the only living thing that broke the walls of pain my young son endured through years of grade-school bullying. Bear showed me how each of my children were caretakers at heart as they took turns throughout the years giving him unsolicited puppy-cuts, walking him, bathing him, picking up after him. He taught them all responsibility and compassion.
Bear taught me how little carpets mean in the grand scope of life when you have the unconditional love of a living creature. He continues to help me sift the superficial from the meaningful.
And now Bear is teaching us how to take care of the elderly, how to be patient when one’s body gives up, and one’s mind becomes confused. Bear is teaching us about the cycle of life, about dignity, and the aging process.
And sooner than we are ready, he will teach us about letting go.
About this Blog
This blog is a space for me to pursue writing unrelated or at least less related to my academic work. I try not to post too often, and only about things I hope might be relatable or meaningful to you. If you enjoyed this post, please like it, and subscribe below.
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