Love Story

This is a real love story.  An American classic of boy meets girl.  It has a fantastic beginning and like many love stories, a painful end. Yet, in this case, the end hasn’t come yet, but it is on its way, which makes it even worse. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

Our story starts with a crazy woman, I mean a REALLY crazy woman. She is so insane; she has leashed a beautiful, black and white border collie to her dryer door to keep her away from her drug addict son’s child. The son has decided drugs are more important to him than being a Dad, so he has come to roost at the place where he can be enabled best, his Mom’s tiny apartment. His Mom, eager to prove her mental instability knows no bounds, allows the prodigal son to invade her home where she is also raising a teenaged girl.  It is this young lady’s prized pet that now gets relegated to being leashed in the laundry room to make room for her brother, the drug addict, a valuable lesson for any child to learn, tough love indeed.

Now here comes some serious irony, mixed with some delicious serendipity, which changes lives forever and from which our love story is born. Crazy Mom continues to show her eggs are scrambled beyond repair. When her landlord announces he is coming to inspect her apartment, she thinks not of harboring a drug addict under her roof, but that the dog tied to the dryer door, is not allowed according to her lease. Uh oh.

She must have thought, “I’m not concerned about the heroin addict, but I have to hide the dog”.

Innocently enough, My roommate says in passing, “Hey, a friend of mine needs to hide her dog from her landlord and asked me to see if you’d allow her here for the night”.

I have two dogs living in my home at the time, a dominant female, Siberian husky named Kolky and a black lab/great Dane mix called Clyde, who is smart enough to give Kolky her space.

I ask, “the dog a female?”

“Yes”, he replies.

“Well, keep her away from Kolky and it’ll be ok for one night”.

When I returned later, Boo was already in the house. She greeted me with loud, incessant barking. She was smaller than my two dogs (about 30 lbs), but barked more in the first ten minutes I met her than my dogs had in the past 2 years. As I crouched down to greet her, she ran away and barked more, then stopped and faced me with another round of barking.  My roommate, perhaps sensing this wasn’t working out too well took Boo upstairs to his room, closed the door, and it was there she spent her night, free from the dryer door.

The next morning, as per my normal routine, I was preparing to take Clyde and Kolky to some nearby trails for a run, when I asked my roommate when Crazy Mom was coming for Boo. He was unsure. So as I loaded my two into my Explorer, I invited Boo along.

She barked at me, several times, backed away, barked some more and then ran forward and leaped into the truck, avoiding any contact with Kolky, finding the nearest open window, sticking out her head and barking. Bark after annoying sharp bark for a ten-minute ride up the mountain. I’m thinking one night is plenty with this crazy bitch as I open the door to three bounding dogs spilling out.

Maybe it was the feel of Mother Earth under her feet.  Or maybe it was the sensation of moving more than 5 feet without her collar jerking her back to the dryer. Or maybe it was the pack instinct found inside every canine.  I was there and I call it a miracle, because Boo stopped barking. In addition, as I began to jog up the trailhead, with Kolky taking the lead and Clyde just in front of me, Boo fell into line just behind me. In fact, she kept so close, that I often clipped her jaw with my heel as I took a stride. She kept that position for the entire run, jumped back in the truck at the end and barked all the way home.

We never heard from Boo’s owner that night and she had another 24 hours dryer-free and had another run at the “Tubs”. She stood by me as Clyde and Kolky swam in the pools of the creek, barking the whole time. One day, led to another, and she began to run in front of me and chase whatever the other two chased and barked less with each ride home. Instead, she paced and panted, panted and paced, while the other two laid and wondered if she’d ever clam down.

One week turned to a month and I discovered if I went upstairs, so did Boo. I turned left, Boo turned left. I stopped. Boo stopped and sat and look at me, eyes riveted. If I made eye contact with her, her tail wagged, no barking. I sat down; she jumped in my lap and as I pet her, moaned with such delight that I was sure it was her soul singing. Unbeknownst to her, or so I thought, she had temporarily won the doggie lottery without even buying a ticket.

Since crazy tends to be consistent, months went by without even a whisper from Boo’s jailer. Then, a message delivered by my roommate that it is probably better for Boo to remain where dryer doors are only for keeping tumbling clothes in place and here is where the love story begins in earnest.

Boo has her inevitable run-in with Kolky, where I attempt to intervene, only to have Kolky remind me that a dogfight is no place for a human hand.  She becomes buddies with Clyde, but never really playmates. She finds her place in the pack and decides upon the role for which she is best suited, adoring me with all her heart and all her soul. Let Clyde play with the rope and Kolky rule the roost, Boo is here to make sure I know that she loves me and her new life and she does so every second I am near in every one of her waking moments for the last 6 years.

I wish this story had a happy ending, I really do. I mean with every fiber in my body, much like Boo has loved me, I wish I were beginning to tell you the happiest ending in the history of happy endings. But I cannot and will not, because Boo and I are somewhere in the beginning of the end of our love story in this life.

It began with excessive drinking from her water bowl and urinating in places she never did before which has led her doctors to discover a massive tumor on her right side, involving her adrenal glands, liver, kidneys and aorta as well as ten nodules on her lungs. Other than the drinking and urinating she appears normal, eating well and running down new trails. Surgery is far too risky given the size of the mass and its over-lapping of vital areas.  Medicinal options will be discussed tomorrow to attempt to arrest the growth of the mass and help her body to continue to function normally. It is hard to determine when she will begin to fail, but that day is closer than farther away.

I recently attended a workshop on mindfulness, somewhat an introduction to meditation, but mostly exercises designed to keep us present in life.  One tip was to use a STOP sign as the following acronym. S for actually coming to a complete stop. T for take a full breath. O for observing your surroundings and finally, P for proceeding after taking in the first three steps. Try it sometime. I highly recommend it.

For me though, I now have a daily reminder of staying present. She is my undying love story even as she dies. Six years later, and with a massive cancer stealing room in her little frame as I look from my computer now, she is there. I call her name and she wags her tail. I make eye contact and the tail wags quicken, she rises, with a look of great anticipation. I pet her belly and she moans with such delight that I know it is her soul singing.

In her eyes I see this: “we only have today, and really, we only have this moment. I have loved you since I was dropped into your life and I love you still. I believe in you and I believe in us, always have and always will”.

This is a love story. An American classic of boy meets girl. It has a fantastic beginning and like any real love story, it never ends.

(Boo currently is the leader of the pack , where Clyde and Sarge (3 year old, male Golden) tumble and play while she referees. She was born black and white for a reason.)