I can not be as eloquent as Farley Mowat, so I’d like to start with a quote from The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, which was one of my favorite novels as a kid, and remains one as an adult.
“There was no other wanderer on that road, yet I was not alone, for his tracks went with me, each pawprint as familiar as the print of my own hand. I followed them, and I knew each thing that he had done, each move that he had made, each thought that had been his; for so it is with two who live one life together.”
― Farley Mowat, The Dog Who Wouldn't Be
It’s late at night in Hinton and I’m heading up the hill to the bus to go to bed after party night. The dogs are always on my mind- they need to be put to bed before dark so I don’t lose them or upset them in the chaos (Jude especially) and around two a.m, I know the old guy is going to need to go out for a pee. Regretfully, I leave behind the fire and the baked potato and the buds to go and do my due diligence. Every day of my life since I got him has been changed by having to make sure he is ok, cared for, put first.
Jude hasn’t worn a leash anywhere than the big city for years. He’s not yet crippled, but he is fifteen and slowing down. The night is illuminated almost day bright with a full moon and all the stars of the bush road isolation, the sky almost white with pinpoints of brightness, and Jude takes off at a gallop down the hill. I jog after him and he gives chase, leading me on a game of tag and chase almost all the way to camp- I run after him and tap his bum, he turns around and weaves in and out of the bush and the tall grass, the tips of his gremlin like ears ‘flip flip flipping’ the way I love when he runs. After fifteen minutes of chase, he runs up behind me and leans against my legs, old tail wagging, eyes bright and mischievous. I’m out of breath- we lie down on the trail in the tall grass and the moonlight and he somersaults against my chest, lying belly up and grinning as if pleased with himself. There on a warm June night, I hold him close to me and know he has had the greatest life a dog can have.
When we finally get up and head back to the bus, he follows without complaint. He can’t jump up into bed on his own anymore- he stands at the foot and lets out a solitary “oof” that means “I want up,” and I get up and pick him up, one hand around his bum, careful of his arthritic hips, one around his chest. He slides into his familiar place behind my legs. Mostly, now, he sleeps on his bed at the foot of the bed, grumpy and displeased with my fidgeting and thrashing and early wake up call.
I fall asleep forgiving myself. I have carried a lot of guilt in my life about my dog. I was seventeen when I got Jude from an Amish sheep farm in Wallenstein, Ontario. Freshly back from a stint in England, repairing my relationship with my mom, I say “I want a dog.” And she simply says, “Ok.” I read an ad in the classifieds, make a phone call (not on Sunday), and we go to see him. A parade of Amish children from eldest to youngest come out of the barn holding pups. Jude is the last, dangling precariously by the shoulders by a girl so young she is barely walking. Mom and I both know, instantly. It is him. He is the one. He is the only one who’s basecoat is white, dappled all over with tiny black spots. His paws are brown speckled, and his head is a black cap. He has three large black spots, two on his rib cage and one small one above his tail. The large black spot on his side is the softest.
For the first three years of his life, he gave me absolute hell. I should have done more research about blue heelers- I didn’t realize to what extent they needed constant attention and exercise and mental stimulation. He chewed through doors, ate panties whole, jumped the fence out of the yard of the townhouse and barked incessantly, including directly in my face after three hour walks. When I moved to Toronto to go to school, he moved into a dank, tiny basement bachelor apartment at Bathurst and Dundas with me. He spent a lot of long days there while I went to school and worked full time to support myself, but we also had a lot of adventures at the dog bowl and in ravines and later, in the Beaches. When I was cooking in restaurants sometimes he’d stay at home alone for twelve hours. I’d get home and take him and his glow in the dark ball to the nearby park and we’d play fetch for two hours in an attempt to make it up for him. “I’m sorry, I’m not doing a good enough job,” was a thought I had on a regular basis.
Finally, treeplanting came, and we embarked on a new adventure together. Jude spent his entire summers free in camp, getting fed peanut butter sandwiches by his multiple aunties, hoovering up the spilled and forgotten lunches in the buses, making doggie friends, getting sprayed by skunks, driving with the top down held by one of his aunties, sneaking into hotels, pissing on planters tents and bags, refusing, steadfastly, to be trained not to be in the kitchen.
We drive back and forth across the country together a multitude of times. We spend much time together, just the two of us. We run across the Prairies together, embodying a moment straight out of a Farley Mowat novel. We live together in a school bus. He is a part of every relationship and every breakup I ever have. He rides shotgun with his Auntie Mic from Ontario to BC to join me at an apple orchard where he lies in the rows all day while I pick. At thirteen, he hikes up Mount Finlayson with me. Every time I leave Ontario, my uncle wonders if it will be the last time he sees him.
This year, it finally was.
This is hard, if not impossible to write.
It is the night before my 32nd birthday and around 8pm, the old guy comes into the kitchen and barks at me, eyes bright, asking for something from me. His dinner, maybe. Maybe he hears the thunderstorm that rolls in rapidly afterward. I like to think he was just coming in to say “I love you, I’m ok, goodbye.” Half an hour later when it is pouring rain outside, I wait for him to show up like he always does when he is displeased by the weather, to either lie grumpily on his blanket in the kitchen or to ask to be put to bed in front of the fire in the bus. “Has anyone seen Jude?” Nobody has. I know, already.
I and some friends and staff spend hours and hours looking for him. When full dark finally falls, I sit outside the kitchen and ugly cry, wondering, “What if he is cold, wet, scared? What if he is stuck somewhere, or hurt?” He is completely deaf, and searching for him is difficult. You can’t call his name and wait for him to show up- you have to see him. But I know that if he isn’t with me in the kitchen, he is either stuck somewhere or dead.
What follows is an interminable period of anguish. When I shower, with the rain pounding on the shower roof, I’m sure I hear him barking somewhere far off in the bush, but every time I turn off the shower to listen the sound disappears- auditory hallucination and nothing more. What if I have left him outside in the rain and the cold? What if he is hurt? For three days, I replay this thought over and over while I tramp through waist deep greenery in the bush around camp, hoping, searching, for at least closure. I can’t work. I run into my coworker outside the kitchen and she bursts into tears. “We bought you birthday presents in town yesterday,” she sobs, “and we got presents for the dogs.” And then I’m laughing hysterically because it’s my birthday and it’s so fucking sad, I don’t know what else to do.
The next two days I spend half heartedly searching are hot and sunny. The birch are tall and shady and blow in a perfect summer breeze. The creek runs cool and swift over the boulders it is named for. The fireweed is in bloom and everything is lush and green and beautiful. I make peace with the idea that he has laid down somewhere in this perfect, peaceful green and passed away. The searching has become token. I know in my heart he is gone, and feel his absence keenly. I fall asleep the first night holding his argyle jacket in my arms.
When we leave camp and drive into town, I can’t quite shake the thought of him alive, lost in the bush, cold and scared and confused. And instead, I remember one night in Hinton. We are running down a hill together under a blanket of moonlight on a perfect summer night- he runs, I chase, the invisible tether between us at play, until he comes to my feet and says, everything is ok- life has been so, so good.
