Dog Tales

Last week I was interviewing a guy for a story I’m writing and realized we were neighbors once, nearly two decades ago and more than 2,000 miles from here. The first hint was when he said he’s lived in Crested Butte, Colorado, for the better part of the last 40 years. But it was his mention of having golden retrievers – a long line of them, now in the 12th generation – that ultimately tipped me off.

Hey, neighbor, wanna play?

It’s safe to say I’m a dog person, the kind who crouches down to greet canines at just about every opportunity – at holiday parades, during walks through the neighborhood, along hiking trails. I will often ask strangers the name, age, and breed of their dog without seeking a bit of intel about themselves. Dogs make good conversation starters – and great company.

I knew three of my interviewee’s dogs, from the seventh and eighth generations of the ongoing line, back in my ski town days, when I was living in a basement-level apartment across the street. Chipeta, Moki, and Dillon – a mother and two siblings – would often amble across the traffic-less road and sit at the top of my front steps, dropping a tennis ball down the stairs until I either came out to play or let them in to hang out.

They were mellow and sweet and – most importantly – provided a doggy fix to a dog-loving girl who was without a dog.

After I made the connection last week, I pulled out an old photo album to look for pictures of the golden trio. Stuck amid images of a 20-years-younger me, I found a few shots of the neighborhood dogs – including one of the three of them lined up at the top of my stairs, an old tennis ball at their feet – along with other pups who filled the void during my dogless years, that time between when I left my childhood home and the dogs I grew up with and when I got my own first dog.

Otis and Boone – a golden retriever and a black lab/golden mix – accompanied me on countless hikes and backpacking outings. They belonged to friends, and I sometimes dog-sat for them when their people were away. Ike, an age-hobbled, perpetually smiling yellow lab, was another of my dog-sitting charges. Chelsea was the next-door-neighbors’ mutt, who ran alongside her people on long mountain bike rides well into her old age.

The ski shop where I worked in Crested Butte had a host of shop dogs. Bella was a slightly gawky Bernese Mountain dog who belonged to one of the shop owners. Ruby, a yellow lab who went with the other owner, was Bella’s older, more distinguished counterpart. Rounding out the mix was Honey, a sweet golden who tagged along to work with the office manager.

Around the corner from the house where I lived for four years, there was a huge malamute named Ullr, after the Norse god of winter. Ullr howled daily with the noontime whistle and was always up for a belly rub. I was happy to oblige as I passed the inn where Ullr kept watch, finding contentment in his general doggy happiness and the feel of fur on fingers.

Then there was Ben, a smiling, slightly shaggy, black dog who lived with the family I worked for when I left Colorado and overshot New England by a few thousand miles to land, briefly, in the west of Ireland. Ben loved to play soccer and would join me and the family’s two boys in our evening games in the barnyard. That combination of a dog to pat and a soccer ball at my feet lent a sense of the familiar in a place far from home.

I haven’t thought about this cast of dogs for a long while, but that random blast from the past brought them all back to me. Like good dogs everywhere, this canine crew offered unconditional friendship at times when I was without my own doggy sidekick, easy company during skiing and hiking explorations, and simple stress relief through belly rubs and ear scratches.

It’s been more than 15 years since I moved back East, which means all those dogs are now long gone. But I still can picture them in the old, familiar places, can still see in my mind’s eye their dog-smiling faces and happy anticipation about everything from hikes to biscuits to the noontime whistle.

They weren’t my dogs, but they’re all locked into my heart’s memory just the same, friends from other times and other places.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 13, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Hope is a Puppy

If Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul (as Ms. Dickinson claimed), I think Joy must be the thing that clings to Hope’s wings when it rises into flight.

I’ve been thinking lots about hope and joy – and sadness, too – as we prepare to bring a new dog into our home. It’s been two months since we lost Lily, our beloved dog for more than a dozen years, and I still find myself looking for her in the regular places several times a day, anticipating her greeting when I return home from someplace else, then feeling my heart sink when I realize – again – that she’s not here.

For weeks after Lily died, my son would ask daily when we could get another dog. Nearly as soon as the question was out of his mouth, he’d say tearfully, “I miss Lily.” That conflict of simultaneously missing Lily and longing for a new pup is something we’ve all felt: when (after countless hours of searching and contemplating and – yes – crying) I told the kids we were going to get a puppy, my older daughter’s eyes brimmed with happy, relieved tears; and a few hours later, my littlest one began sobbing at the dinner table, too distraught over Lily’s persistent absence to eat.

Nothing feels quite right without a dog in the house. And while Lily was a one-of-a-kind girl, a dog we know we’ll never replace, the idea of a puppy has been comforting to all of us. It has allowed us to transition beyond our sadness, moved us from looking back to looking forward.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my solo walks in the woods – a place I’d wandered for years with Lily’s companionship – were excruciatingly lonely. Now, I think of Lil in all her favorite places and remember how she loved these walks. But I think, too, of days in the not-too-distant future when there will again be a dog wandering with me, an easy and content companion.

I felt a somewhat desperate mingling of happy and sad when I first contemplated bringing a puppy into our home, a feeling bordering on guilt. Guilt because getting another dog seemed like an attempt at replacing the irreplaceable. And guilt because this hope – for love and loyalty and lifelong companionship – seems a lot to place on a tiny puppy, who will be following in the paw prints of a pretty amazing dog.

For my husband and me, Lily was the first dog we had as adults, the first important responsibility we assumed together. For my children, Lily was the only dog they’ve known as part of our family. Lily knew them – and loved them – all of their young lives. But they didn’t know Lily all of hers, only arriving when Lil was already grown. This puppy, this little bundle of fur and hope, they’ll know for her whole life, from puppyhood to those calm (we hope) middle years to old age.

This will be the dog they grow up with, the one they’ll remember best. They’ll mature together and play together and, I hope, become steadfast pals.

There is work, of course, that comes with raising a puppy: house training and no-chewing-the-furniture training and lessons about not jumping and no biting. For years (I hope) there will be endless fur to vacuum and smelly things rolled in and other puppy shenanigans.  

It’s all a small price to pay for the love of a good dog.

“Next year we can bring our puppy on this hike, right, Mama?” one of the kids asked me the other day during a short uphill jaunt – the hike that was the children’s first, and Lily’s too. Yes, next year we can bring the puppy with us – on hikes and car rides and contemplative walks through the woods. Next month she’ll be here. Soon, there will be a wagging tail to welcome us home again.

We haven’t yet decided on a name for our puppy, and I won’t be surprised if we five humans are still debating the right moniker right up to the day we bring her home. Maybe we’ll call her Hope. Only this Hope will be a thing with fur that romps happily about, ready to share our home and family adventures. Puppies don’t sing, but they smile and they yip and they wag their tails; they are just as persistent in their joy as Emily Dickinson’s thing with feathers.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 14, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Lily

Mornings are the hardest, I think, when I come downstairs and there is no tail thumping softly against the floor to greet me. Or maybe it’s bedtime, when I head toward the door to let the dog in before remembering. Or the countless moments in between: when the kids drop Goldfish crackers on the floor and there is no eager pup to lick them up, or when we head out and there is no happy, giant ball of fur pleading to come with us, or when I reach my hand down mindlessly from the couch to rub a belly and meet empty space instead.

One of Lil's favorite activities: going for a ride.

We said goodbye to the best dog ever last week, and there seem to be lots of empty spaces in our home now, a home that before last Thursday always included Lily. We are getting used to the sad fact that our girl is gone, and most of the time we are, at least outwardly, OK. But the reminders of her are everywhere; often the sadness hits all over again, and one person’s tears lead to general sniffling all around.

Baby Lil

Lily was intertwined in everything we did. We brought her home when she was a puppy, all fluff and energy and hopeful joy. That was before we were married, and I knew when David suggested we get a dog, he was serious about me. She was there a year later when he popped the question, and stood witness with our family and friends the following summer when we said our vows. She was there to welcome our children home with curious sniffs and gentle licks, to love them unconditionally and to play with them as they grew – at first enduring their climbing all over and around her, later tagging along happily on hikes, forays around the yard and woods, and drives to school drop-off in the mornings.

Welcoming the littlest one, a few years ago.

Lily was there for more than 12 years. Always ready for an adventure. Greeting us happily when we came home, whether we’d been gone all day or only a few minutes. Wagging her tail sleepily in the mornings. Begging for her bedtime biscuits at night. Following the kids into the kitchen when they cleared their dishes after meals, always hoping there was a crust of toast or a bit of leftover hamburger that might end up in her dish. Bounding out to roll in the snow. Swimming in the river. Smiling her golden smile all the time.

She had been my nearly-constant companion these years since the human children arrived. She accompanied me to take the kids to school, then we returned together to a quiet house. Now and then, always just at the point where I needed a distraction, she’d plod over to where I sat typing and put her head in my lap, gazing at me beseechingly until I got up from the keyboard and took her on a walk through the woods. She was always good company on those walks, leaving me to my thoughts as she trotted along sniffing the myriad smells of the forest.

Everybody's buddy

Just over a year ago Lily and I headed out together for a favorite hike, and she struggled the whole way. I knew then, sadly, that it would be our last long hike together. Gradually she went from jaunting around the field to moving more slowly through the yard. By the end, she could barely get to the garden without stumbling, her legs simply giving out. Often, she could not get up without help. Finally, she needed to be carried more often than she could make it outside herself.

While Lily’s legs failed her, her spirit never faltered. She still smiled at us and stretched out as much as she could for belly rubs. But we knew she was hurting more than we could fathom. We knew it was time to say goodbye, to let her go.

Two happy girls in the woods.

I’m still getting used to her not being here. Yes, the mornings are the hardest: that quiet time before anyone else is awake, when it used to be just me and Lil blinking the sleepiness away while the coffee percolated. Once the kids are up, the house becomes a bustling distraction of breakfast and playing and planning out our final fun-filled summer days. But underneath all that activity, I miss my dog. We all do.

Next week, the kids return to school. I will be doubly lonely then, driving home without Lily in the backseat, her head pushed blissfully out the window. There will be no kid-fueled distractions at home, just me and my work. I’m not quite sure how I’ll manage. Lily has always been here with me. I imagine I’ll find myself getting up often to let the dog out. I may well fall into melancholy when I spot a tuft of Lily fur lingering in some corner of the house. I’ll miss her well-timed interruptions, that take-me-for-a-walk look. I’m dreading that first solo trek through the woods. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the August 26, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

A Girl's Best Friend

The first time we met Lily it was clear she was the rowdiest pup in her litter of four. She bounced around the other puppies, constantly nagging them to wrestle and smiling an ebulliently happy golden retriever grin as she pinned them, then rolled in the dirt, then beseeched them to play some more.

It’s been eleven years – and countless life changes – since we brought Lily home. While our golden girl’s muzzle has whitened and her step is not quite so spry as it was a decade ago, Lily maintains the lovable feistiness she radiated as a puppy.

Wanna play?

When she was tiny and newly ours and we’d take her on walks up the dirt driveway, Lily would sprint as fast as her clumsy puppy feet would allow before flopping down superman style, front legs stretched out before her, back legs flattened behind, and a look of sheer disbelief that she still had so far to travel. After a brief pause, she’d be up again and running with wild abandon for a few more yards.

Lily’s curiosity and zest for a good time landed her in some tight spots when she was a pup. She once crawled into the culvert under our driveway and was briefly – but alarmingly – stuck. Somehow we managed to coax her through to the far side, since she couldn’t back up and we couldn’t get in to reach her. She still looks longingly into culverts, although she soon grew too big to explore them.

Lily has accompanied us through all the changes that passing time brings. When we first brought her home, she had to learn to live with two cats – and found out the hard way that cats have sharp claws and short tempers. Before she was quite full grown, we moved to a different house, with lots of new scents, new things to chew, and fish to catch from a garden pond – which, inspired by Lily’s fishing adventures, we soon filled in to make a patio.

She donned a pretty purple collar one hot, late August day and stood with us – and our family and friends – in the field between the house and the mountains as we were married. And when she was not quite three years old, we came home one day with two tiny, wiggly bundles of unfamiliar smells and noises. We were entirely preoccupied with these mysterious creatures, often too tired to give belly rubs. 

Regardless, in typical golden fashion, Lily set out to love these new members of the pack. For the first week or so, whenever one of them would fuss or start to cry, Lily would come closer to investigate, offering her help (but obviously unsure what to do). Turns out two babies can make a lot of noise for a surprisingly large part of the day and night, and soon poor Lil simply retreated from the crying in search of a quiet spot to rest. How often during those exhausting days I wished I could go with her, curl up, fall asleep and dream the day away.

Before long there was another baby, and as kids and dogs are wont to do, they have all become buddies, although the old dog still retreats sometimes from the clamor. But Lily knows the children now measure the food into her bowl twice a day and feed her sandwich crusts after lunch. They rub her ears and her belly. They take her for walks through the woods and throw sticks into the cool brook for her to retrieve. Many mornings she comes with me to see the children off to school.

It is a sad reality that our canine companions age so much more quickly than we do. When we brought Lily home, I was barely 30 and she was barely weaned. Now I am in the nebulous realm of middle age, while she is something like 70 in golden retriever years. As the children have grown more independent in recent years and my work has evolved into a mostly home-based venture, Lily and I have settled increasingly into a rhythm of togetherness.

She will no longer climb the stairs to the third-floor office, and so I find space at the dining room table to work, preferring both the warmth of downstairs and the easy company of the dog. When I sit down to write, she lies nearby and is soon breathing the soft, sighing snore of an old dog. Now and then she places her head on my lap and stares at me from deep brown eyes, now enveloped in a mask of white, beseeching me to stop typing and pet her or take her for a walk.

Usually, eventually, I give in and we head into the woods together, she sniffing a dog’s treasure trove of delightful forest smells and I appreciating the a mind-clearing break and the quiet companionship of a good dog.

There was a time, not so distant, when Lily walked patiently up the hills by my side as I struggled to jog while pushing a double baby stroller, but she won’t run with me anymore. I am not a far nor a fast runner, but I’m too fast and too far-running for Lily. Normally she is up and wiggling with anticipation when she sees her people preparing to go out the door – to school or for a hike or a drive to the post office or anywhere. But when she sees me lacing up my running shoes, she sighs and gives me a look that seems to say, “Please don’t ask me to come with you.”

And so I alter my pace when I can, as Lily once did for me, so that we can go together. Sometimes we just head out into the yard for a few minutes or take a short loop around the field. This she can do alone – and often does, barking out toward the woods to let the wild things know this is her territory. But she seems to like the human company – and the possibility of a longer adventure.

On our walks, whether brief or ambling, Lily will sometimes lag behind, investigating a particularly interesting scent. When I turn to call her, she comes bounding my way, ears back, eyes laughing, tongue hanging sideways from a smiling mouth. In that happy stride she still looks like the puppy we brought home one spring day a lifetime ago: a little bit wild, infectiously joyful, and always ready to play.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 23, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

Puppy Love

Banshee

My brother and his girlfriend got a new puppy this weekend. She is 8 pounds of pure, fluffy, black-and-white, wet-nosed joy named Banshee.

Banshee is an Icelandic sheepdog, the first specific-breed dog my brother has ever had. We were a mutt family growing up, and when Billy was living in Colorado, he got a puppy whose mother was some kind of Norwegian elkhound mix and whose father was unknown. He named that puppy Teocali, after one of the most beautiful mountains near the town where we both lived for several years. Teo went everywhere with Bill, including to New Hampshire when he moved back East.

Teo was the smartest dog I’ve ever known and the most loyal. He was cute in a disheveled sort of way. He would play fetch with any willing participant, including my small children, who could only throw a tennis ball a couple of feet. And he would fetch endlessly, finding a ball or stick wherever it landed – the tall grass of a vast field or the tangled undergrowth of a forest – until Billy told him, “Take a break.”

Anyone who knows my brother also knew Teo, because Teo continued to go everywhere with Billy. He spent a lot of time camped out in the pickup truck – in front of the Village Store, on the job site, outside the bar. From his perch in the truck, Teo would acknowledge you only if you were in his inner circle. If not, or if he simply didn’t feel social at that moment, he’d cast a bored sideways glance and keep staring out the window, looking for Billy. Or he’d hop calmly into the back seat and lie down.

He was playful, but not overly exuberant. He didn’t jump around or lick people or clamor for attention. Teo just did what Teo wanted to do, which was basically hang out with Billy. Or play fetch. Or stare at cats. That was one of his favorite pastimes from puppyhood, just staring at cats. Not trying to chase them or play with them, just staring. Billy thinks it was some kind of herding instinct.

Teocali

Teo was so nonchalantly charming, so unconventionally handsome, that a virtual stranger asked Bill if she could breed him with her female Chow. Billy got pick of the litter, and now my parents have Teo’s son, Gunnison, named for the town where Billy lived when Teo was a puppy.

When Teo died two summers ago, it was crushing. For a decade he’d been my brother’s co-pilot, his friend, and a constant companion through many changes. Some people, when they lose a pet, want to get another one as soon as possible, seeking to fill that hole in a life and a heart. For others, there is no filling the hole, and the reminders are everywhere – the water bowl you can’t quite bring yourself to put away, the leash hung behind an old coat and discovered months later, a stray tuft of fur blown into some rarely cleaned corner, the loneliness of a run or a hike without canine companionship, the empty spot in the truck.

My father in law keeps in his office the ashes from his beloved golden retriever, Alex, decades after Alex ceased to run around chasing his tail. So much was Alex loved, that my husband and I now have a wonderful golden, and both his siblings have goldens. For their family, there is no other breed. For my father-in-law, there is no other dog, and since Alex, he has never brought home another pup.

We all knew there was no way another dog could ever fill the hole Teo left. Billy and Laura buried Teo in their back yard. They planted a tree and created a garden there. Those actions were about both grief and remembrance.

Then two weeks ago, Billy started talking about a breed of dog he’d seen in a National Geographic article. Icelandic sheepdogs seemed a lot like Teo – the same wise look and calm expression, the same unexuberant joy, the same disheveled mane of thick fur standing out around the neck. They even have similar personality traits – smart, loyal, patient, mellow.

Saturday Banshee came home. An Icelandic sheepdog from Limerick, Maine. A happy little bundle who played with my smitten children, sniffed at the snow, and curiously chased after the three cats of the household.

She’ll grow to about the same size Teo was and will probably sleep on his old bed and drink from his old water bowl. She’ll learn that cats have sharp claws, and to stay away from the electric fence around the pig enclosure. On hot days, perhaps she’ll rest in the shade of Teo’s tree. And I bet she’s going to be great at fetch.

Banshee will never be like Teo was. She’ll be like herself. She’s already stealing hearts and causing spontaneous outbreaks of grinning. That’s what puppies do. They create joy. And if we’re lucky, they remind us of the dogs we’ve loved before, and those empty spaces in our hearts start to fill in just a little bit.