Major. It's Been Six Years.

Photo copyright Wings 2020; all rights reserved.

Major. It's been six years.

Six years yesterday, to be exact, and once again, I failed him. I don't know why, other than the fact that this time of year is invariably fraught with too many stresses and far too much physical pain, and I can have it in my head on the first or second and still forget by 12:30 on the third, because my brain no longer works and things that I once would never have failed to remember now vanish in a puff of pain and smoke.

Our Big Guy has been gone six years yesterday, and that's as many years that he was with us, and that was more than we ever could have expected. He had belonged to my parents, who rescued him from the local shelter, and it was a rescue indeed. His earlier years were so saturated with trauma that it had affected his physical health, and give his enormous size and bad hips to go with it, we didn't think he would have long. Bringing him to live with us was a shot at giving him a comfortable place for his final days.

Except . . . six years. Here, he found his home, and this place healed him, at least until it didn't, and that was cancer like nearly all the others, too. the same place that gave him life would take it, but in the meantime it healed his hips and gave him space to run and and allowed him several years' worth of the good life that he probably thought would never be his.

That's him with Griffin, also gone now these nearly four full years, and that was taken after we had all said goodbye to their sister in 2014. The dogs mourned as they lived, together.

He seems to live on again, suddenly, in Chinook — they both do. She has Griffin's beautiful brindle coloring and intensely intelligent mind, but the body and ears and muzzle are all Major. Her eyes fall somewhere between the two. I look at her, and I see the Big Guy's face, the WiggleButt, the one who never should have made it but defied all the odds anyway. The one I failed, and failed again yesterday.

And so now, it is snowing. Windy. Bitterly cold. And I will take the cedar and the tobacco and the fresh water, and I will lay them on his resting place, because that what we do, what Wings and I have always done for these sweet generous spirits who gave us so much more than humans ever do. And I will tell him I'm sorry, once again . . . and remember him at his happiest and most brave, on patrol around the fenceline, hunting prairie dogs on the land, saving his younger siblings from a prairie rattler. Like his new little sister, he had no start n life, no socialization but plenty of abuse and neglect, but he was a good dog and a brave spirit. 

We love you, Major. You found your home, and you're in our hearts every day.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.