It can't possibly be fourteen years for BearGirl, but apparently it is.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

BearGirl in better times.

She was a Newfie, and she lived for the winter; snow was her natural habitat. She was also one of the sweetest balls of fur you could ever hope to meet, and she, along with her sister Hunter, adopted me on sight the very moment I pulled into the driveway for the very first time, a week to the day after Wings and I first met.

It can't possibly be fourteen years for BearGirl, but apparently it is. She left us at 1:12 in the afternoon, on the day of the Feast of San Geronimo. It was our first joint death of one of our four-leggeds, and it tore our hearts out.

It was made worse by the very fact that it was so unnecessary. It was veterinary malpractice that riddled her internal organs with ulcers, and then with tumors, and by the time we realized that anything at all was going on it was the evening of September 5th (another marker, as it happens, albeit not for a dog), and she was merely a bit subdued. Within days, we realized that something was wrong, very wrong; we pulled out all the stops, even took her down to Eldorado, tried everything we could think of, from prayer to corn pollen on the ultrasound cradle to every kind of traditional medicine we could find . . . not knowing that she had fewer than four weeks left.

It broke my heart. the day I first arrived here at the house, she and Hunter were in the north field when I turned into the driveway, and they came bulleting across the field like a pair of puppies, practically hoverboarding over the land. The followed my car up to where I parked and the moment I opened the door, both of these girls, who had never met me, tried to climb into the car on my lap. Hunter managed to wedge herself under my legs on the floorboards; BearGirl was enough older to stand on a little bit of dignity, and she contented herself with sticking her head in my lap and grinning at me.

And that was it. I was theirs, and I was never allowed to leave.

So when she came up suddenly gravely ill in 2007, it was staggering. On the 29th, she went with us on her very last walk around the land; Wings has a photo he shot of me crouched down by both dogs in the hayfield toward the end of it. The next morning, she was not moving much, and then suddenly a blood vessel in one eye burst, and with it, all motor control of her hindquarters disappeared. It was the day of San G, and trying to get the vet out was impossible, but we couldn't move her.

So finally, Wings called Ted, who has been our vet ever since. He was jointly on call with the vet who refused to come despite being on call, and he came. No questions; no reservations; he just came. I held her head in my lap, and Wings bent over her, stroking her beautiful silky coat, whispering to her, and Ted made sure it was painless. When he helped Wings move her, he was wiping tears from his eyes, too.

I promised Wings then and there that I would always care for their spirits, these beautiful beings who gave us the purest kind of love always. And so I took her her cedar and tobacco and water this afternoon, to the place where we scattered her ashes, and despite the howling winds, I was able to give her a little smoke, too. I always feel her there, pain-free, content. And in my mind, she's still running to greet me on that very first day, shoving her head into my lap and smiling at me as if to say, "You belong to us now."

We love you, BearGirl. We'll always belong to you.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.