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.                                             

Two years now that Raven's spirit is free.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

Two years already. Two years since my personal guard dog left us, taken too soon by the same cancer that took his sister the year before.

The photo is of Raven in his last winter with us, 2018-2019, accompanying me back to the house from a trip up to the gate to lock it for the evening, already ill and tiring easily, yet joyous enough to romp through the snow. Back when we had the gallery, he would wait faithfully every day, and every time I locked up to walk up to the restroom, he would escort me there and back. It took several months, though, to get him home and safe.

Like She-Wolf, who was either half-sister or cousin, but clearly related, he had been abandoned as a pup, left to starve. He learned to fend for himself, but it did metabolic damage. He gained weight; She-Wolf became diabetic and lost it. In his case, he gained enough that it disguised the tumor growing in his abdomen for far too long, until it was too late to do anything about it.

He came by his name honestly. I was still struggling with what to call him, some weeks after he first began visiting us on the daily; we already had one "Wolf," and "Bear" didn't seem right. One day, he was lying on the plank threshold outside the door, paws just on the sill, staring n at me. It was a cloudy, stormy day not unlike today, and when I went to the door, I noticed a raven perched on the skeletal tree outside the low wall of the building. The dog kept looking at the bird, then at me, as though trying to tell me something. I looked at the raven, and it screeched and cawed and cackled, clearly mocking me for my thick-headedness. Finally, after looking between them a few times, I said, "Is your name Raven? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Cue the cackling peals of laughter from the bird, haw-hawing himself nearly off the branch with mirth. Raven looked at the bird, then smiled at me, and crossed his paws with a look of pure self-satisfaction, so Raven he was, forevermore.

He was theirs and they were his, no question. he was wild, still half-feral, and he was always getting into trouble, which usually meant an injury of some sort. Twice he got out onto the highway and got hit, and survived both well enough to hide; in the first case, we found out after coaxing him out from under the deck, and in the second, I was a thousand miles away helping a friend when Wings discovered him, again hiding, and texted me frantic photos before, during, and after a rush to the vet while I, long-distance, begged all the forces and spirits for our brindle boy's life.

And every time, the ravens gathered. He had a few smaller instances, usually from getting into scraps, once or twice from having eaten something he shouldn't, and always, always, the ravens gathered round, hovering, waiting and watching until he was sufficiently recovered to suggest that he was fine; then they'd move on about their business. It was the oddest thing.

So when the tumor developed to the point that it made its presence finally known, every time the ravens appeared (which they began to do with frightening regularity), I began to worry that he would be taken from us. It seems, though, that they were here to watch over him, just as he watched over me all those years ago, to lend their support to help him stay where he so dearly wanted to be just a while longer . . . almost a year, in fact.

By the end of April in 2019, we thought it would be any day. On several occasions, his breathing had already slowed so much as to be unnoticeable, eyes open but sound asleep and perfectly still, and we thought it was done . . . only to have him awaken and smile and wonder with his eyes where the next bone was. By April's end, I had written a piece, submitted but never picked up, that is being published on my Patreon tonight, a sprawling reminiscence built around his last days lying at my feet. He would last exactly three weeks more, twenty-one days.

By the early hours of the morning of May 21st, we knew we had to call our vet. He was not able to come out until after 5, when they closed, and it was a surgery day, so we were lucky to get him at all. I held his upper body in my arms, and as the needle went in, Raven dropped his head against my chest so that he could be as close as possible in that final moment, 5:19 PM by the clock, Wings standing over us with his hands in his fur, and everybody wept.

Everybody.

The vet tech helped Wings settle him in his resting place, and the vet asked to be allowed to throw some dirt in before the closed it up. That's family, so of course the answer's always yes. And just as they shoveled the last bit of earth over and began tamping it into place, there was a flurry of movement just behind the latillas that bound the grave: out of exactly nowhere, a raven, flying straight up from the earth, cackling and laughing, soaring and swooping above us, over and over, until he finally shot westward, laughing all the way.

 When I went out in the wind this evening to take him his cedar and tobacco and water, as I always do, the raven returned to the east field, settling gently down on the ground to watch. As I finished, I heard a flurry of wings, and turned to see the raven soaring past, swooping and circling and cackling before heading back again.

No more pain. Two years now that Raven's spirit is free. I'm glad my guardian comes to visit occasionally still, that he hasn't forgotten us.

Because we love you, Raven. We're glad you're flying free now.

The raven was back today. When I went out 

ll 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.                              

Twelve years gone, and still a thunder-shaped hole in my heart.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

Twelve years gone, and still a thunder-shaped hole in my heart.

What does thunder look like? Like that up there. That was his name — well, one of them, anyway. Here, everybody gets nicknames, multiples of them, and the four-leggeds and featherbutts are no exception. His real name was Animikiins, Little Thunder Being, but we called him everything from Thunder to Thumper to Little Dude to Big Man to Little Big Man and more.

He was pint-sized, but a whole personality in a tiny trembly package, and brave enough to back even Raven the bully off with a bark and stare.

He came to us by way of an accident in the village, hit by the bumper of passing SUV and crying in front of the place next to us. The young women there were trying to figure out what to do with him but couldn't take him themselves, and we couldn't get hold of any rescue folks that late in the day, so we did what we had to do and brought him home with us. A quick but thorough examination showed that it was only a graze and all the yelping was from fear, not from pain. But over the next few days, the neurological issues would present themselves, and while we could not get an appointment with the vet between that evening, a Wednesday, and the following Monday, the news would not be good. Distemper. Advanced.

Meanwhile, in the parts of six days that Little Big Man was with us, he wormed his way right into our hearts. He followed us everywhere, talking constantly, head tilted to one side and gazing up at us quizzically about everything. The head tilt and the occasional repetitive thumping of his hind feet were artifacts of the disease, but he seemed entirely unbothered by any of it, just glad to have found a pack to be part of, and to be loved.

And he was loved. I was the one who had to take him on Monday, the one who had to hear what we already knew on some level. The one who had to hold him in my arms on that cold table and watch as he curled into them, gazed up at me, smiled a sweet puppy smile as if to say he knew what was coming and understood and it was okay, and went to sleep before the vet ever showed up with the big needle. The one who soaked his fur with my tears.

I barely made it home with his little body wrapped in a blanket. I wept the whole way. Griffin took months to forgive me. And we buried him in the field to the southwest, not far from where the horses now lie.

I did as I promised long ago that I would always do for our four-legged family members. The time was 10:20 in the morning, and so I took him cedar and tobacco with a little sweetgrass in it and some water. I took the lighter, too, but only the most momentary tiny flame was possible, because just as I started out, the sky opened up, and what had been a steady rain became a torrential downpour. And as I heard myself apologizing to this sweet spirit for the lack of smoke, I realized that he was only living up to his name. Only maybe three months old during those six days, and already a powerful being.

We love you, Animikiins. We're grateful for those few days, and for your presence, in the rain and in our hearts.

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.                           

Three years since She-Wolf left for other worlds.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

Impossible that it's been three years already. But it has.

Three years since She-Wolf left for other worlds.

I know that photo looks like she's saying goodbye, but she's not; Wings took that in August of 2015. She'd just stood up after lying in the grass, yawning hugely, and was just checking in with us as she always did.

She-Wolf found us, way back in 2008 when she was still a puppy. She and Raven were cousins, at the very least, perhaps half-siblings, even, and they were both abandoned and starving, and made their way to our gallery door separately from each other. Unbeknownst to each other, we were both feeding them on our respective shifts and allowing them to sleep by the warmth of the fire. And while it would take a few more months for her brother, she came hoe with us on the night before Thanksgiving of that year.

But the damage had been done by her first months of starvation; she had barley survived to find us. And by the time that photo was taken, she had already been diabetic for two full years, a product of that early and deadly neglect, and already she had outlived all the predictions in more ways than one. When she was diagnosed in the fall of 2013, by which time we knew she'd had it for a few months, the vet warned us that her eyesight was already failing, and that she would be "completely blind" within two months at the very outside, probably sooner. But while her vision was somewhat impaired by the time that photo was taken (it's why she tracked us so closely), we were able to save most of it for the better part of four and a half years.

Until the cancer that took her suddenly in 2018. It would turn out to be interstitial carcinoma of the bladder, a sudden-onset, fast-moving, very aggressive kind of cancer in a place that was not really reachable even had surgery been an option, and by the time we found out, it wasn't. Never had been, really, and we actually discovered it pretty quickly, but when they say "sudden-onset," "fast-moving," and "aggressive," they're not understating it in the slightest. But again, our great big wolf girl with the mountain-lion paws defied all the odds. When we took her to the vet in early 2018, her prognosis was clear, and very, very ugly; we were warned she'd be lucky to last three more weeks.

She lasted three more months.

And they were good months; we made damn sure of that. She had everything she needed, everything she wanted, too, and we used an aggressive treatment regimen that, while there was really no chance of it saving her life, in fact kept her very comfortable and happy and even active, and gave her those three months in which to be and do it.

And then on the night of the 26th, the tumor ruptured, as we had been warned it would do. She threw up masses of blood in an instant, and we thought that would be it, but she was not quite ready. We called all over, and no one would come out that night; our own vet wasn't even the one on call, but he did come out first thing the next morning. And at 9:27 AM, as I and the vet tech together held her in our arms (she was a BIG dog), with Wings hanging over us, his hands on her soft fur, she let the vet do his work without protest, and simply, trustingly went to sleep. They helped us lay her to rest amid their own tears, and ours.

And so this morning, I did as I have always promised Wings that I would do and I took her everything she needed to know that we remember her, that the hole in our hearts has made a space in our spirits for hers.

We love you, She-Wolf. Our spirits hold that space for you always.

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.    

Half a decade since Griffin left a hole in our hearts.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021;
all rights reserved.

It's been a terrible day in so many ways today, but the worst is the one that repeats on this day every year. As of 5:00 PM tonight, it's been exactly half a decade since Griffin left a hole in our hearts.

It can't possibly be five years, and yet it is. We were gearing up to build the house, and he was supposed to live in it with us. He was fifteen and a half, after all; we wanted him to age in comfort, instead of that rattletrap RV in which we spent seven long years, and him with us. There's no question, of course, that that toxic tin can shortened all their lives. They all hurt, but this one hurt the most.

Griffin found me; literally saw me, at the shelter, before I could see him, because of the angle of the walkway. He was five months old, abandoned, abused, and supposed to be going elsewhere, but he had other ideas. He seized my heart immediately, and I have yet to understand how he arranged it, but he was always conversant with more powerful spirits, and he made sure everything else fell through so that he could come home with me.

He was the dog of my heart and my spirit, and not just a dog; he thought he was human, and damned if he wasn't. He managed to save my life in very literal terms more than once. He would capture Wings's heart the same way.

He was not a fighter, and yet he was always, always the pack alpha, even as a puppy. Oh, he would fight to protect them, but only for that reason. More often he just . . . laid down the law with a look, and everyone fell into line. And like all good leaders, he needed time to himself, and he would often follow me outside and then find a nice shady spot in the cool grass; at night, he'd do the same on his own. It was always clear that he felt the responsibilities he'd taken on himself weight heavily, and that he needed a little time apart from the other dogs to recharge every now and then.

He was my my baby, and yet not; he was my best friend, and there is not a day that goes by that I don't feel that gigantic hole in my heart. He was always incredibly healthy, until one September day when the then-"puppies," She-Wolf and Raven, decided to escape onto the highway to chase something. Griffin went to round them up and herd them back, and he was the one who got hit. I went flying out of our old house, and he was "running," as much as he could with a fully dislocated right hind leg dragging behind him, one eye bleeding, scanning, scanning, looking for me the whole time; he found me and ran straight to me, and we took him straight to our vet, with Wings's instructions to save him no matter the cost.

It turned out to be mostly superficial, in the sense that torn hip ligaments and a leg that needed resetting in the joint and a blow to the eye that necessitated removal of an inner lid and would cause eventual blindness can be said to be superficial. No damaged organs, no internal bleeding, no broken bones. We were able to bring home the next day, as I recall, and he wore his left hind leg bound up for five weeks and learned to run on three.

There would be other damage, but we didn't know that yet.

After losing Lilith in 2014, he grew withdrawn. He lay apart from the other dogs, the sadness evident on his face. he had long experience with mourning, but we thought maybe her death had hit him harder. And then one day, I called him from a few inches away, and he didn't even twitch an eyebrow.

He couldn't hear me.

It would turn out that he had been steadily going deaf for months, and by then was pretty profoundly deaf, and as his world grew more limited, he was beginning to fear for his daily life with us. The moment I realized it, I tested him enough to confirm it; then I knelt down in front of him, alternated putting my hands over his ears and pointing to my mouth and touching his chest repeatedly, and he visibly relaxed right before my eyes. He had been afraid of what would happen if we knew, or if we didn't know, and once I told him that we would be his ears, he was instantly, as in that very second, back to his old self. We think the impact from the truck that hit him probably hastened it.

It hastened something else, too: Grif developed canine vestibular syndrome. It's terrifying as hell the first time you see it; it looks as though your dog is having either a seizure or a stroke, and of course the first time it happened was one year on Easter Sunday, when our own vet was not on call. So we took him to the other one, and they rehydrated him with fluids subcutaneously and checked him over. I was there for about three hours with him, and we would have to take him back a year or so later for the same problem, but by then we knew how to manage it and we got him through numerous smaller episodes on our own.

Until the last one, in the early weeks of April in 2016. It began the same way, and so we thought that was all it was, and even though he didn't bounce back the same way, we attributed it to age and the vagaries of the weather, which were brutal that year. And then, on the 16th, we had to carry him outside, and he couldn't really stand without help. So Wings brought him in and put him on the couch where he could be next to me. It was better to have him indoors anyway; we had gotten a full foot of snow that morning in one hard, heavy storm . . . snow that had melted almost wholly by noon. And while outside, I saw the Cooper's hawk, who had her own history with us, land in the aspen by where I stood and stare down at me. I thought she was there as a friend; little did I know she was there in her role as guide.

Griffin by then was tired, and we had placed his bed on the floor of the RV's kitchen so that he could stretch out and be comfortable, and still we had no idea of what was coming. Periodically I'd go and sit with him, but not because I expected his spirit to leave anytime soon; I did it merely so he'd know I was there with him, and he always relaxed and breathed more easily as soon as I laid my hand on him. It was a day that I did not help with the outside chores; Wings had told me to stay in with Grif and let him handle it, so I did. He came inside about five minutes to five, went over to greet Griffin and stroke his velvety head and ears, and then sat down beside me.

And then I saw Griffin stretch suddenly, and I knew exactly what it was, and I went running for him to hold him and beg every being I could imagine not to take him from us, but he took only a few more breaths, then rested in my arms and let his spirit go. It was five o'clock on the dot.

And the moment that life force left him and all the remained was the body, with gravity pulling at it now, I felt along his spine what we had not been able to feel while he was alive: a tumor of some sort. It would, given the size and location, probably have been pressing on his heart and lungs and airway by then, and coupled with TBI-induced CVS, it was more than his body could overcome. And it wasn't for lack of watchfuless; I had monitored his whole body regularly after what had happened with the girls, but it was too deep to be felt until he was gone, and up until then, he showed not a single sign that would have sent us to the vet to try to catch it.

Once more, it was too cold, the ground too hard in the fading light to dig, and so we wrapped him gently and laid him in the studio until the following morning. And we both wept like we have never wept for any other being.

At five o'clock, I did as I promised Wings I would always do for all of them: took him water and cedar and tobacco, this time with a little sweetgrass in it. There was no hope of anything more than the faintest tendril of smoke; the wind, mostly lying low all day, had kicked up at five minutes to the hour, and has howled most of the evening since. But I managed a little, plus the rest, and I stood there beneath the big blue spruce with the tears, and the tear, in my soul, and I remembered the spirit who took care of me when no one else would, or even remotely cared, this small sweet spirit who saved my life more than once, and whose absence is as raw today as it was five years ago. Some spirits are more than they appear to be, and he was — is — one.

We love you, Griffin. You're always in our hearts, and our spirits are always with yours.

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.             

A decade since our littlest girl left us.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021;
all rights reserved.

It can't really have been a decade since our littlest girl left us . . . can it?

But I look at the calendar, and it tells me that at 10:42 PM tonight, it'll have been exactly ten years.

Her name was Dom (Domina, for her half-mask; also Dommy, Dommers, Dom-Dom, Grubster Girl, and a few others besides), and she was the biggest combination of fragile feminine girl and wild-ass tomboy you've ever seen. She was also a former bait dog, and she came to me mostly by accident after having been so badly abused that she had permanent slashes (bite marks) in the fur on her forehead and across her little nose, on top of a broken/never healed/badly infected left foreleg.

The shelter that supposedly "rescued" her said they didn't notice anything when they sent her home with the foster who ultimately transferred her to me. Didn't notice the swelling and the blood dripping from it. They played and pleaded ignorance, and I took matters in hand myself and got the infection healed. Not the break, though; that was impossible, because it had been broken at the joint when she was young, never set, healed badly, and the shelter vet had had to rebreak it and fuse the joint. It bothered her when it was cold or damp.

It also bothered her when she didn't want to do something, like go home from the dog park, or go indoors here, and then she would pull that little stunt she's pulling in the photo up there, lift it up as though it pained her so desperately, and shake it as though afflicted by essential tremor, looking pitiful enough to need a tin cup that read "alms for the poor puppy." Until she'd tip over on her ass and scramble up as though there'd never been a thing wrong. Because, of course, there mostly wasn't; she'd run full-tilt with the rest of the pack, always on the lookout for something especially gross and rotten and so, so lovely. Like the time I saw her from a distance, diving repeatedly onto the ground on top of something, and as soon as I called her name, she jumped up, looked at me defiantly, grabbed the thing up in her mouth, and ran off with it where I couldn't catch her.

A rotted snakeskin. Oh, my god, she stank to thigh heaven, and she was so pleased with herself. Now you know why that last nickname.

She was also the kind of dog who forced herself onto your lap and literally refused to accept that anyone could not possibly love her completely . . . and so, of course, everybody did. When I had to be up in Washington for five weeks in 2011, she had taken to riding on the back of the ATV while Wings tooled around here hauling horseshit and doing other work, and he was so taken with the whole thing that she stole what little was still left of his heart.

And then promptly broke it, and mine, too. When I got back in either the last couple of days of March or first couple of days of April, I forget which, everyone seemed fine. A couple of days later, I noticed that she had developed a couple of bumps on her head at the base of her ears. They looked like giant insect bites. More worrying was what materialized within the next couple of days after that. She'd been looking slightly chubby, but she was 11-1/2 by then, as near as anyone could tell (her dentition was so bad when she came to me that my vet said it looked like she was 12, but she was actually about 2-1/2, most likely; that had been 9 years previously), so we hadn't thought much of it. But chubby is one thing; looking pregnant (in a thoroughly long since spayed dog) is something else entirely.

So I took her to our vet here.

The news was grim.

She had a tumor, a massive one, and only the placement of it had kept it from showing. She had shown no signs of anything wrong, either, no loss of appetite, no pain, no fatigue, no discomfort of any sort. But in the space of a couple of days, the tumor had hit that magic growth spurt when no amount of internal organs can hide it. A sale permitted us to pay for an ultrasound, and the worst was confirmed: The cancer had spread through her entire body, and she had weeks at the very most left to be with us. It would turn out to be fewer than two weeks.

The good news was that she was not in pain, and the vet told me that given her comfort levels and lack of pain up to that point, she might have none at all. At the point when everything failed, he said, it would probably be quick. And so I took her home, and relayed the terrible news, and we wept, and then we set about making her as happy and as comfortable as possible.

She lasted about ten days. On the morning of Wednesday, the 13th, Wings gave her a marrow bone all her own, and she was so happy with it. By evening, her body had begun the laborious process of winding itself down, and she was tired and weak, but she wanted very badly to be allowed outside. I went out with her, and she began to walk, slowly, also laboriously, and it became clear that she wanted to see all her favorite places on the land, imprint them in her mind for the journey that was to come. Eventually, she was to tired to continue, so I picked her up and through a haze of tears, I carried her around to all the places where I knew she had loved to play so that she could visit each one one last time. Then we brought her back inside, into that cold tin can of an RV where we had been living for several months and would wind up spending seven years, and set her on a dog bed at our feet with her bone and Griffin, the alpha, nearby to keep watch as he was wont to do.

Sometime before 10 PM, I saw her convulse, and I knew that it had ruptured, as I had been warned it might. I also knew that, at that hour, and in the snowy weather that year, there would be no one able or willing to come and help, that I had to do this myself. And so I got down on the floor and held her on my lap and in my arms, and I felt every twitch and tremor as her body went through all the processes of turning off the switches and turning out the lights. It took about an hour; her vision went early on, and that frightened her, and so I had to make sure that she could feel me and hear me and know that she was safe. I talked to her for forty or fifty minutes, unceasing, and slowly she relaxed, and eventually . . . stopped. Everything . . . stopped.

10:42 PM.

And it was bitterly cold outside, ice and blowing snow, and we would not be able to bury her until the next morning, so we wrapped her up carefully in a soft pink blanket that matched her favorite girly pink dog sweater and pink biker-girl-style studded collar. And we laid her to rest the following day.

And we wept.

To this day, Wings still talks about how she would ride with him on the ATV, this little scaredy-dog who was also a little tough girl, a gangster girl, one who lived entirely up to her pit bull and rat terrier ancestors. She loved to fake being "dumb," but besides being street smart, she understood everything; she just liked to be everyone's baby.

Of that group of dogs, she was the first to go, and the pack felt it intensely. We'd already lost two others in our years together, but we felt it, too. And we still feel her spirit every now and then, this happy, grinning little girl who had everyone wrapped around her little paw. And tonight, five hours early because it's too late and dark and far too cold at 10:42 PM, I took her her cedar and tobacco and water, as we always do for all of ours. Very little smoke, though; the winds have been at gale force most of the day. But she has what she needs, and mostly that's memory, knowing that she still has our hearts.

We love you, Dom. There's always space for you on the ATV, in our hearts, and everywhere else, too.

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.             

Seven years since our Kachina girl left us.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

I've been so busy all day I keep forgetting to sit down to this. But it's been seven years since our Kachina girl left us.

That was her nickname, actually; in this household, everybody gets nicknames, even those with four legs and tails. Her actual name was Lilith, no not because of the silly flowy white-girl New Age stuff, but because I knew the story of Lilith in the Gnostic tradition, and as with her, what happened with this little girl seemed like an escape from bondage of a very real sort.

She came to me by accident, having escaped from whatever, wherever, whomever and fled to the dog park. She was very much not an alpha dog, but because she was a pit, whomever had kept her on a four-foot chain, trapped in her own waste, had been beating her to try to turn her into a fight dog.

She didn't want that life. Unfortunately, a very large amount of damage had already been done by the abuse, and I spent the next thirteen years on desensitization and PTSD management with her. It was a full-time job in and of itself, on top of all my other work.

She didn't trust Wings when I brought her here; he was a man, and she hated men, save for those who got grandfathered under the "safe" clause of her first two weeks with me. Thereafter, certain people were automatically a threat to her newfound safety and that of her pack, in her mind, and men as a class were chief among them.

But she learned, and so did he, never having had to deal with a dog with such issues before, and as was always the case when she finally warmed up, even marginally, to someone, they always felt so honored that she had them wrapped around her paw for life, and he was no different. But by then she knew that she could trust him, and she did. And it was he who nicknamed her Kachina. He also took that photo of her, from, if memory serves, January of 2011: happier times for her, still healthy, no cancer to fight, looking bright-eyed and beautiful in her little bandanna.

We lost her [older] little sister to sudden cancer in April of 2011 (and her brother in April of 2016, as well as another sib in April of 2018; it's a bad month for dogs). Within a month or so, Lilith developed the same signs, and we expected to lose her in June of 2011. But she clearly wanted to fight, even though she was weakened by it, and so we started her on a regimen of intermittent regular doses of prednisone and more traditional medicine (and a lot of prayer and all the love in the world).

And she was with us very nearly three full years more.

By this day in 2014, we knew it was near, had been near for about ten days already. She had already had several miracles, and we knew there would be no more. We were wrong about that, though; we got one more, and so did she. She spent the day before with a giant rawhide bone, unutterably happy and at peace. On the 14th, she slept nearly the whole day through, on the kitchen floor of that crappy old tin can of an RV that we lived in then. And sometime around 2 or 3 PM, her breathing started to get both more even and more shallow, and she slipped into an ever-deeper sleep.

Wings came inside about 4, maybe a little after, to check on her, and her ears shifted slightly when he spoke to her and stroked her head and ears. By then, I was sitting on the floor with her full-time, so that she would have me there when the time came. it came a few minutes later: 4:16 PM, to be exact. And after so much fear in her younger life, so much pain, so many recent years of fighting to stay with us, it was the easiest, most peaceful thing it could possibly be: She took one last breath while lying against me, let it out, and let her spirit go with it. She's at rest with her sibs, under the big blue spruce, and at the appointed time, I did as we always do, taking her cedar and tobacco with a little sweetgrass in it and a little water, too.

Lilith, we love you, sweet warrior girl. You're always in our hearts.

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.            

Hunter, Twelve Years On

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

One of my favorite images of our beautiful girl: Hunter, twelve years on now.

It seems impossible that she can have been gone twelve years already; she was part of us many more years than that. And still it was far too early; immune-mediated thrombocytopenia and immune-mediated hemolytic anemia, which we managed to catch and halt the prior July, but by February, it was back.

It was one the worst Valentine's Days ever, art of a long week of traveling daily to Santa Fe to a specialized vet, until her condition became so bad that we had to transfer her to another vet there . . . and it took no more than a day or two for the reality to make itself known.

We couldn't even be there. The vet and the techs all held her collectively on their laps, with us on the open phone line, as we all sent her on her journey. And I weep every time I think of it, because this is the little girl who adopted me the very second she saw me, who refused to let me go, who, with her sister BearGirl, made it plain that I was the one and they were not about to let anything change that.

And I am so tired tonight that I know I will not get through this without breaking down, so I won't even try. At just after 4:30 PM, the time she left us, I took cedar and tobacco and water out to where her ashes are scattered, just barely mobile enough to manage it in a foot of snow. Sunny came with me, perhaps to bear witness in his way; he seems to know these things. And I miss our sweet baby girl desperately, this fuzzy flying bullet, this little ball of fur who was such pure love.

We love you, Hunter.  The hole in our hearts makes room for your spirit, baby girl.

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.

 

Seven Years Now

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

It's impossible.  It cannot be seven years now since we lost our big guy, the one in the foreground there. But a quick search of prior posts proves that it's true. [That photo was taken in April of 2011, on the day we buried their little (but older) sister Dom, and they were both in mourning.]

Major was the one I failed, terribly and utterly, and no, I do not want argument from anyone about it, because I know the truth of it. He had developed cancer (as, it would turn out, would all of his adoptive siblings, dogs and horses both, because we have a large and deadly animal cancer cluster in this area, maybe environmental contaminants from the old moly mine, or maybe from what they've been doing up at the Ski Valley). He had had such a hard life before he came to us, and all we wanted was to give him whatever years he had left in comfort (and that was before the cancer). 

He had been abused, neglected, starved and abandoned, apparently left tied out on a chain in the middle of the summer monsoons, which are terrifying even to humans; how much more for a young dog? Whomever had him first also cropped his tail badly, ripped off his dewclaws, and just generally set him up for a lifetime of pain and fear. He wound up at the shelter where my parents lived, then with them, and then with us when it became clear my mom couldn't handle him anymore. By then his insulin resistance had kicked in and he was overweight, hip joints in terrible pain, and even thought the car I drove then was fairly low to the ground, I still had to pick up all 125 pounds of him and lift him into the back to bring him here, because he couldn't climb even that foot or two for himself.

And then he got here.

Twenty-five fenced acres to roam at whim and will, absolutely fascinating smells everywhere for a scent hound, and good healthy food and fresh water and a safe place to sleep indoors for the rest of his life. He was in heaven. He dropped 25 pounds in the space of a couple of months, and in short order was running, jumping, patrolling all the way around the fenceline every day, hips apparently fully healed. So up until his last months, we were at least able to give him a good life. Those final days were complicated by a bitterly cold winter and the fact that we no longer had the house and were crowded into that toxic tin can, with no funds for continual vet visits, and we had to do what we could for him ourselves. It was hard. So hard. But we loved him, and we had made him that promise. You know the one.

Major was a wigglebutt when he was happy, not enough tail to wag effectively so he just wagged his whole back end. He was also scared far too much of the time, effects from his early years of trauma and abuse. But he also lived up to his name (not one we hung on him, by the way, but it was what he knew) when it counted: In the spring of 2009, then year-old pups Raven and She-Wolf came across a prairie rattler in the south hayfield, thinking they could play with it. Major instinctively knew better and threw himself between them and it; I watched it all unfold as I was racing across the field myself. He grabbed it, bit down hard, and threw it, sustaining a snakebite on his muzzle. I couldn't reach Wings, who was gone with the truck, and so I had to resort to the old suck-and-spit routine on a dog's muzzle between each effort to dial. Fortunately, I had my peoples' own traditional remedy for just such an eventuality, and after I had done what I could, I made a poultice, plastered it onto his muzzle, and kept him quiet until Wings got home and we could get him to the vet for Sunday emergency care. Two vets came in, and both were shocked to see that there was no swelling, no redness, nothing; I had to search through his whiskers and fur for the fang-marks to show them where he'd been bitten. They concluded that a half-course of anti-venin (hideously expensive even at that) would be sufficient, so that's what we did, and was enough.

I have never forgotten that moment when our scaredy-boy set aside all thought for himself to protect the younger ones. It showed a strength that normally wasn't visible to anyone on the outside, and I was so proud of him that day. We were always proud of him, of course; he was always a Good Boy. And so today, at 12:30 (the time that he left us seven years ago) I took some water and cedar and tobacco to his resting place, as I always do for the ones with four legs and feathers and no lesser spirits than humans have . . . and found Wings already there, putting out a little of the food he loved so much in life, kibble, wet food, a little raw meat that was his favorite thing in the world.

We love you, Major. We will always feed your spirit.

 

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. 

Our little Trickster Girl, two years gone.

Photo copyright Aji, 202; all rights reserved.

It would be the last photo I ever took of her, although we didn't know that at the time. Today is hard day for other reasons, too, specifically a marker of yet another human loss, but the one that breaks us both is this one: our little Trickster Girl, two years gone.

She was one of the first of the ferals, she and her littermate who we called Crow. Littermates to Cricket, too, apparently, and tricksters all, starved, abused, neglected, and near death, and they all wormed their way into our hearts. She and Crow brought Cricket and three others, and then all but one stayed permanently, or as permanently as can be with ferals used to wandering at will . . . with too often inevitable results. Crow and Blue had vanished, as though into thin air, a little over 2 months prior, although we know, as surely as it is possible to know without having witnessed the act itself, what happened to them, and at whose hands as well. Coyote had stayed behind that day, and she became velcroed to us in spirit as well as in fact.

Crow and Cricket got their names in part from their black coats, but Coyote, Ashawinoodese in my language, was the beautiful golden-buff shade of a coyote pup. She was fierce, and just as predatory, too; we lost a chicken or two to the fact of her early starvation before she found us, and she nearly got two more (Bent-Beak, whose beak was bent nearly from hatching, not from the dog, is now the infamous zombie chicken who resurrected herself, regrew her entire lush Americauna tail, and is now thriving as one the alpha matriarchs in the coop). But it was not Coyote's fault, and we knew that; starved from birth, by the time she found us, at probably four months of age, the need to hunt for baseline survival was long since ingrained.

But the vanishing of her sister changed her, kept her close to home. Thereafter, she never ventured beyond the gate, ever, and so on this day two years ago, we still don't know who, or what, lured her around and beyond it to put her in the path of a fast-moving vehicle. We never saw or heard a thing, only found her some minutes later. She was sufficiently tied to us in spirit by then to have managed to stagger back up the drive and inside the gate, where she simply lay down in the snow, a few drops of blood leaking out with her last breath. And when we found her, I howled at the sky, cursed all the likely suspects roundly, did my damnedest to make them pay. Because she was innocent, and a most beautiful spirit.

We have our own theories, our own suspicions, just as we do with the two who vanished just as mysteriously last June. This county is a hard place for small spirits, full of evils brought here from without, and every day visits new horrors upon them. So if you're reading this, yes, we know we will never be able to prove it . . . but we know.

But none of that brings this sweet girl back; nothing does And so this morning, at the appointed time, I did as we always do with our dogs and our horses who are no longer here, who gave us the greatest of gifts while they were with us and so we can do no less by them now. I took her her cedar and tobacco and a little fresh water, and while I was there, Sunny and Stormy came barreling up behind me to fling themselves both at me and at the resting place of the sister they never knew. 

Except I don't think she's quite a sister. We see so much of Coyote and Crow in both of these new pups, in appearance, yes, but mostly in spirit. There was an attachment there from the very beginning that neither of us, in all our years of dogs, has ever seen before, a sense of familiarity on their part, a very clear sense of finding home. We know that the other dogs come to visit us occasionally through them, but with Coyote and Crow, it's perhaps something a little more. And so in a sense, they are still with us, the honey-colored fierce bundle of love and her smaller but still-fiercer sister with the raven fur.

We love you, little Trickster Girl. You're always in our hearts.

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.

     

Thirteen Years.

Photo copyright Wings, 2020; 

all rights reserved.

Oh, BearGirl. It can't possibly have been thirteen years already since you left us. And yet it is.

She would be the first of many — so many; too many — of the animals who would have to leave us since we began our lives as a couple, and so this day is always especially hard. It's also hard because it was still too soon, entirely unnecessary but for the veterinary malpractice that took her from us. We had taken her to said vet some weeks previously, the vet clearly surprised and none too pleased to see me holding her leash, and when it came time to examine her, BearGirl turned and fled to hide her face between my knees. "Mom," was Wings's comment.

But the animals in our lives have never been child substitutes; they are equals in spirit. Dependent on us, surely, that doesn't imply a childlike status, merely care. And BearGirl was already an old soul, impossibly wise. She was in the neighborhood of eleven years old on this day thirteen years ago, and while that's long for a Newfie, she should have had much longer. But I had only recently learned of the long-term damage that had been inflicted previously, and its shadow and her spirit had finally caught up with each other.

I still remember how she greeted me the day we met: a week after Wings and I had first met, as it happens, when I came here for our first date, no small amount of trepidation on my part because of all the obvious reasons, and because I had also been so long out of the dating game, courtesy of life and work and the need to take care of two ill elder parents. I had no real idea what to expect, but as I turned into the drive, she and her sister Hunter saw my car, fixed their eyes straight on me, and came bulleting all the way across the north field as fast as their legs could carry them, so fast they seemed nearly to levitate. By the time I parked, they were dancing with anticipation; I opened the driver's door, and Hunter, a gull-sized Australian Shepherd, immediately shoved her way in under my feet, while BearGirl, enough older to insist on retaining a smidgen of dignity, merely danced and shoved her head in onto my lap. It was a minute or two before I could even get out of the car, because these two girls adopted me instantly, and they never let me go.

Letting BearGirl was exceedingly hard, and we had fewer than four weeks to adjust ourselves to the idea that she might not make it through the crisis, through the battle her body was insistently waging despite all odds. Indeed, on the next-to-last day, we were still arguing with fate, hoping for a miracle. But on the day of the Feast of San Geronimo, when absolutely no help is to be found, a mini-stroke foreclosed all other avenues, and it was time. And it was the vet who was not hers who agreed to help us help her. He's been vet to all of our dogs ever since, and he's come out for others, too. And we knew it was right, because he wept with us at the end.

I love that photo Wings took of her, above. I love the contrast between her rich black velvet coat and the bright gold carpet of aspen leaves, a shot from this very time of year, probably in 2005 or 2006. It was when she was happiest, too, the cool air most comfortable for her with all that gorgeous long black fur.  And there is not a day that goes by that BearGirl is not in my heart, nor in my thoughts. It would be impossible: All I have to do is walk outside to see the spot where, when the old manufactured home was still here, she loved to lie against the skirting in the sun. That house was far longer than our home now is wide, and so that spot is now open space, but I can still tell you exactly where it is. And so, some forty minutes ago, I did as I always do for all of our animals and I took her water and cedar and tobacco. I put them where we spread her ashes, including a little extra tobacco on her favorite spot in the sun. And I miss her terribly. We both do.

We love you, BearGirl. We always will.

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. 

It's been a year already, but it seems like only yesterday.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

It's been a year already, but it seems like only yesterday that we had to let Raven walk (or fly) where we can't follow.

That shot was on May 10th of last year, eleven days prior. For at least a month, we had been prepared for him to leave us at any minute, and yet, even then you're still never ready. All the moreso with a dog whose fierce protectiveness hid his atavistic fear of vets and more, born of a first year of abuse and abandonment, when you have to call the vet to come out and help his body do what it can't on its own. 

The one thing we promised him is that we wouldn't let him suffer.

Raven came to us in the latter half of 2008, starved beyond what one would think would be even base survival, set upon by the local vicious dogs, generally abused and left to die. He was terrified of everything, including the prospect of getting into a vehicle, so we could only feed him on the days we were at the gallery, and every morning, he would be lying faithfully in front of the door, waiting for us. It broke our hearts to think that during closures, he would be waiting for days and weeks on end.

So before the end-of-winter full closure, we loaded him (and me) up into the bed of the truck and I held him and his leash in a death grip in the cold February dusk, wind blasting us both, him looking for any chance to jump. But he had been my guardian, even escorting me to and from the restroom, for all those months, and I wouldn't let him go.

His fear made him aggressive with other dogs, and even at the end, he was still trying to guard his pack: two sets of stitches in the two months prior. That photo, though, shows him at his most relaxed, lying in the grass with a marrow bone, tongue happy and his entire self in the doggie equivalent of pure bliss. On the last day, held fast in my arms on the grass, it took all of a few seconds: 5:19 PM was the moment when his head, instead of falling rightward as expected, fell left against my chest and I felt his spirit go. The vet tech helped Wings carry all 120 pounds of him (50 of that the inoperable tumor that took him too soon) to the grave, and the vet himself tossed in a little soil.

At the moment he was laid to rest, a raven rose seemingly out of nowhere, cawing and cackling and flapping. It looked straight at me, circled, then zoomed westward, laughing as it went.

The ravens were always his guides; they named him, watched over him, and made him their own.

At the appointed time, I did as we always do, took him some water and some cedar and some tobacco at his resting place. His spirit's long gone, of course, flown westward a year ago this night. But I feel him here occasionally, my fierce brindle guardian with the sweet eyes.

We love you, Raven. You're always in our hearts.


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

Six days eleven years ago.

Photo copyright Wings, 2020; all rights reserved.

Six days eleven years ago. 

That's all the time we had with him. Hell, not even six full days; four days and parts of two more. He was another wounded spirit who found his way to us however briefly, but despite the illness that would take him, he was also strong — a little tough guy who barked back at Raven, and who loved us deeply and wholeheartedly for those six days.

We called him Animikiins, Little Thunder Being. Well, that was one of his names. He was also Little Man, Little Big Man, Little Dude, Tough Guy, Thumper (the neurological damage that had already settled in caused one hind foot to spasm occasionally and, well, do like Thumper in Bambi).

He followed us everywhere, and he carved out of place in both our hearts immediately. And when we couldn't save him, it left a Rott-puppy-sized hole that hasn't closed even a millimeter all these years later.

It was this day eleven years ago, about ten minutes from now. At that point, I'll do as we always do, put cedar and tobacco and water on his resting place. He's near where the horses are buried, and I imagine all of their spirits watching over each other.

And I'll be haunted by sweet face, smiling up into mine on the vet's table, telling me he knew and understood, then circling into my arm and going to sleep before the vet even got there. I don't think he felt a thing.

Except love.

We love you, Animikiins. That never changes.


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.

Two years since this sweet girl left us.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

It's been two years today — at 9:27 this morning, to be exact. After all that's happened over these two years, it seems impossible that so much time could have passed, but it's true. Two years since this sweet girl left us.

in the same way that Raven was slightly more my dog, She-Wolf was slightly more Wings's. Not unusual for female dogs to bond more, or at least differently, to male humans and male dogs to female humans, but She-Wolf was such pure love that it never felt less, only different. She tagged after Wings while he worked; when she was sick, she came to me for help. And she fought so much in her life just to live.

She showed up one day at the shop while I was there, not yet a year old, scrawny, starved, a pint-size bag of bones that would eventually grow into a 65-pound healthy dog. She was whip-smart, having absolutely no commands but nevertheless understanding instinctively what was wanted, and she would come to be fed and then lie at my feet or by the fire to escape the cold. She went home with us on the day before Thanksgiving in 2008, still more puppy than not, full of energy and mischief.

By the fall of 2013, she wasn't feeling so hot, and we suspected we knew what it was; her formative months, filled with starvation, come back to haunt her by way of a damaged metabolism. It took a few weeks to get her in to the vet; sure enough, she was diabetic, and he warned us that she had no more than two months' worth of sight left at the outside, probably less, because in retrospect we knew that she had been showing symptoms for a while. He also grilled me about whether we were prepared to take on the "burden," because apparently a lot of folks would rather put their dogs down than deal with it. But we're both intimately familiar with the disease, and we knew what to do.

She got tested twice a day, and injected twice a day. Normally, I did it at 9 AM and 9 PM, and if I got busy and too many minutes passed beyond the 9:00 mark, she would come and find me, because her internal clock was scary-accurate, and she knew it was time for her test and her shot. She never fought the needles, never whimpered; the first insulin injection in the vet's office had made her feel SO much better in the space of five minutes that she made the connection instantly and never looked back. And with a lot of work, we saved her eyesight for more than three years. Even once it was, for all practical purposes, gone, she navigated just fine in daylight, knowing her home sand land so well that she didn't need to see it.

We didn't know that something worse was on the way.

At the very end of 2017, the last day or next-to-last day of the year, we came downstairs to find what looked like a little blood on the dining room rug, with perhaps some urine. We couldn't tell whether it had come from her or Raven, or indeed what it actually was; both were perfectly capable of getting into thing outside and winding up with nicks or scratches, too. Everyone seemed fine, so we didn't worry unduly, but we kept watch.

It appeared again a few days later, and still we couldn't tell which dog was responsible. I followed them both as much as possible, and we eventually determined that it was She-Wolf. We were hoping diabetes- related UTI (and worrying about diabetes-related kidney failure). What it was was much worse.

She had interstitial carcinoma of the bladder, a very aggressive, very fast-moving, very lethal form of cancer in dogs. By the time we knew anything was wrong, it was already too late. The vet (our regular vet's partner, who treated her all the way through it, and was wonderful) warned us to expect her to have days at most.

We gave her three months. Good ones.

When the night came that she threw up blood, we knew. We called the vet at dawn, and our regular vet came out with the tech, who She-Wolf knew well and loved. Together, we held her in our arms, and through their own tears, Ted and Natalia helped us send her to the spirit world, where she would have no more pain. It was time, and it was easy, and she had no pain in the process.

And she is still in our hearts every single day. When I say She-Wolf was pure love, I mean exactly that. She just . . . LOVED. Everybody. Everything. But especially her pack and her world. And I miss her terribly. And so today I did as we always do, and I took her sweet spirit her offerings: cedar and smoke, tobacco, water. Wings left her some jerky, too.

We love you, She-Wolf. The gift you gave us, sweet girl, doesn't disappear; you and it live in our hearts.

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

My Eagle and My Lion, Four Years Gone

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

Four years today. Four years that ripped the biggest of all the many, many holes in my heart, and this will never be repaired.

I was walking out to the studio this evening to start evening chores. Chinook stood off to the left, and for a moment, I swear, just for a moment, I thought it was Griffin. It wasn't just that she has the same coloring; yes, she's a hound, too, but her body type is very different. But just for a moment, he seemed to be present there, in her, just a little — just enough for me to start to speak his name.

But the, Griffin's always been powerful, his spirit far outsized to his body or length of time on this plane.

He was my spirit dog, a soul mate of a different sort, and he nearly immediately became the same for Wings. He saved me on more than one occasion, taking care of me when there was literally no one else to do so. He was what a friend called a benevolent alpha, always gaining the deference of the pack without ever having to enforce it, because his job, his role, his task and obligation, as he saw it, was always, always, to keep his whole pack safe. And on those rare moments when he had time to wholly himself, his favorite way to unwind was simply to lie in the cool grass, maybe a shaft of sunlight or only the shimmer of moonlight falling across his rich brindle coat.

We lost him too soon, and yet, he had a good long life: fifteen and a half years, far longer than most dogs of his size, and especially those who were rescues. But he rescued me: On the very night I was at the shelter to see a different dog, he saw me coming long before I could see him, and he was waiting. He was promised to another, but he knew better, and he worked his spirit magic to make sure he went home with me. And his trust in me was complete from the very first moment, a gift, with his purest kind of love, of incalculable value to someone like me, from a life of being not merely unwanted, but deliberately forced out of every space that by rights should have held a place for me.

It was 5 PM on this very day, and so at 5:00 I went out and took him everything we always take them: cedar for smoke, tobacco, water. Wings also gave me a piece of his home-made elk jerky, and its's tucked under his stone. He'll find it; he always does.

And I will feel that hole in my heart, that empty space, a little more deeply tonight. He was my Griffin, my eagle and my lion, four years gone — as fierce and brave as either, as strong and protective, too. Four years gone, but the love, and spirit, of our sweet boy is as strong as ever. We both feel him, even "see" him, every now and then.

We love you, Griffin. You're never out of our hearts; our spirits are with yours, always.



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