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.            

Little Warrior Girl

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

That photo was taken six years ago almost to the day — if I remember correctly, on April 9th of 2014. That was her last enormous rawhide treat. Because it was six years ago this day that our little warrior girl left us.

This was Lilith, the demon-goddess (and yes, if I had it to do over again, I'd no doubt choose another name, but it suited her perfectly, having been abused and confined and beaten until she grew into powers she never wanted, but wound up needing for survival). The way she came to me was seemingly accidental, but I think she never would've survived had my dog not herded her terrified self into submission for me to catch.

She never left.

She was . . . much more than a handful. Whomever she escaped from had designs on her as a fighting dog, and it was not her natural inclination, but she learned all the worst lessons just to save herself, and she transferred those loyalties to us. It took her months to warm up to Wings; she didn't like men, she didn't like kids, she didn't like uniforms or wheels or braids or locs, and she reacted entirely from memory, her whole early life one massive formative period of trauma, and everything thereafter filled with post-traumatic stress. My other dog had to teach her to play, that running was something you could do for fun.

But she was fiercely loyal, and once she loved, she loved you forever. You were part of her pack, and she would defend you with everything she had. She was also, once comfortable with you, the sweetest little girl, and she doled out kisses as sparingly as the rarest of jewels; if you got one, you were honored and grateful, because she just didn't do it. Yes, she had quite the racket going, and she worked it for all it was worth, but she also meant all of it, too. Once she finally bonded herself to Wings, she took full advantage. In return, he called her Kachina, and it fit.

As with several of our other dogs, she developed cancer, part of a cluster of illnesses that resulted, apparently, from an off-brand topical treatment for fleas. We've stopped using them entirely as a result, and we've never seen a flea on any of our dogs, before or since. She became ill in June of 2011, and we thought we would lose her several times between then and this day in 2014, but she always rallied, never willing to leave us just yet. By the time we took that photo, we knew it wouldn't be long; she was slowing, easily tired, content just to lie at my feet and chew on her rawhide. When she finally left us, at 4:16 PM on April 10, 2014, it was the gentlest leaving I've ever seen: She fell asleep a couple of hours prior, her breathing slowly deepened over time, then her breaths grew further apart, until finally, she gave one small sigh, and began her journey to the spirit world. For a little girl whose early time in this world was so fraught and terrifying and filled with pain, I was happy to see that her leaving it was easy and without either pain or fear.

I did today as I always do, for all of them: At the appointed time, I took water and cedar and tobacco to her resting place. Wings usually does something similar, or comes with me to do it. Most people don't do this with their animals, but there's a reason he nicknamed her Kachina: These are the purest of spirits, and the give us everything, unasked. We also tend to take in those who spent their lives prior to reaching us being abused, neglected, abandoned, starved, and so the least we can do is honor their little spirits for all the loyalty and love they gave us in a world that had otherwise treated them so badly. That's especially the case with this little girl, who had every reason to hate humanity, and still found it in her big heart to love us.

We love you, Lilith.  You're never out of our hearts, either.

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.

Half a decade. Already.

Photo copyright Wings, 2019; all rights reserved.

Half a decade. Already.

That's how long it's been since we lost Lilith, our Kachina, our demon-goddess, our little warrior girl. On this date in 2014, at 4:16 PM, to be exact.

Kachina was Wings's nickname for her; all our animals get multiple names, just like people. Sometimes it's nothing more than Butthead, but I don't think we ever applied that one to her. She was damaged when she found me, way back in 2001, and our life together was spent trying, slowly and carefully, to unravel her PTSD, to free her from the demons that bedeviled her so. Someone intended her to be a fight dog, although she never wanted it; never wanted, in fact, anything other than food and water and shelter and love and the safety of being somewhere in the middle of a pack. But what was done to her made her permanently fear-aggressive, and once I took her on, I knew that I could never let her go, because it would mean her consignment to a death kennel.

And so we worked. All of us. It took her a while to warm up to Wings; he does have that Y chromosome, after all, and so did her chief abuser(s). But eventually, she bonded with him almost as much as she had already done with me, and, as always, her eventual acceptance of him made him ridiculously proud (nice little racket she had going there). Seriously, though, she was all innocence, which made her treatment all the more repulsive, and so we protected her fiercely.

She fell ill in June of 2011 — visibly so, anyway; given the size and speed with which the tumor in her abdomen manifested, it had likely been there for a while. We had just lost Dom (same month, and Grif and She-Wolf would also leave us in April of later years, and we will likely not get out of this month without yet another one now in Raven, and this is all why I hate this month so desperately, because it's all grief), and so we threw everything we had into saving her. It worked, for a while; we were able to give her almost three full years more. And when the tumor finally won, it didn't get to take her spirit or her peace; she simply went to sleep, and her sleep grew deeper and deeper, until, late that afternoon, it simply took over entirely.

She is where all the others are, and at the appointed time, I took her the same things I take them all: cedar, tobacco, a little water — all the things a kachina would need. For all her demons, she was certainly a warrior, and a little spirit girl besides, and we miss her every day.

We love you, Little Warrior Girl.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Four years for our fierce little warrior girl.

Photo copyright Wings, 2018; all rights reserved.

It can't possibly have been four years.

But it has.

Four years since our little warrior girl, the one Wings nicknamed Kachina (in part because of her fierceness, and because her eventual acceptance of him felt like a spirit's magic), walked on. 

Lilith was not the dog I ever intended to have, but she found Griffin and me, and it was a done deal before I ever knew it. Griffin taught her how to be a dog, how to be. She had been so badly abused, she knew nothing but pain and fear — and relief at having found us, and then the kind of love that is so utterly terrified of losing it, of being lost.

She was also the toughest dog who ever owned me, because her terror of being hurt again, of being abandoned, made her aggressive. Not toward me; just everyone and everything else. She was so suspicious of Wings that by the time she finally deigned to take food from his hand, or look at him without baring her teeth, he called it a victory.

As much difficulty as she caused me, we understood each other, she and I. We had too much in common for it to be otherwise. By the time Wings took that photo, the most beautiful one of her, looking happy and inquisitive, time had worked a little of its magic, and she was mostly calm. She was happy. She wasn't healthy anymore; her battle with cancer consumed nearly the last three years of her life. She fought it like the warrior she was, but we always knew there would come a point when it would win.

When it won over our fierce little girl, it took its victory in the gentlest way possible. She went to sleep on her own, breathed deeply for a while, then slipped away with the waning sunlight. Around this time last year, she visited me in a dream; I haven't seen her lately in any world, but I assume that's because she now has her brother back, and they're happy.

This is always a tough week: The three who came with me from the East Coast to here, Dom, Lilith, and Griffin, are all in that other world now — Dom in 2011, on the 14th; Lilith in 2014, on the 10th; and Griffin in 2016, on the 16th. Today is the first of the three, and just seeing her beautiful little face, so happy in this world at last but with so little time left overall, breaks our hearts all over again.

In a few minutes (at 4:16PM, to be exact), I'll go out to where her body rests, and give her cedar and tobacco. Her spirit's long gone, of course, but I think she'll know. At least now when her spirit comes back to visit, she has a house to stay in, comfortable and warm.

We love you, Lilith, our fierce one.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

It's been three years already. I think her spirit is happy now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. 

This was taken, if memory serves, three years and a day ago. Not many days more, at any rate. Because three years ago today, at 4:16 PM, Lilith set off on her final journey.

You can't really tell from the photo, but her abdomen was hugely distended from the tumors that riddled her body. But Wings brought her a rawhide in the days just prior, and she lay happily on the dog beds on the kitchen floor, gnawing for all she was worth. 

She fought for nearly three full years, too, and hard. It was nothing less than I would've expected from our little pit-bull warrior girl, one who survived horrifying abuse in her first eight months of life only to escape and find Griffin and me. But the abuse scarred her psyche for life, and I'm convinced it hastened her physical illness, as well. 

I dreamed about her a few nights ago. That's rare; the dogs come to me in dreams, but not often, and when they do, I take notice. This time, she was undeniably happy — joyful, even, healthy and slender and full of energy, running here and there, back and forth, with her happiest doggy grin on her face. At one point, she jumped up into my arms as she did when she was young, and simply grinned at me, and as dreams go, it's hard to do much better than that.

At the appointed time, I went to where she rests and burned a little cedar for her, gave her some dry cedar and some tobacco and some water. Wings gave her some medicine yesterday. And I will weep tonight for this beautiful little girl who came to me so badly hurt and worked so hard to overcome it, this little warrior who Wings called Kachina, this little spirit girl. But they will be, partly, tears of joy, too: for the time we had with her, and because I think her fierce beautiful spirit is happy again now.

We love you, Lilith, our little Kachina girl.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Three Years

Photo copyright Wings, 2011; all rights reserved.

Monday was the actual day. Between the killer pace of prepping for the show and having lost Lilith four days previously, I was in no shape to post anything.

But April 14, 2011, was the night this little girl left us. It was too late to do anything then, so we laid Dom to rest the next morning. Lilith is now resting between Dom and Major.

This was another little being with a heart to match any human warrior. She survived horrors (as a bait dog, among other things) before finding her way to me. That raised paw? That's because it was broken in puppyhood, and her [alleged] humans couldn't be bothered to fix it. By 2.5, when she came to me, the shelter/rescue had had to rebreak it and pin it, and they screwed it up so badly that it had to be fused. Bleeding and infection followed; I took care of fixing that on my own.

Pit bull/rat terrier, as nearly as we could tell. Liked to play scaredy-dog, but really had a hell of a lot of heart and strength. And once she wormed her way into your heart (and your lap), you couldn't remove her, even surgically, if you tried.

We found out she was sick roughly two weeks before she left us. It was the same thing that took Lilith's life: pyrethrin toxicity, leading to tumors throughout her body. Lilith first showed sign of having developed it two months after we lost Dom, and the first death scare with her was on June 17th of that same year. She hung nearly three more years, but Dom's little body couldn't hold out that long.

I still feel her sometimes; we both do. A few days ago, a sudden image of Lilith flashed into my mind's eye, wholly unbidden: She was walking alone, westward, down a road that I'd never seen before, when suddenly she saw someone she recognized. She broke into a run, that big doggy grin on her face, and I could see that she was running like she used to — healthy, tumors gone, gray gone, her coat back to full black and white. And I knew she'd just seen Dom, and they were running to greet each other.

Oh, my sweet baby girl . . . .

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Thursday, April 10, 2014.  4:16 PM MDT.

Our fierce little warrior girl finally lost her battle.

This is how I'd rather remember our little kachina girl ("Kachina" was Wings's nickname for her).

We love you, Lilith.

My heart is ripped into shreds.

Y'all must be doing something right.

Yesterday, when I thought all hope was gone.
I thought that today, too, actually.
Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Thank you to everyone who has sent kind words, good thoughts, prayers, whatever healing practices your traditions employ, all on Lilith's behalf. We owe you more than we can say right now.

Yesterday morning, she drank a bit of broth — and promptly upchucked it and everything she'd eaten Friday night. She refused to eat for the rest of the day, and drank water only twice that I know of. Today, she'd eaten a very little bit of food this morning, and a few tiny pieces of cooked chicken from Wings's hand, and nothing else. She hasn't been able to stand up under her own power since last night.

Until now.

I had to run up to the little store in the village two miles up the road to pick up half-and-half for Wings's coffee. I left her inside on her doggie bed, and although the metal trash can contained food scraps, I didn't bother covering it, because, you know, she couldn't stand without one of us lifting her.

I just came inside. Her bed was empty. I blinked, saw her standing precariously by the trash can, and nearly dropped everything, thinking she was upchucking again.

Oh, no.

She had hauled herself laboriously to her feet, hauled the remnants of last night's homemade pizza out of the trash can, and was furiously horking all the pepperoni off it as fast as she could.

She's drunk some water, been outside, and has now collapsed in here again.

But the cover's back on the trash can.




Copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.

Still with us . . .

Photo copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.

for the moment. We'll see what tonight (and, we hope, tomorrow) bring.

I can't put into words what this image does to my heart right now.

Copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.

The Last Halfway-Decent Photo This Camera Will Ever Take

Photo copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.

Well, today is the day I have to say goodbye to my camera, apparently.

On March 20th, I took some shots of the new little chickie girls that came out brilliant in color and sharply defined. Four days later, I tried to get some of Miskwaki, and got a lot of white glare for my trouble.  I thought it was a setting.

So, having recharged the battery and skated through the settings to make sure everything was as it should be, I took a few of Lilith with her new present from Wings: a gigantic rawhide bone. And of a half-dozen shots, this — the first one taken — is the only one that's remotely useable.

Turns out it's a sensor. And it's a problem that been known since October, 2005 — a year before Wings bought the camera. Yes, this was his first digital; after he upgraded to a more professional model a few years ago, he bequeathed this one to me. So the professional in the household has a functional camera, and all is well. And frankly, we're lucky that this one lasted eight years; that doesn't appear to be the norm.

I'm strictly amateur hour, and I know it. The one he uses? Waaaaaaay over my head. But it's been fun to have a decent-quality little piece that could take the casual shots I want to grab at any given time.

So all this is by way of saying that from here on in, any photos by me that are posted here are going to ones taken previously. But I guess it's appropriate that the last shot using this one should be of my beautiful little girl having so much fun.



Copyright Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.