Dog gone wild

Admittedly I look around at the world today, the parts of it comprised of people close to me, that I care about and know or have known, as well as those far and distant to me and I understand that what I am writing about here is probably small potatoes in the realm of loss, grief and personal tragedy. I know that, but I will write it anyway. As there is often great beauty and solace to be found, even in things that are sad. And sadness of any kind is profoundly felt and universal, regardless of the worldly cause.

It was August 7th when I started writing this. One week off the year anniversary of Piper's death-day. I was in the company of 2 good dogs, neither mine, looking over Elk lake, surrounded by birds of all sorts. It is therapy, it is penance, it is me offering care in the hopes that things will go better for these two souls than it did for him.

Now it is the morning of August 14th, and one year ago I was having a busy day filled with the ins and outs of taking care of my two young dogs, working, basking in the afterglow of a great trip to Clayoquot with good friends.

In the aftermath of Piper's death, which was brutal and bloody at the hands of another human being, I was knocked flat. Another's tendency towards a quick trigger finger was unlocked by my part of the equation. A door left open. The temptation of another dog being walked down the driveway, Piper darted out as I looked the other way. Ran himself down the road and up the wrong driveway into oblivion. Minutes later I found myself covered in his blood, cradling his limp warm body. The exit wound a gaping hole where his heart had been.

I cried daily for 6 weeks. Shocked by it. Unwound. My grief interupted over the months that followed by other things that rose up and shook me, in both lovely then devastating ways.

I never shed the feeling that I could not keep the creature left to me, Jespah, safe from the world. Perhaps that I could not love her in the way I should. Maybe it was cowardice or something else, but in the spring I gave her up too, though to a home that loves her and knows her as equally as I did. And is probably better for her.

One turn around the sun of a Piperless world is complete. That smooth-coated little black wild thing of a dog. He drove me nuts, defied everything that I had learned from my old dog/old soul Tarka. Taught me everything anew. He was insensitive, blazon, endlessly hyperactive.
Reckless, if a dog can be that.
We had come a long way he and I, had figured out how to harness his erratic energy. His blinding speed and unpredictable ranging.

Not quite enough to survive this human world.

He was wild but unbearably sweet. He thrived on touch, trusted infinitely the hands of humans and flopped like a seal across any lap that would take him. As he lay blown open by a bullet in my arms I remember thinking that he seemed the same. Heavy, limp, relaxed. A dark image perhaps, but it's the truth.

He was named after a bird. Chosen on a whim at the end of a late night drive home to Tofino. Passing Sandpiper Road in the dark wet of a west coast winter, the name of the dog I had had for less than a week arrived.