Two

It is August 14th, 2 years to the day when my young dog Piper was shot and killed by a neighbour. Last year at this time I remember being in a state of much more strife, residual angst still alive in my bloodstream. The trauma of finding him warm and dead on the man's property the year before minutes after exiting my house palpable. Feelings of responsibility, failure and remorse as well as the type of anger and grief that comes with such events overwhelmed me. His death occurred mid-way through a difficult time in my life, and a year ago I was still neck-deep in the complicated tangles of my inner landscape. Trace amounts of loss and trauma lingered, many still unhealed and unresolved. This year those feelings have waned some and I remain grateful to have had this wild little creature and all his patience-testing ways as a brief companion.

Pipers' presence in my life was a watershed, inviting me to learn more about how dogs think. I signed up with a trainer in an effort to find a direction for his hell-bent energy and met with many successes. It was akin to magic this ability to tap into the hidden motivations of another creature, and all that was needed was for me to notice all the things he was doing right. In the time since, I apprenticed with the same trainer and have become someone who works with dogs, work that has become woven into an eclectic but satisfying mix of things that I do with my life.

In the past year I have worked with a number of people and their dogs, and a recurring theme has been people struggling on a decision point. To keep or not to keep; what to do with a problem dog. The ones whose unpredictability needs both management and special training to make them viable as a creature that can exist in this human world of ours. And we have a habit of becoming hooked, emotionally strung out on a cocktail of guilt and anthropomorphic reasoning and a drive to 'rescue'. It is almost impossible for most of us to remain objective for fear of seeming callous, but I have come to understand that there is nothing black and white in this reality. I can see now how the 'kindest' approaches can be the more destructive or futile, and how the 'callous' ones can really be the most compassion-filled. Sometimes the best decisions are the ones that end a life but free an animal from a lifetime of confusion, fear and the trauma of a more violent end, although the best of us may never find absolute peace in this conclusion. We try to figure out what the dogs would want/need, striving to be accountable in the best ways, attempting to do the 'right' thing for both ourselves and the dog. In all of it I am struck by it's challenges - torn between a reverence for life and other, more mundane but critical realities. I do believe we live in a world which does not always make it possible to choose perfectly or with absolute clarity. Perhaps part of our penance is to always doubt ourselves, even if it is only in small ways, and to know that we did truly love despite our imperfections.

With Piper, my choice was made for me, though I will admit here that there were days with him as he bolted away from me on the beach to steal a picnic (or worse) or suddenly went ballistic on my other dog for some imperceptible eye contact infraction, that I wished for an easier animal. One that was less Tasmanian devil and more placid, obedient, pliable. But he was none of the latter, and while his feral nature was probably what cost him his life in the end, it was also the thing about him that taught me the most about what I still need to learn. About how I cannot change other beings to be what I want them to be, how I must find the ways I can to step in with their wildness, to walk or gallop alongside them in an effort to understand. To see them and work with the materials I am given, to listen deeply, and learn how to let go if need be.