Welcome, Thistle!

Cricket came to work with me yesterday, and we left early to go pick up Thistle. Do you think she is comfy?


She sure looks comfy:


In preparation for bringing her home, I added her drawing to our treat buckets:


She has flippetty-flappetty ears, like Cricket's. She also has the same coloring as Cricket, but unlike Cricket, who is part pointer, she is more traditional husky, so she has a fuzzier coat and a more classic husky nose, instead of Cricket's pointy, slopey schnozzle.

While I was at work yesterday, the dog handlers at Dew Claw were getting a bit sentimental, and took some beautiful photos of Thistle out in the sunshine:


I sent one back of Cricket:


She got comfy pretty quickly, although she has yet to embrace the couch (or eating veggies):


This morning, Cricket actually hung out with her a bit:


It was cooold!


So rather than take them skijoring as planned, we ran around the neighborhood surface streets, with them in harness attached to my skijor belt, and me just flying along behind them! They make a great team! I only hope that they don't think they are working and will still enjoy their walks, sniffing things at their leisure!

I'm glad to see that she has a good appetite and eats like a classic gweedy husky:


Jodi does touring now. Here is one of Thistle's last photos leading her team taking some tourists out on a ride:


Their previous handler, V, sent me this photo:


"Thistle in lead... helping me in my first race evaaa 😍😍 such a good girl" (Her partner leader here is Spitzer; Cricket's sister Bedbug is Spitzer's mom!)

Here is a photo of the two of them together, on a fall training run. This must have been a while ago; Thistle has been a leader for at least 5 years now, and I've had Cricket for 3. Well here, Thistle is in swing (second from the front, although she's in the front of the photo since the leaders aren't in this photo), and Cricket is two places behind her:

Life After Loss

After losing our Roo Bear, I have been very wary of letting Cricket run loose, so I've been skijoring with her. She is very strong and fast! I still try to let her enjoy retirement--when she wants to stop and sniff something or pee on something, I do not discourage her. But she's only interested in such things for a little while when we first start out, and then she is all business. She is a very serious dog! It is amazing that although she is very youthful, she doesn't have the temperament of youth. She doesn't like to play, she doesn't like to run in circles, she does NOT like puppies, she does NOT like Labradors. She likes only to eat, to run, and to cuddle.



I put the word out that we were looking for a Friend for her. The owner of our boarding kennel suggested we meet Roxy and Greta, two sweet girls who are half MacKenzie River Husky and half Alaskan. They were the result of an "oopsie" breeding, and I know most of the homes where their siblings are. These two girls were in a pet home, but their humans moved to Oregon and could not take them, so they ended up being "boarded" indefinitely. I'm a sucker for giant, fuzzy dogs, but also prefer older dogs, and they are only 3! Still, no harm in meeting them. One never knows. Also, a boarding kennel is a perfect place to meet since they both are comfortable there, but also so many dogs come and go that no dogs really regard it as "their" place.

We only met Greta, the sweeter of the two, and she was really, really sweet (and being beautiful was only a bonus!), but Cricket was pretty unimpressed. Greta wanted to play! Cricket did not want to play.


She gave me a hug! Many hugs, in fact! If I had been looking for a dog "from scratch" and not to be Cricket's companion, I'd have taken her in a heartbeat.


Cricket was rather annoyed and needed a hug, too!


"Can we please go home, without that giant puppy?"


Well, if any local Fairbanks folks are reading this and would like one or two beautiful, sweet, 3-year-old girls with known health and behavior histories, let me know! The former owner would be more than happy to talk to you at any time, too!

Today we headed up to Cricket's kennel of origin. I figured it would be a slam dunk here, and it was. In fact, when we went to look for Cricket herself, two other dogs were up for retirement, and one was still on the list (the other was claimed by their current dog handlers, a couple from Oregon who fell in love with him and want to take him home with them after they finish their stint as dog handlers). Several others were also on the list. We finally narrowed it down to Thistle, a 9-year-old leader who was ready to retire, and Gremlin, a boy who was born at the same time as Cricket, so both sets of puppies had grown up together. Both were sweet, cuddly, and calm, and Cricket tolerated them both. She did not actively engage, but she's not really an active engager for anything but cuddling, and she only wanted to cuddle with DL then. But she knew them and obviously didn't mind them either, which is about as good as can be expected with her.

DL and I could barely decide between the two, and honestly, I think either one would work out just fine. But what swayed me toward Thistle was her eyes. This face:


Those eyes! She reminds me so much of Autumn. I think that is an "old leader" look.

You can see it again in this photo, in which Thistle and Sparrow remind me so much of Autumn and Linden:


The dogs look very similar to each other, but one's eyes are all wisdom and inner calm, while the other's are all gooberdy ebullience.

Happy, happy! Joy, joy!


This photo (I put Thistle's name into Jodi's blog to find these) reminds me also of Autumn, how she used to hang out on top of her doghouse:


Well, I'm going to pick her up next Thurs! I hope Starbuck-A-Roo, Autumn, and Linden, all continue to smile down on us and wish us a smooth transition!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to my 14 loyal readers. Today we honor St. Valentine, a 3rd-century Roman clergyman who was arrested, imprisoned, and condemned to death for marrying Christians, continuing Love in a time and place that it was illegal.

My Facebook feed is full of love stories today, but my favorite is that of an old friend from California celebrating the 20th anniversary of asking his then 8-year-old future stepdaughter's permission to propose to her mom. "I told myself if she said no or was hesitant, then it just wasn't the time yet. Because I'd been in her shoes with a new parent spouse coming in, I understood the change that meant. Luckily she said yes, was excited and gave me a big hug."

Love is not just two young people over a candlelit dinner. Love is older adults finding ways to make already-formed families blend. Love is also DL studying the wall calendar and then saying, "Oh! Happy Valentine's Day!" and me saying, "Oh crap! I defrosted some burger for meatloaf; weren't we planning to have crab legs? You know? Romance?" And DL replying, "Meatloaf is fine, if you want meatloaf."

Love is also Cricket coming to work with me because I can't bear to leave her alone.


Love is a noncustodial parent's little girl running up with a big smile for a giant hug. Love is an expectant father cleaning the cat's litterbox even though he hates the jerk of a cat because his pregnant wife loves the danged thing. Love is eating tofu bacon because your spouse has high cholesterol. Love is getting up at 5 a.m. so your dogs don't miss out on their morning run when you have an early class. Love is having 3-year-old dog ashes by your bed because you can't bring yourself to scatter them as you'd planned. Love is DL doing all of the shoveling on snowy days so I can ski with the dogs. Love is my mom and sister emailing me obscure nutrition and obvious safety tips. Love is bundling up and filling the bird feeder when it is -40. Love is also chocolates and carrots and cheese and pie. Mac n cheese and lasagne and caribou soup. Love is HD ordering a black wolf stuffed animal and painting Roo's markings on it, and gently delivering it to my house as I stand on the porch and sob. Love is MK collecting her sweetest, most cuddly sled dogs into the house for me to cuddle. Love is bumping into KN at the Denali Center visiting her mom. Love is so many tears, and courage to face each new day.

Rooflections

These are things that I know to be true:

1) Starbuck-A-Roo loved us, very much, and will never stop.

2) We loved Roo, very much, and will never stop.

3) We were very blessed to have spent six years together. And I will be forever grateful that although her end was premature, sudden, and shocking, it was instantaneous and without pain, and she was probably in the happiest husky State of Being: Running at top speed with a giant smile on her face.

4) I have no regrets. I understand that any time someone is hit by a car, there is some degree of culpability. There is a borough-wide Leash law, and although off-leash dogs are all over the neighborhood trails and parks, in theory dogs should be Within Your Sight and Under Voice Command At All Times. But dang huskies! Even Roo-liable Roo was only 90% reliable. Honestly, when Autumn and Linden used to run off, it was not cars that I had worried about. My highest fear was that they'd get into someone's livestock and get shot. And they were way less reliable than Roo. It is really unexpected that while they lived to dotage, Roo was the one to get hit. But these are the odds that we play, and those are the chances that we take every time we let them run free. I told her musher when I called her to tell her the news, that while I had no regrets, I was still deeply sorry that this was the outcome. She said not to be sorry, that "huskies need to run free". She said we had done a wonderful job loving her and taking care of her and finding opportunities for her to be who she is, the Roo who was so extraordinarily loving that she had to have a heart on her chest.

5) BUT I am going to be more careful from now on. I'm going to skijor with Cricket for a while rather than letting her run free, until I learn what she is like as a single dog. Their personalities really change with companions, and with lack thereof.

6) But we do need to get Cricket a new Friend at some point. Dogs are social animals, and I think it is not healthy or kind to leave them home alone all day when the humans are gone. She has been coming to work with me a few days each week. Already, I see a different Cricket. She is more extroverted and less shy, although in a serious and unpuppylike way. She has always been such a serious girl! We do have some thinking to do on what kind of dog we need to look for. With Serious Autumn and Goober Linden, it was easy to blend in any dog, since we already spanned the range, so of course the addition of the sweet, amiable Roo was a piece of cake. When Roo was alone, it was easy to let her be alpha and blend in the shy, but affable, Cricket. I think we could benefit from another sort of gooberdy dog to balance the Serious Cricket, but gooberdy dogs seem to annoy her... Well we have some thinking to do.

7) I am going to have Cricket evaluated to be a therapy dog. She is such an attention whore in my office, it seems she'd be a good fit.

8) There are so many clichés about love and death and heartbreak that we have repeated so often they have lost their emotional punch, but they still have meaning. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. We are stronger for our losses. It only hurts this much because we loved that much. I feel the depth and truth of these things, and I believe in them, I truly do.