Snows of March

At twilight—mercifully longer by this time of the year—we decided to take the dog and walk the river trail. The unbroken snow rose to my boot tops, and Schroeder bounded ahead in great arcing leaps like a porpoise. The grey skies, dwindling daylight and slowly diminishing snowfall conspired to smudge and blur the boundary of ground and sky until it all appeared as one great sweep of cold.

We strode down the drive to the pines, where the fresh snow lay treacherously uneven on the trail—one moment ankle-deep, then a calf-deep drift the next. Unabashed, Schroeder led the way manically. He punctuated his progress by briefly laying down in the snow every fifty yards to lick the snow and ice from his front paws, then standing up and looking back towards us expectantly.

The steep road through the woods down to the floodplain was deep with drifted snow that obscured the rough and eroded surface; we lurched and stumbled our way down to where the way levelled out and our passage was easier. With Schroeder in the lead, we began to make our way to the west and the upstream end of the floodplain. But the going was slow and difficult; in the shadow of the great looming hillside, the weak March sun had done little to reduce the prior snow, and today’s fall built upon it to where it seemed like a real challenge in the fading light. Within just a few dozen yards, we turned around and headed downstream and towards the stream trailhead.

The river beside us ran fast and loud. It was brown as mocha and churned not so very far below the banks; the familiar rocks and landmarks were obscured by the roiling waters. The eddys and backwaters and shores were bound with a milky, opaque layer of slush and fallen snow that slowly became ice. The same waxy-looking mix grew off the shores of the stream until just a modest channel of open water remained; the clear waters of the stream mixed reluctantly with the murky waters of the river in clouds of diminishing whorls and vortices that gradually drifted away downstream and merged into the heart of the river.

We turned from the riverside and made our way into the deep snowy woods. The trail, well-worn and familiar, was plain to follow even with the layer of untracked snow upon snow. We paused for a moment to dwell in the dwindling light of evening, then made our way along the stream, beneath the lone hemlock bent low beneath its burden of fresh snow, to the lower stream crossing.

Our familiar stepping stones were hidden beneath tall caps of icy snow; the stream, flush with recent rains and melting snow, found new and unexpected channels to follow. Deeper than we imagined, the icy water was daunting to consider fording. Tentatively at first, then with a degree of abandon, we made the crossing without mishap or incident while Schroeder watched on disinterestedly from the woods on the far side.

We wound our way upstream with the icy waters to our left, the deep snowy forest silent but for the sound of the rushing stream. Schroeder chose the switchback trail for us, and we followed his lead up the steep path, slipping from time to time on the snow. We make it to the house tired, a little bit sweaty, as darkness finally embraces our little hilltop for the night. Schroeder is happy to be home.

Carrie

We had Carrie killed, just a few days after her 14th birthday.

She had been faltering for the last few months, increasingly so in the last few weeks. But around her birthday, she rallied and enjoyed having the company of family around. But the day came when she finally could no longer stand on her own and would not eat.

We knew her time had come, but still we debated. In the end, we called the local veterinarian who would make a house call. But the earliest she could come was in the afternoon, leaving us with an emotionally exhausting and trying wait.

We use the time to dig a grave for her in the slight meadow, near the gnarled pitch pine. Our rocky hilltop begrudged her enough loose orange clay and feeble rock to make a decent dog-sized hole in the cold ground.

At the end, Carrie lay on her favorite pillows surrounded by family and the veterinarian and the vet’s assistant. Schroeder sat nearby on the couch. She got one shot of a relaxant to put her at ease, followed by the lethal dose. One moment she was there, and the next she wasn’t

I tucked her in a curled sleeping pose, and wrapped her in a clean cotton sheet. She felt remarkably heavy; we needed the wheelbarrow to move her with any ease. We placed her in the hole, and each one of us laid upon her a few stalks and stems of dry plants from the backyard. They were a memento of her curious hobby, deadheading the spent flowers and shrubs with her teeth. Then we all took turns shoveling the rocky dirt into the hole, and finally placed a large chunk of rough white quartz on top to mark the grave.

The holidays and the presence of family and friends served to keep emotion at bay, and I could not see clear to grieve the loss of my first dog for a time. But some days later, on a blustery, misty gray morning, I took down the green lead and collar from its peg, and began to walk the path through the pines, down to the river, along the meadows of the river, and up the stream valley.

I had barely begun when the weight of the empty lead in my hands was too great to bear. I could hardly walk, and the grief washed over me again and again. I felt so keenly both Carrie’s presence and her absence with every step and at every point at which she would have always paused. It took a long time.

A few days later, we went into town for some errands. I walked into the feed store, and standing at the register was a woman with a dog on a green lead—a Saluki, the only saluki I have ever seen.

A Saluki is a sighthound, related to greyhounds but closer in appearance to a Borzoi but smaller. Timid, pure white, with long hair, elegant bearing and sweeping lines, the sight of the dog rendered me speechless. I explained to the woman I had just put my greyhound to sleep…but didn’t complete my thought that this dog looked like an “Angel Carrie”—a perfected vision of our little rescue, free from the scars of her racing career and the infirmities of a long greyhound life. It was a remarkable chance encounter that left me speechless and somehow comforted.

I feel a little better now, having wrung out some grief and coming to a measure of peace. She was a good dog, a great dog, and had a pretty full life—certainly a long life for a retired racer. I would like to imagine her in a perfected form, something like that sweet saluki but with Carrie’s wry sense of mischief.

We will miss her for a long time, no doubt about that.

Small Sorrows

Sid is dead.

She was put to sleep just two days ago. A week before she had graced our grand party with her bright joyfulness, incessant exuberance and those comical eyebrows that framed her sweet smile. But just a few days later, she began faltering and became ill, and by the weekend a diagnosis of acute kidney failure—brought on by asymptomatic Lyme disease—told us there was no realistic hope for her.

Phil and Claire shared a last walk with her in the sunshine, some final simple courtesies, then in the close company of those who had loved her for far too short a time, morphine freed her from her suffering.

They brought her to us straightaway, and together they picked a spot to bury her within the fenced backyard, close by the flowers and gardens and shady wood. The hard dry earth defied our efforts; recalcitrant stone bit back at our blows. But in the end they yielded, and together, the four of us carved out a hole from the hilltop just the right size to embrace a small fine dog.

Phil placed Sid to rest, with her collar and leash gently arrayed on her. We brought the other members of the pack to see her one last time; Carrie nuzzled her for a moment while Schroeder watched from a small remove. Then we filled in the hole, and upon her grave we planted an apple tree—a Northern Spy. The stones wrenched from the ground together make a neat boundary for this site. We will think of Sid often—when the tree blossoms, when the apples ripen, when its leaves blow away.

There is a subtle and irreversible change in your relationship with a spot on the earth when you turn something you have loved into its embrace. It is a marker of significance, of lasting meaning, of profound attachment—a stake, a line drawn saying "this place means something."

The last few years have been difficult, and have slowly worn away at my ability to feel. But the small sorrows have a way of finding the cracks, of wending their way inside...

...uh, nice to see you, too...

Carrie has been with us about a week now, and has gotten used to us enough that when we reappear from being away for any length of time, we are greeted with a greyhound "smile."

We were warned early on that Carrie is a "smiler" and were also warned that a greyhound smile can be a little—'disconcerting.'

'...Disconcerting?!?'

...Did you see "Alien"?

A full greyhound smile is like the Alien's smile, but with less dripping and fewer sets of teeth.

Hey! I've got one!

Carrie had a huge outburst of scheissenfreude this morning!

And when she comes in from the cold, she shakes so hard to settle her coat that—no fooling—her front legs fly off the ground.

She's a hoot.

An Analogy update from August

Now that I know a lot more about Greyhounds than I thought was humanly possibly, I rescind my analogy of Beast to a Greyhound, though I will stick with my comparison of the F650 to a Jack Russell terrier. A this point, the best "bike" = "dog" analogy I can make using a greyhound and a BMW is "Campaigner" = "Carrie."

Campaigner sits for extended periods without ever moving.

Carrie, likewise.

Campaigner has a long, successful professional career behind it.

Carrie, likewise.

Campaigner can be provoked into speeds in excess of 40 MPH on occasion.

Carrie, likewise. (So we have been told.)

Campaigner is beautiful in a classic, elegant, understated way.

Carrie, likewise.

So there you have it. The perfect Bike=Dog metaphor.

Carrie on!

Our new baby

Our new baby. This is not schaved Schroeder with the top of his head taken off. This is Carrie, soon to be the newest member of our household. A retired professional athlete, Carrie likes sitting in front of the fire, sitting on the couch, taking long moonlit strolls on the beach, and can do zero-to-sixty in less time than it takes to order a drink at Starbucks.

That'll look good on the resume...

Newly tattooed Phil is working this weekend—parking bikes and providing security for Biketoberfest in D.B. So what are you gonna do if things get hairy—rationalize them into submission? Whip out Occam's razor and slice off their fallacy? Obfuscate them with your explanation of the significance of the first 47 digits of pi?

Too cool. But to do it properly, he needs to shave his head, get wraparound shades, and shave Schroeder, too.

Schroeder would make a bad-ass junkyard dog, unless the object of having a junkyard dog would be to protect the junkyard...

Nature, red in tooth and claw

We were clearing weeds from the garden this evening when Julia—the cat—managed to find a bunny in all the deep tangle of growth. Julia is over eight years old, weighs about six pounds dripping wet, and is frequently mistaken for a kitten because she is so tiny.

Julia possesses all the innate ferocity of a hot-dog bun. But she has enough personality and poise for an entire litter of cats, and yes, she managed to kill the bunny that was nearly her size. Once it was dead, she seemed annoyed and impatient with it for not working anymore, and I believe she was in a feline snit. It was quite an amazing, horrifying thing to see.

Anyway. Hi-five to Julia! Haven't lost your touch!

Who knew?

Apparently dogs can get brain freeze from eating ice cream too fast. Who knew?