Chinook
by George Hosier II  - November 15, 2007


In Memoriam

Thunderhawk’s Lupine Empress “Vazhneya”

April 16,1999 - October 27, 2007


I lost one of my best friends recently. My dog Vazhneya passed away suddenly on the evening of Saturday, October 27th, apparently succumbing to a stroke or heart attack. I think she must have infected me with some sort of communicable allergy in her final moments, because every time I think about her, I’ve noticed that my eyes begin to water and sting accompanied by a heavy, empty feeling in my chest

We had taken a walk that morning as we had done every morning for 8 years. Vazh, as we called her, had awakened me with a cold nose thrust insistently into my sleeping face and an eloquent little dance of excited urgency beside the bed. I stumbled out from beneath the covers, muttering bleakly as I slipped on my slippers and shrugged into a coat.

In moments like these I appreciated her the least. I wished I could just open the door and let her outside in the cold to do her duties like an ordinary dog. However, the contract I had signed when I picked her up from the kennel had stipulated that I would never let her outside without being restrained or contained. At the time, it seemed ludicrously preposterous that the frightened little fuzzball, wrapping its paws in a death grip around my arm and burrowing its shivering face into my chest should require such restrictions.

But the restrictions were prudent. She was one of the few remaining breeds whose bloodline remains close to the original primordial dog. She was, in fact, a rare Caucasian Mountain Dog whose legendary guardian bloodline had once patrolled the Kremlin. These majestic animals were prized so highly in Russia, that exportation was expressly forbidden as late as 1989. In the Caucasus Mountains where her ancestors had guarded flocks for hundreds of years, she would have been called a Kavkazskaya Ovcharka. Bred to take down wolves and even bears that threatened the flock, she instinctively protected her turf, her flock, and her people. Anything or anybody strange was considered a threat, and she would have given her life to keep them away from those she loved.

Only a handful of people outside of her flock had ever earned her trust, and they had done so only after passing a rigorous screening process. This process could take anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks. It involved a grueling probation period in which they were expected to make no eye contact with her and make no sudden moves while she conducted a battery of full body sniffs. She then assumed a stakeout position within lunging range, warily monitoring every breath of the suspect. If the rookie flock initiate were to do anything rash such as sneezing, standing up abruptly, gesturing broadly, or raising their tone of voice, Vazh would leap for them, roaring notification into their startled face that the probation countdown clock had just been reset.

If they patiently complied with this ordeal, however, upon graduation she would grudgingly raise the head count of her flock to include them. Once graduated, she would never forget them, and would welcome them with the wagging tail and perked ears of delight each time they approached, even if she hadn’t seen them for years.

Any living creature patient enough to pass the screening process could be included in her flock. Over the course of her lifetime, her flock had included people, goats, other dogs, cats, ferrets, gerbils, horses, and even mothers-in-law. With members of her flock, she was gentle, affectionate, and forgiving. She would romp with the ferret, taking great care not to smash it under her huge paws or crush it in her powerful jaws even when, with typical exuberance, the ferret would pierce her lip or nostril or eyelid and dangle there like a gigantic furry piece of facial jewelry, chortling delightedly.

At the same time, nothing outside of the flock that dared trespass her domain would escape her wrath, no matter how harmless it might appear. She would charge ptarmigan and squirrels, baying a deep-throated warning that would raise the hair on the back of your neck. There were occasions when we were relaxing in the comfort of our living room, only to have the peace shattered by a ferocious roar of challenge. Fully expecting to see a black-masked thug crawling through our window brandishing a shotgun and crowbar, we would instinctively dive for cover, only to discover Vazh valiantly leaping high to snap a housefly out of the air. In her mind I am sure the housefly was an Al Quaida kamikaze, its abdomen loaded with .03 milligrams of C-4 making its final pass before rolling into a dive calculated to terminate with an impact on the center of my forehead.

Once when we lived in Pennsylvania, a contractor who was doing some backhoe work for us, arrived when we were not at home. Not sure if we were home or not, he ignored our previous warnings and opened the front door to holler “yoo-hoo”. We arrived twenty minutes later to find the burly contractor with the Harley Davidson T-shirt still pale and shaking. He had locked himself in the cab of his backhoe and was gripping a monster crescent wrench so tight that his knuckles were white. We couldn’t get an intelligible narrative out of him, but among his incoherent ramblings we were able to pick out the words, “Monster”, “Baskervilles”, and “heart attack”. There also seemed to be some oblique reference to a bright light at the end of a tunnel and his life passing before his eyes.

That was why on that fated Saturday morning, I shuffled to the door for the morning ritual. Vazh’s leash was hanging on its designated nail by the door. She waited, panting, for me to spread the chain collar. I held it in front of her nose, and she dutifully poked her head through. As I turned the doorknob, she nudged it and we stepped out into the crisp air. Her nose was to the ground now as she snuffled through the snow, searching for the perfect spot to bestow the bladder full of delicious commode water she had lapped up the night before. Carefully and studiously she allowed her nose hover over what appeared to me to be simply a random nondescript spot on the surface of the snow-covered ground.

I have never been able to decipher the mysterious process by which a dog determines that a certain spot is “un-pottyable” while another site a few feet away is perfect. Whatever the procedure may be, it is clear that it requires a great deal of concentration and an olfactory prowess at least 10,000 times more powerful than mine.

The nose vibrated. Inside her long, tapered muzzle her amazing smell laboratory went into action as she inhaled and exhaled rapidly. As she exhaled, scent particles in the vicinity of her nose were dislodged. When she inhaled, each individual scent molecule became sucked into the mini vortex of air rushing into the complicated network of tissues in her snout, where the moisture trapped it next to one of over 200 million scent receptors. The slits at the corner of her nostrils flared to enable more scent-laden air to circulate around the nostrils. As soon as the odors had been identified and catalogued, a cleansing bath of liquid flooded the nasal passages flushing out the current scent molecules and rebooting the receptors for the next sniff.

Vazh snorted and moved on. I can only guess what was going on in her mind: “Arctic vole hibernating in a burrow 2.64 feet below the surface. Has a bad case of indigestion. Ate a rotten berry within the past 6 hours. Developing a little dermatitis on the outside toe of the left rear foot. Too small to dig out and eat. To cute to pee on. Moving on.”

“Come on, Vazh!” I grumped, “Just get it done. That spot is as good as any other. I’m freezing my earlobes off.” I gave her leash a light jerk. “Do a good potty. Right here. Hurry up!” She ignored me. Her nose was busy at the next spot, rooting little nose tracks in the snow as she snuffled vigorously. This must be a very fascinating spot. Chances were it marked the location of either something dead or the compressed and nutrient-stripped albeit odor-rich byproducts of some creature’s digestive system.

Vazhneya looked up at me suddenly with a little pile of snow stuck to the top of her nose. I could tell by the gleam in her eye and the lolling-tongued grin that she had finally found it. This was the spot. She turned around three times and then carefully assumed the position. I politely averted my eyes as nature took its course.

Oh, the delight she exhibited when she had finished. I wish I could take such transparent joy in such unsophisticated pleasures. She bounced and cavorted like a pup, snow and chunks of moss spraying backwards as her hind legs dug in to skillfully transform her most recent deposit into a sacred burial ground. Then she stretched, long and slow, her mouth gaping in a yawn that revealed her intimidating teeth. Finally, she stood erect with her magnificent feathered tail curled over her back and her nose pointing into the wind savoring the wonderful smells wafting by.

Little did either of us know that this would be our last morning walk together. I choose this picture as the memory I will always cherish. In my mind’s eye I will replay the video clip of her quivering nose pressed to the October Alaskan wind that ruffles her long fawn-blue coat and dusts a scintillating sprinkling of snow crystals along her back. Then I see her turning to look at me with those eloquent, intelligent brown eyes as if to say, “Thank you, master. I’m done now. I’m ready to go home. Sorry for the bother.”

Goodbye faithful, adoring, gentle friend. I’ll never forget you. I don’t know if there is a dog heaven, but if there is, I know you’re there. I don’t care to dwell on those final moments of suffering before your heart lay still in your deep chest, but I like to think that the last thing you were trying to tell me as you struggled to get up before you died was, “Thank you for everything, master. I’m done now. I’m ready to go home. Sorry for the bother.”

 

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