The ‘Writers and Their Pets’ series began with my own desire to celebrate my dog Sally, and since then I have also invited other writers to share with the rest of us the details of their lives with beloved pets. Today, please enjoy this essay by Nancy Welch.
You can also submit your own essay to the series. Read our guidelines here.
—Ladette Randolph, Editor-in-Chief
For years I cruised the websites of shelters and rescues. Established and well-trained. Mannerly. Mature. Such were the dogs—staid companions, their elderly owners bound for assisted living—that I tried to tempt my husband into meeting.
“No,” my husband said. “No dogs.”
His answer never varied, not in fifteen years. So why did I persist? For the same reason children press for ponies or mini-bikes few are likely to receive. Each time I tried to initiate a “What about this one?” conversation, I experienced the thrill of longing, my SEEKING system (as animal-welfare advocate Temple Grandin might put it) pleasurably engaged. When I asked him to look at a flop-eared pup with enormous paws, I expected him to snort. I thought he might alter his answer: “You’ve got to be kidding.” Instead, lingering over the website photo, he said, “Maybe …”Continue Reading
Zee was his name. He had liquid eyes and a proud stance. He also towered over me at well over six feet—without his antlers. My husband raised Roosevelt and Rocky Mountain elk on our Missouri cattle farm from 1997 until 2009. Zee had lost his mother and we raised him on goat milk until his size and strength was too much for the goat even after we put her up on a hay bale.
Because a large portion of my spine is fused, for the last nineteen years I have owned service dogs. Currently, I live with a seven-and-a-half-pound Papillon named Mink. Her job is to retrieve things on the floor or otherwise out of my reach. She even jumps into the clothes dryer to fetch stray socks.
I felt fairly monogamous about the first dog I raised as an adult. He saw me through two break-ups, two graduate degrees, and helped launch a marriage. When he died, Audrey lit votive candles and tucked frozen vegetables around his body until I could fly home for a wake of sorts. I hefted him into the four-foot grave we had dug while we called every (bewildered) person who’d ever expressed affection for him. I’d been at his birth—and afterward was rarely without him—but I missed his death. Unabsolvable.
