Countdown - Going Home

      It’s over now. The world’s best family vet has come and gone. So has Missy’s last day with us. She and Grandma and I shared a shady spot in the back yard. We sat and talked with her and petted her as Gary shaved a little spot on her foreleg. Then he gave her a quick injection in that leg and in a few seconds she was gone. No fear, no pain, not even a little surprise. She just quietly died. He left, and we just stayed there with her for a while. I don’t think we knew anything else to do. We cried for a while together.
      Then we picked her up, so thin and bony, wasted by her illness. We carried her to the grave we had prepared for her out in the east pasture. It’s getting to be a little crowded back there, with Molly and Dinah and Cat and now Missy. Maybe that’s one way to grade the meaning in your life – the number of animals who loved you unconditionally and who you grieved over and buried in your pasture. We gently arranged her body on her bed – in the same position she used when she slept on it. We said a prayer.
       Then very slowly, very gently we covered her with the soil of home. We replaced the buffalo grass and blue grama and flax in a low mound that will slowly even out over the fall and winter. By next summer, it will be shortgrass prairie again and her body will return to the land she loved.     

     But her memory will live on. Her long, loping stride when she was in her prime. Her gentle dark brown eyes. Her love for a good ear rub. Her embarrassment at public displays of affection from cats. She was a kind, sweet, gentle soul who came into our lives and loved us unconditionally. She never judged us, always trusted us. She waited every day for just a little bit of our time – a run, a few throws of the tennis ball, her breakfast or dinner. She was meek and kind and humble. She was what we all wish we could be. She loved as we all wish we could love.
      And her spirit will live on. If you were to ask, “Do you think you’ll see her again?” I’d probably answer flippantly that no one as ornery and prideful and mean-spirited as I am should ever be allowed to sully the afterlife of a great dog like that. But what I’d really be thinking is that God would never have given us a dog like that if He thought that we’d only have a few years with her. What I know in my heart is that she’ll be there when we get there, and she’ll be strong and fast and full of life and happy to see us again.
      Most of the important things in life aren’t easy. Birth, death, love – all are hard, terribly hard sometimes. The very foundations of our lives are built of hard things, as they should be. Foundations, if they are to be foundations, must be hard to be strong. You blessed our lives in so many ways, old dog. God be with you ‘til we meet again. We love you.

-Grandpa

Countdown - Part 2

        Tuesday 9:00 AM – She’s happy today. She was up early and ready to be fed. She’s insistent about meals these days, not because she’s hungry but because she’s figured out that the pain pills come with the dog food. She keeps trying to move meal time up earlier and earlier. It’s not about the food, it’s about the pain.
       So we go outside and she totters around the north pasture a bit to take care of her business. She doesn’t like to walk outside much anymore because the footing is uneven and she stumbles and sometimes falls. She’s thin as a snake, weak and teetery. If she was bipedal, she’d be using a walker. But we go very slowly and she manages. She likes the concrete driveway – there’s nothing to trip over. I brush her and a cloud of hair goes sailing off into the breeze. She’s blowing her dry, brittle coat like crazy.    

      We come inside and I feed her – canned dog food now because her teeth are just about gone and she has a tumor about half the size of a tennis ball under her tongue. Her tongue lolls out to the side because it has nowhere else to go. It breaks my heart to watch her eat, but I hide the Tramadol inside a chunk of dog food and she gets it down. Within minutes she’s resting quietly. She’s an addict, the canine Judy Garland.      

     She watches from the office window as Grandma and Jora go for a run. Three years ago, she was there. Chasing a cottontail, following a fox track. Not now. She watches them disappear in the distance. Another heartbreak. So we sit together and talk about the old days when she felt good. She doesn’t feel good any more, except when she can sleep.
        Last night, Grandma laid down beside her on her bed and just snuggled her. She’s always trusted Grandma. She relaxed and fell asleep. I hope that’s the way it goes when the vet comes tomorrow afternoon. I had hoped she would pass that way on her own, maybe even go when we were at the cabin. But that’s not going to happen. She clings to life like she’s afraid to move on. Maybe we all do, to one degree or another, when the time comes.

-Grandpa

Countdown - Part 1

     If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that most of our posts are pretty upbeat in tone. We take a great deal of joy in being a family who loves wild things, wild places, and each other. Once in a while, though, a little sadness creeps in. That’s OK. Life is not, as Long Rifle’s daughter reminded me recently, “pink fluffy unicorns dancing on gumdrops” all the time. We’re losing a member of the crew right now, and it hurts - bad. Missy, the almost-15-year-old Labrador is dying.      

     Monday, 3:30 PM - She came to us in 2008, already a middle-aged dog. She was a project, a rescue dog from our friends at the W9. She was in pretty bad shape, and she’d been through a rough time. She was thin and ragged looking, with a dull brownish coat. She was afraid of pretty much everything, especially men. We weren’t real sure we had room in our life for a dog anymore, but we couldn’t say no. She came aboard a few days short of her 8th birthday.     

     She was Grandma’s dog from the start. They learned to go for a run together every morning. It wasn’t easy. Missy didn’t understand what was expected of her at first. We even had to call in

an expert to teach us to redirect her attention so she didn’t go

berserk every time she saw another dog or a person or a rabbit. But in time, she came around. As the weeks went by, she learned quickly. And she morphed into an amazing dog. The dull brown coat all blew out and she was as shiny and black as a piece of obsidian. And just about as hard – she had muscles on top of muscles everywhere, as she settled in to a high quality diet and daily exercise. At 75 pounds and 0 percent body fat, she could lope forever. And sometimes she did.

       It was easy to see from the beginning that she would never hunt. Her bloodline was great, but too much troubled water had passed under the bridge and she was terrified of any loud, sudden noise. Gunfire, fireworks, thunderstorms were her demons. So we put away the notion that we had a hunter and loved her for who she was – sweet, strong and happy. She fit in at our outfit like she’d been born here. That winter, when Grandma’s running moved indoors to the treadmill, Missy and I moved outdoors to the school section west of our place. She’d retrieve a tennis ball no matter how far I threw it, no matter how many times I threw it, no matter how deep it was buried in the snow. Lots of times, it was pitch dark when we’d go out in the morning and she’d disappear into the void in her perfect nighttime camo, then reappear spectral a few seconds later with the snowy tennis ball clutched in her mouth. We became buddies that winter. We’ll always be buddies.

-Grandpa

Never Fails

    Our family treasures our time in the outdoors. In the words of Frank Lloyd Wright, we “study nature, love nature, [we] stay close to nature. It never fails us.” In fact, my wife has spent most of her July at the cabin. Her father is convinced she may be going feral. She’s been up there with kids and she’s been up there with friends. She is taking advantage of nature’s gymnasium. She comes home rejuvenated and renewed after communing with God while watching the setting sun from a bench she discovered, tucked away up the road from the Cabin. And while she enjoys reading in the hammock, I find myself building an internal compass of the terrain.      

     After travelling with Grandpa, I discovered he knows every landmark in the great state of Wyoming and usually has a story associated with it. He gets great pleasure testing his progeny on both landmarks and stories. I’m still learning. This man has the best internal compass I’ve seen. He has crossed every inch of Wyoming territory, so when I brought up the idea of a Garmin Oregon 650 T GPS unit, I got the ever-so- clear Grandpa “eyebrow raise”. It is accompanied by the “what kind of bologna are you trying to feed me” look. However, he always follows up with the” I’ll hear ya out” smile and gives you a chance to explain your madness.
       The GPS has come in my rescue in a dicey situation or two. A couple years back, it was getting dark and I attempted to take a shortcut to the cabin. My internal compass was a little turned around and I found myself in unfamiliar territory. I pulled out the GPS and realized I wasn’t terribly far off, but off nonetheless. I followed the directions on my trusty Garmin and got back on track. Thinking my adventure was over; I turned off the electronic compass and went back to the internal. I found a solid trail and headed toward the cabin. Unfortunately, it was darker than an inside of a moose and I was off track yet again. I was getting to the point where I thought I may need to hunker down and build a fire, so I sat down and pulled out Garmin, just to see how far off I was. At first I thought it was lying to me as it showed me only about 300 yards away from the cabin. In a dark, heavily wooded area, 300 yards can seem like 300 miles. I headed east and heard a magical sound. My beautiful daughter was calling for her brother outside on the porch and I realized everything was going to be ok. Thank you, Garmin, for Bailout #1. Maybe a year later, I was trying to find my way to my opening morning hunting spot at 4:30 am in the pitch black. Moonlight and flashlight were not cutting it – the landmarks I was searching for were hidden in the darkness and I needed to be on the trail. I pulled out the GPS and it took me right to the sweet spot. Thank you, Garmin, for Bailout #2.        

      Technologic advances have their place and time and a GPS can be a helpful tool. Grandpa is slowly warming up to the idea, but I agree with his warning, “Make sure you know the land, my son.” I am grateful Grandpa sent me on walkabout more than a few times to learn the land. His patient teaching and guidance is the only true way to learn the landmarks I need to be familiar with. I need to know the subtle hills and clumps of trees, the old fences and rushing creeks. I want to know where Ole Luke and Grandpa Gus killed that cow elk or that bull moose. This, my friends, is institutional knowledge. I gotta tell ya, though; nature may never fail me, but every once in awhile my internal compass does. And that’s when Garmin sure comes in handy.

-Long Rifle

Thank you, Waite Phillips!

      Our family loves Boy Scouts. The program teaches the values that we strive live every day: honesty, hard work, love of the outdoors, loyalty, and duty to God and country. Every one of the boys in our family that’s old enough is a Boy or Cub Scout, and a fair few number of the parents are involved in Scouting. Last week, Apprentice-dad and I went down to New Mexico to experience the Philmont Scout Ranch.
        First off, a wee bit of history. At the age of 16, Waite Phillips (pronounced White) and his twin brother Wiate set out in 1899 from their small family farm in Iowa to explore the still-Wild West. Wiate Phillips unfortunately died in July of 1902 near Spokane, Washington. When Waite returned home, his two older brothers (who eventually went on and started Phillips Petroleum Company) sent Waite to college and gave him a job in their rapidly growing company. After selling his shares for the equivalent of over $50 million, he started his own extremely successful business and continued his love for the West.

      He bought the 300,000-acre UU ranch near Taos, New Mexico in 1922. Ultimately, he donated this property to the Boy Scouts of America on the condition that the ranch would make Scouting a family activity.
       So back to the present: my dad and I went down there last week so that my dad could have some training and I could have some fun. We left early one morning and made the drive to New Mexico. We listened to Harry Potter on CD all the way down, so it made for a pretty quick 9 hours in the car. When we got there, we got settled in our tent and explored the incredible Philmont property.
       Over the next couple of days I went rifle shooting, did archery, stamped belts, did some blacksmithing, and went horseback riding. My favorite activity was the horseback riding. My horse, Trigger, had anger management issues. Funnily enough, we got on mighty fine (Is that reflective of my personality?). But bottom line, it was great to be on a horse again. It had been awhile!

        On the third day, Dad and I went on a hike and then went into Taos. For those who’ve never been to Taos, imagine Jackson Hole built out of adobe bricks, with lots of Mexican restaurants and art galleries. I got my first real cowboy belt buckle there and then we went to eat. We went to this Mexican grill and it was amazing. We got stuffed jalapenos and green chili chimichangas and oh my, they were good. I also answered New Mexico’s state question: red or green? The answer, of course, is green.
      The next day, I went on an overnighter in some truly beautiful country. We hiked through fields of 6 ft. tall sunflowers, oak forests, and prairie than looks a lot like home. When we stopped for lunch, we each got a sealed bag filled with all sorts of snack food. And in that bag was the famous “Spam.” It was the first time I had the opportunity to try Spam, and I am proud to say I made about half way through the “block.”
       The rest of the overnighter was relatively uneventful. We played football in pouring rain, and swatted flies in return for homemade root beer in a cantina. The next morning, we woke up and hiked the mountain at a tremendous pace, only to stop at an outpost to play some baseball.
       After getting back, we went on a low ropes course. We then planned a skit for the night’s closing campfire. Our skit was a mix between the classics, a fire drill, and the girl scouts. It was a big hit among those who saw it.
       All in all, I had an awesome time in God’s country. We laughed and learned, we hiked and played. Thank you Philmont, and thank you, Waite Phillips!

-The Apprentice