Last Friday, we lost our best friend to a fierce, but blessedly short, battle with cancer. Today, I've been thinking about why the house feels so completely empty, even though it's only 60 pounds emptier than it was last week.
Cassie made us come home from work. We have the kinds of jobs that never close and are never finished. People like us need someone to make us turn off the computer and come home, and then turn off the computer again. She made us get outside and go for walkies, even in the snow or rain or fierce heat of summer. She made us wait to go in to work until after dawn. She made us laugh with her antics, and kept us from sleeping all day when we were sad. She made us stop and look at the beautiful view while we waited for her to stop chasing moose and come back to us. She made us clean up the kitchen right away, and pack up the leftovers, and put the bread away before we left the house or went to bed. She'd show up at the bedside with the baguette sticking out of both sides of her face, wiggling for all she's worth; 'Papa, can I have this?' She ate the extra rice from the Chinese food place, and cleaned up the crumbs under the table. But she NEVER, EVER licked the dishes in the dishwasher. (That's still a mystery to me...) Anyone saying 'Oops!' in the kitchen suddenly had company, even if she was sound asleep on the sofa.
Cassie tracked mud all over the house, so we had to get the vacuum out and scrub the floors. There was always a muddy towel on the porch near the back door---a badge of the 'feet wipes' after the last muddy hike in Strong's Creek. She was famous in Washington for finding spawned salmon, other dead fish or seals. A flying leap from 6 feet away; a turn in midair; her shoulder landing with a 'splorsh'; an unbearable stench, and happy, smiling dog face. We'd drive home with our heads hanging out the car window, and Cassie just as happy as can be in the backseat. Sometimes she ate god-only-knows-what, and heaved it up in a little pile in the living room at midnight. We'd be out of bed at the first heave, and almost never got her all the way out the door in time. But she was always sorry about it, as only a dog can be sorry---all puppy-dog eyes and feet in the air.
Her hair got in the furnace filter, which reminded us to change it once in a while. It got in the lint trap in the dryer, and in the sheets, and behind the sofa cushions. It got under the bookcases, and behind the refrigerator, and under the bed. We had to buy special cleaning tools to reach those places. We probably never would have cleaned the car if she didn't make it such a mess sometimes.
She took us camping, and crawled into the sleeping bags when it was really, really cold. She watched the chukkar babies, lying in perfect stillness, only rolling her eyes to follow their movement through the campsite, sitting up to smile and dog-laugh only after they'd gone. She let us know where the skunks were. She let us know when someone was on the property. She let us know when friends were at the door, or when it was the ultimately evil UPS man. She made us cut short visits with friends, and trips to just about everywhere. We had to make special plans if we wanted to go out at night, because she'd get spiteful and surgically slice the straps on our work-bags if we left her all day AND all evening. She knew she was too good for that, and was not going to put up with that kind of behavior. We had to look at every package that came into the house, to see if it would be interesting to her. This, after a 50 pound bag of flour wound up spread all over the kitchen carpet, drooled on, and worked into the carpet fibers, dried on like cement. Yummy. She made us finally get rid of the ugly carpet we hated anyway.
A lot of people see these things as a pain. They roll their eyes and say, 'How can you STAND it?!' But these things are a gift. Learning to compromise, to accommodate, to think as a completely different species thinks and see the world as a completely different species sees it, reminds us that there IS another way. Everything she did made sense to her, even if it was a mystery to us. Making room for a creature with such a different way of being, finding a way to communicate and to love and to share beyond the species barrier, sharpened our skills for reading not only dogs, but also each other.
Of course the house feels empty. That's because it is.
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