This post is more difficult than most for me to write, as it involves grieving and a dog that changed my life. He wasn’t even my dog; he was Paul’s, who is one of my very best friends. But he was part of my pack or, more accurately, I was part of his.
Salvador was rescued, in a most literal sense. Paul found him sitting on the street with a homeless guy, tied with a dangling bit of shoelace. He gave the man all the money in his wallet to rescue the dog, little enough to pay for a life companion. It was pure serendipity, an intersection of that perfect moment and destiny.
“Sal” was a powder puff of poofy fur and aggressive energy, half Golden Retriever and half Chow. A happy mix, aesthetically – it gave him the sweet face of a Golden with super-expressive eyebrows and masses of lion-like fur. I did not know him until later, when he was full grown, so I missed a lot of the chew phase.
The Chow in him was super-protective and often would not let other dogs even close. Dogs twice his size would inspire furious barking and yet those half his size left him bemused. He had a heart like a lion, Sir Loyal Heart.
Like most dogs, he loved long walks…in rain, in snow, in sleet and freezing cold. He liked walks at 3 am, when you could barely crack an eyeball open to see. He would take off running after anything that took his fancy; his retractable leash would snap to maximum length and dismantle your arm from your socket. He would search the bushes for what felt like hours to find the very perfect spot to deposit his gift. He would store liquid in his bladder like a camel and stop every three feet to mark an infinitesimally small patch of grass.
When he saw you, it was a moment of pure joy. He would spring forward and charge into you at full tilt and jump up and bark with joy, asking you “Where, oh where have you been?” Once the preliminary histrionics were complete, he would not rest until he trotted through all the rooms and found my cat, Ramses. They would touch noses in acknowledgment and then he would insist on securing the perimeter of the neighborhood for his pack.
I always felt safe with Salvador in the house. He would lie flat on my hardwood floors, splayed out in all directions. Not that it was always roses; he was notorious with unleashing fatal dog farts with no advance notice. He would lick your face, most frequently when his breath was truly horrific, and could always find the most foul, rotten pile within a mile to go roll in. He was the best pillow I ever held and his paws smelled of Fritos.
One time I was crying and he crawled up into bed with me and pushed his head into my chin. His big liquid brown eyes were infinitely wise and it was at that moment that I became convinced that he might be at the top level of reincarnation. That if I were good enough and brave enough and loving enough, that I might one day be reborn as a dog like Sal. He was the Buddha of all dogs and he made my life better than it was before he arrived.
The last few years, it was clear that Salvador was aging and slowing down. Perhaps it was time for him to leave this place and transcend to another plane. He had completed his mission in life; he guided Paul through his life until he had a child of his own, Sofia. Sal left us peacefully, put to sleep after a biopsy revealed terminal cancer.
He left us and my pack is reduced by one, but I know he is off somewhere in some Doggy Elysian Fields, barking and jumping and rolling in some celestial pile of stinky.
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| Salvador Doggy, Rest in Peace Old Friend, July 20, 2011 – 16 years |
