Smudges, our Texas death-row escapee and Dog Extraordinaire

My former step-mother-in-law, Kathy, used to say that I was filled with grandiose notions of savings animals. Have you ever been told such things? In her case, she was trying to comfort me after the Northern Red Flicker committed bird suicide by kitchen window right in front of me as I sipped my morning coffee in the company of her family. I ran outside those French glass doors of the log home we were vacationing deep in the Lodge Pole Pine forest, picked him up and cradled him in my hands, as his still-warm body grew cold and lifeless. I cried so hard and for so long, I became inconsolable. Rather than join the family for group rock climbing in Southern Colorado for the day, Kathy took me to a bagel shop in town that morning, trying to console me further into reason and reality.

She was a beautiful therapist, and I miss her greatly.

I never did accept her counsel, though, that in caring so deeply for all that happens to animals is an expression of grandiosity. But I was successful in drafting the family to accompany me to the craft store later that afternoon to buy black poster board, scissors and tape. Together at the dining room table, we cut out bird silhouettes to tape onto the squeaky-clean, smudge-free picture windows in that beautiful home. Windex may be a favorite in the homes of an idealized housewife, but such transparency is fatal to thousands of birds every year.

Sunday Coyote

If you’re reading this, you’re probably of the same heart and mind as me – a devout animal lover. For me, I’ve been tuned into the wants and needs of animals the whole of my life, and Jesus and Julie (my good friend, to whom I’ve often cried about their plight) know they fall prey often to the ills and suffering of this world. They lack the one thing that might help them survive:

Voice.

Having a voice would empower them, allowing them to feel heard. It would afford them equality in instances where they are being exploited, abused or disenfranchised. If animals had a voice, their lives would be different.

Why do you think there’ve been so many attempts to give voice to animals in animation? Disney has been a mainstay in our culture for such proposition: Having a voice fleshes out a disposition, character or personality more readily. It allows one to seen and felt, our needs better understood. (Didn’t we all skip a trip to Chic Filet after seeing Chicken Run?)

Horatio, another Texas death-row escapee, now living in a large backyard in the Colorado Foothills

By the same token, cultivating consciousness and heightening awareness for the lives of animals can accomplish the same goal – seeing and caring better for them. Consciousness is rising: many are doing so all the time. More people ascribe to vegan and vegetarian diets to not only live healthier with less environmental impact (we all know vegetarianism reduces cow farts), but because they simply don’t want to support the cruelty of factory farming. More people are adopting a homeless dog rather than buying from a breeder because they recognize the nightmare end others in power have in mind for that dog by way of a small, dark gas chamber. (Some of us can hardly know the intimate details of such atrocities — it gives us literal nightmares for days.)

Still others sign up to travel to faraway places to teach villagers the value of an elephant’s life or the intrinsic beauty of a chimpanzee.

Honey, the little rescue warming the couch of a friend (hopefully)

All these people – and more – have been awakened to the diverse beauty and inherent, heartwarming joy found in the wag of a rescued tail or the feel of a warm muzzle. All have seen the intrinsic value of an animal, and choose to partner with and care for them as a result. And so many more are giving voice to the animals that have stolen their hearts, for the same reason as I.

Being a voice for the well being and unfettered existence of animals is a priority of the heart for any of us so connected. For me, to turn away from their needs is akin to soul-suicide. I can no more fall silent in the urgent presence of an animal in need as a mother could from her child. When I speak up for the most vulnerable and fragile born into life, I speak up for the helpless, fragile and beautiful parts of me. On both counts, these are needs worth giving voice to.

I love my dog so much my heart aches. My Shepherd mutt, Smudges, I mean – but then – I could say that of many dogs. Except in Smudges’ case, she is exceptionally intelligent and sensitive, in just the right way. She’s bonded to me as my Shepherd mutt of twelve years, Sheba, has. I’m still bonding with my third rescue, an Oklahoma refugee – Charlie – but that is coming along, well, swimmingly.

If it’s possible to be in a love affair with dogs, then that has become my life. Those of us feeling called to such acts know what I’m talking about.

Have you always loved dogs? I have. Since I could take my first steps on this blessed earth. But calling any special one for my very own didn’t happen until I was out of my parents’ Midwestern apartment — Mommy, can we keep him? — Being my cry as a little girl – the answer to which was always,

No, honey, we can’t. We live in an apartment and they don’t allow dogs.

My well-meaning father gave me my first Shepherd mutt when in 5^th grade. I still remember how it felt when I came home from school one afternoon to find him gone.

I found him a home with a nice policeman, my father said, turning away. I looked at my mother. Honey, you know we can’t have dogs here. Your father should’ve remembered that.

I vowed then, when I get out of my parents’ apartment, I’m rescuing all the dogs I can feed…and then some.

Since then, I’ve had a consistent three at a time. Don’t you?

As I get deeper into life, I find more desperate dogs in intense need of love and care. The surge of death-row escapees coming into Colorado from the South, where the high-kill shelters darken our night dreams, gives me a constant supply to peruse. (My husband grimaces every time I scroll my Instagram feed.)

Every encounter, whether technologically or in reality, intensifies and deepens my love for their existence, hope for their plight. I call upon everyone I know: Got room for one more? being my trusted copy-paste into my texts. (Just this week past: Watson, a nine-year old senior Labrador in need of a home after an overly long stay @ the Longmont Humane Society. Got room?) If you’re ever wondered why we rescuers have just so many dogs, it’s usually because the rest of you are saying, Uh, no, one is enough. What else are we to do, turn our hearts away and close our doors to a friend in need?

At times, the surge of love for a homeless dog in need matches my own urgency to fill a need to do something good for the day. Such urgency requires my immediate and deliberate attention. Somewhere in there (especially when I can’t take in any more), I feel the simultaneous need to protect my valuable free time, so I can write and do my work for them.

For any one of us who’s ever rescued such beings, you already know that the depth of a rescue dog’s gratitude and the love they give is reflective of the depth of suffering and deprivation they’ve experienced. Rescue dogs in particular have an affinity and devotion to their people. Once you’ve been at the bottom of life without the basic necessities of survival, much less the higher essentials of love and care, you know just how fragile life can be. So when someone comes along with a gentle hand and reaches down to pull you out of the misery of an asphalt bed and perpetually, rumbling empty stomach, you are forever bonded to and grateful for a second chance to enjoy the life in front of you.

For rescuers like us, nothing feels more gratifying than being able to help alleviate the suffering of a vulnerable, beautiful, sentient being who has been overlooked, abused, neglected, or suffered the horrors of cruelty by society in the running rat race of life. In a world overwhelming any one soul in its speed, density and mass, it’s a small measure that takes on vast meaning for one individual. It can turn a person’s life around, quite literally, and in the bonding relationship that becomes a furever existence, both beings are healed.

There never used to be so many moose in this area. Historically, they ranged all throughout the West. Then Europeans – or maybe Native Americans before them – living on the landscape drove them northward. Back in the 1970s, the good people at the USFWS reintroduced them to the area north of Fort Collins, in Walden. They’ve been rompin’ and reproducin’ ever since.

Many make it down here to our valley of Tungsten, Colorado these days, attracted by ten acres backed up to the National Forest. The valley is replete with willows, one of their foraging foods. In the edge seasons – springtime and autumn – we see them often.

This morning, I hadn’t planned on it – but Smudges saw him first.

A young bull. Gorgeous and chocolately brown, I have him at about 800 pounds or so. It’s hard to tell when I’m fleeing and screaming for my errant Shepherd mutt at the same time.

They always sneak up on us. We were out for our morning walk before I settled in for a writing day in the barn. Blending in with the darkness of denuded foliage that is the winter landscape, I can no more discern a moose leg from a willow branch.

Then whoop, there he is…and there my dearest, most intelligent, two-year old Shepherd mutt goes. Off to remind him that he’s on the wrong side of the creek.

I snatch up my one-year old Labrador mutt in an instant – he backs out of his harness and he’s as free to join Smudges as she is to pursue our wayward wild friend. The mindset of a Labrador is different – a little less intelligent, I would argue – and a heck of a lot more obedient.

It doesn’t hurt to have lamb lung treats in my pocket.

Charlie – Charlie, please come…NOW, I whisper, bending low and pleading.

He sits down smack in front of me. I wrap a lead around his beautiful, naked, sleek black neck, stuff his mouth full of lamb lung treats, and dash for our nearby pickup truck. Our elderly, incontinent, diapered Shepherd mutt, Sheba, joins in hasty retreat.

We bound through drifted snow on the east side of the barnyard. Smudges’ indignant barking trumps those melodious mating Chickadee calls I was enjoying just moments earlier. For a second, I glance back to glimpse the moose shaking his gawky, gorgeous head. The blonde fur on the back of his neck is standing on end. He runs full out – galloping like a mustang – ears pinned back like a mustang in pursuit of a charging wolf. He is gaining on Smudges’ tan tush, trying to snatch her already bent tail. They are fifty feet away, her lead is flying wildly behind, and I can no more run through hard-crusted drifted snow in our woodlands than I can get her to obey my calls in the moment. I think of the calm voice the dog trainer employed when pulling her back on her 5-foot lead in the basic training class. Instantly, I feel inherently mocked by some invisible, authoritative voice of judgment.

Tossing Charlie in the pickup, I return to the woodlands nearby to attempt to grab Smudges. But she and our wayward wild friend are in a dance – I was just trying to browse – Hey, YOU! – You’re in MY WOODLANDS! – that I can only witness from a distance.

So I do the next logical thing my spinning brain came come up with at the moment: Call my husband at work, some 20 miles away. I am desperate for human involvement, if only remotely. And, I want him to know why Charlie has been in the pickup for 6 hours, Sheba is wandering around loose on our land, and Smudges is nowhere to be found…

As I lie collapsed from the onset of a massive coronary due to the sudden traumatic stress of it all.

Or so the story goes in my swirling mind. Continuing to call & chase for Smudges to return now in auditory witness of my husband from a distance, I run down further into the woodlands to find she is now chasing our wayward wild friend across the creek. Right up towards the gravity line, where the City of Boulder workers have been repairing the pipeline for weeks now.

My heart falls. I feel sad for the young bull moose, so very trapped between the loud Teramax machine and my errant mutt. He turns and charges again and again, she barks and runs, he turns and charges, he charges then retreats in circles, she barks, he turns and runs in her direction.

The entire dance takes somewhere between eternity and infinity. I can do nothing to reach her ten-foot dragline to pull her away from the taunting and harassing of our 800-pound wayward wild friend.

I scream for her to come, anyway.

Then, silence.

I look up to see an exhausted Shepherd mutt crossing the creek, returning in my direction. I welcome her as they say to do in dog training, employing my highest, least-agitated, affirming greeting. They never do tell you how to shelve your disappointment, frustration, anger and raw terror in the moment your dog fails to listen to your recall commands, much less screams of helplessness, in the presence of an 800-pound browsing moose.

I snatch up her lead and drag her back towards the pickup truck. Charlie is nestled in the back seat, curled up warmly in early springtime sunshine. Sheba putters back in her filthy, sopping-wet diaper back to the front porch. As for our wayward wild moose friend, I can’t precisely say where he ambled off to, though I’m fairly certain it will involve willows.