at which point she’d disappear back into the brush to suck wind till she caught her breath. When we rolled back into the yard, she stumbled in with us, and collapsed in utter exhaustion. Cole and I, almost in unison, set our brakes and then pounced on her.
Rather than relief, a wave of nausea overtook us. Coolwhip reeked from an all too familiar odor. Living next door to several commercial salmon fishermen, they will often—illegally and unethically—dump flounder, Irish lords, and any other by-catch that ends up in their nets, in a big pile at the outer edge of their property, right on the line between us and them.
Any loose dogs get chummed to the stench, to do what is perhaps the most mysterious of all their behavior: rolling around in the rotten pile and seemingly relishing the act of doing so. The funk Coolwhip came home with ranked somewhere between day-old road-kill and unwashed butthole. We knew it would constitute a sacrilege to operating-room sterility to arrive for a preplanned and majorly invasive surgical procedure with her coat so thoroughly contaminated.
We gave her not one, but two baths, extra heavy on the suds, and still there lingered a slightly noxious, breath-of-vulture-bouquet, but at this point we were so late for the procedure, there was nothing more we could attempt. We called the veterinarians, plead our sob story, and assured them we would be there as soon as we could.
As it turned out, other than the doctors’ eyes watering up a bit from Coolwhip tainting the breathable air in the operating room, the surgery was a success. Coolwhip healed quickly over the next few weeks, and her breathing sounded almost indistinguishable from any other dog. Within months we were able to work her into harness and eventually she trained side by side with the best dogs in our kennel, and for many years afterward.
From a clumsy, breath-sputtering, inferior specimen, Coolwhip changed. It took a trained eye to see the subtleties of the strength embodied in her, much like how the average person can’t detect how soft and flabby a caged lion looks compared to their wild counterparts who are more buff and bulging with muscles from chasing down dinner still on the hoof. Post-surgery, from the excessive exercise (that still never seemed like enough for Coolwhip), her physique developed a sculpted appearance, her chassis became chiseled, the muscles under her fur felt stony hard to the touch. Her whole demeanor evolved as well, once she realized running in harness with a pack was the perfect place to get her runner’s high. She took to her position in the team with pleasure. We hadn’t so much tamed her restless spirit as shifted it to our advantage.
As a pet parent, seeing Coolwhip’s total transformation served as a testimonial for not giving up after even the most dismal diagnoses. The only analogy I can make would be seeing a small child afflicted with chronic asthma beat their condition and go from barely able to play sports to attaining a first-string position on the varsity team. It’s more than joy, or pride, or satisfaction. It was a feeling of fulfillment for seeing something through to the end that in the beginning seemed so irreversible and impossible, but became realized, imaginable, and—hopefully to others with hopeless cases—inspirational.
…
For the next few months I avoided the animal shelter, knowing our passion for saving pets far exceeded our income, but heartless human acts aren’t contained to one location. Two more dogs, brothers in fact, became incorporated with our doggy conglomeration after their original owner gave up on them and all the dogs in his kennel. He just walked away and abandoned them. I’d love to say this kind of thing isn’t common in Alaska, but a sad reality is it happens every few years. Caring for a kennel requires a tremendous dedication of time, energy, and financial resources, and a lot of people leap into owning or breeding lots of dogs before they have thoroughly researched all the hard work the commitment will entail. Some quickly find themselves in over their heads, and will try to adopt out a few dogs. Others, of less conscience, will cull their numbers or bring them to the pound. And then those with no scruples will abandon their kennel, leaving the dogs to either starve to death or fend for themselves.
It was this latter type of human (and I use the word generously in this case) that brought the brothers into our lives. Several mushers with moral fiber better than his banded together to take in as many of the abandoned dogs as they could. Some had gone weeks without food and clean water and were in such a severe state of emaciation, euthanasia was deemed the most humane course of action. Other neglectees reverted back to a more feral state, and acted dangerously aggressive to those there to help. Several of these dogs were also put down.
Perhaps saddest of all, a litter of puppies had been born in the interim. Already a couple months old and with no human contact, they had developed hair-triggers. Scared out of their wits by two-legged intruders to their world, these whelps sprinted at such breakneck speeds they couldn’t be caught by hand. Instead, landing nets, typically used for securing salmon, were required to capture the panic-stricken pups. Like the older dogs, some were deemed too feral to risk rehabilitating, but three little pups that curled into fetal balls from fear rather than attempting to snap and bite were granted the gift of their lives.
A rescuer who knew we had a track record of taking on huskies with tough or troubled backgrounds called, asking if we could take them. One pup, a coffee-colored female, was already spoken for by a young woman who assisted in the rescue, leaving two males. We agreed, sight unseen, to take them.
They arrived a few hours later, both with sunken brown eyes and thick matted coats as black and dirty as potting soil. The smaller one Cole named Boo—a nickname she called her little brother growing up. The other pup, slightly larger and with one floppy ear, I named Klaus—for no other reason than I liked the ring of the Germanic word.
After weeks of trust building, both came out of their shells, but entirely different personalities emerged. Boo exhibited affection and an eagerness to please. Off leash he tended to move in tandem with me, much like dogs that have gone through obedience class and stick to their owner’s calf, step for step. He picked up fetch quickly and ran on such high octane that he could spend an hour sprinting without growing weary of it. Once he started training in harness with the rest of the kennel, he displayed a total lack of fatigue. His pure, gut-driven power quickly led to a permanent promotion running with the core race dogs.
Klaus also warmed into being very soft-hearted and friendly, but when off leash would spend a lot more time interacting with other dogs than us. He also enjoyed pulling a sled, but wasn’t gifted with the same fitness and stamina as Boo. He never quit or ran with a slack line, but he fatigued earlier than the other dogs, struggled to keep up, and his body language at the end of a run epitomized a dog totally out of gas. We kept conditioning him for several years, but when it seemed he was just as happy spending time on the couch, we decided to retire him from running and gave him to Cole’s mom and dad. He now spends his days in Massachusetts where he roughhouses with their other dog, a German shepherd, who like Klaus has a zero-tolerance policy for squirrels in their yard.
One of our greatest successes with a dog adopted from the local animal shelter became apparent when the gutsy gal made it the furthest, literally and figuratively. At this point, when working on a story at the pound, I dropped all pretenses of leaving without a dog.
“What’ve you got for me this time?” I asked the shelter manager upon arriving.
“Funny you should ask,” he said with a sly smile, and led me to the back where a small female pup suspiciously eyed me at a safe distance from the front of the cage.
Wary and untrusting at first, my kissy noises and fingers waggling through the chain-link proved too much for her to resist. She leaned in broadside and let me scratch on her back. Her coat was thick and black with the exception of a white star on her chest, white toe tips, and a white wisp on her chin. Without protest I adopted her and unlike some pound spooks, this pup displayed an affectionate personality from the second she hopped in the cab of my pickup. She cuddled in my lap and nuzzled my beard the whole drive home.
This
