On May 27, 2020 at 12:30 a.m. Hounde the fox hound ran into the night and disappeared. What I assume and what I want to believe are two different things.
Her health was faltering, and, honestly, we were desperately trying to keep her while making plans to put her down. In anticipation of the moment, we took some pictures of her, and I dug out some of the ones I took 10 years ago when she first arrived. That’s the thing about time: sometimes it passes so gently that we don’t even notice it until we go to the pictures. Then we see. I could see how much she had aged, how her coloring had changed. I could see the pain in her face.
The vet said she was developing Cathartic and losing her hearing. It seemed to me she had suffered a stroke. My wife thought Alzheimer’s. Her body was still strong, but it looked like her mind was going. She started making circles around the yard. Sometimes, she’d look at me and I could tell she didn’t recognize me. Maybe she couldn’t see me.
It wasn’t easy to watch. She had been, as with all our pets, so much of her own personality. My wife talked about how spoiled and lazy she was. And she was. While my boys (Freckles the Beagle and Brownie the pitbull mix) would spend hours digging and chasing rats on long walks, Hounde would watch for a while before making her way back home and banging on the sliding door until my wife let her in. If my wife wasn’t home, Hounde would just lie on her mat on the front porch or wait on the deck until we got back. And, once inside, she’d just jump on the bed and spend the day there.
Not that her life had always been easy. We met her like we meet most of our dogs. It was the end of hunting season and she was one of several failed hunting dogs left to fend for themselves on the road. She wouldn’t look at a rabbit or squirrel, or pay much attention to a deer. The only thing that she would instinctively chase was foxes. When she first showed up it was clear she had recently given birth. Our guess was that someone had tried to hunt her, and, when that didn’t work out, they just used her for breeding, took the puppies once they were of age, and then let her go. It was as plausible a theory as anything. There was a deep gash on one of her shoulders like someone had hit her with something heavy and sharp and she was well underweight.
We estimated her age at two years old when we met her. We still had Big Boy, the German Shepherd-Border Collie mix, then. Usually, he’d run anything out of the yard, but her he let stay.
There most certainly had been some trauma in her life because the Girlie, as we dubbed her, was ever fearful. Even after 10 years, she was still slinking in and out of the house. It had only been in the last couple of years that when there was someone visiting she’d even come back in the house – running right past them and heading for the bedroom. Until then, she’d stay outside barking until they left.
She always had a strong maternal instinct. One morning, I watched a cow in the field up the road from my house giving birth. The calf fell to the ground and just lay there. It didn’t move. At first, I thought it was dead. A couple of other cows gave birth too, but their calves immediately staggered up and started moving. But not this one. The mother licked on it. Hounde just stood silently watching. The more time passed the more she inched closer to the fence, her gaze never broken from what was happening with the calf. Finally, it stood, and the Girlie seemed relieved. A baby would cry on television and she would look up. No other sound on TV would catch her attention, but she always looked when she heard a baby crying.
Despite what she had obviously been through, she was as happy and playful a pup as you would meet. She and the Brown would run down the road banging into each other as they went. She would get me to lean down, and then she would jump up and try to lick my nose. Sometimes she did it. Most times she missed and licked my glasses.
As she got older, she jumped less. But she still stayed close to me, unless, that is, she decided to go home.
She was always scared of everything: people … loud noises … thunderstorms … riding in the car. But she could be tough. Freckles and Brownie knew not to mess with her. And when the neighbor’s dogs would come out and jump Brownie, she would charge and defend him.
She seldom barked. Once she got comfortable, when she wanted to come into the house she would just stand on the deck at the sliding door and wait. As she got older, she started standing at the bottom of the deck steps, coming up once someone opened the door.
If she figured out we were taking her to the vets office, she would run off and hide in the woods. We’d have to trick her into coming back by getting in the car and pulling off. When she first arrived, she didn’t mind if we went off and she was left outside, but once she got used to being in the house, she hated being left outside. That was part of why I never thought she’d run off.
The other day, I stopped out onto the deck and a humming bird came out of nowhere and flittered in front of me for a few moments. It startled me so that I jumped back. I frightened it, and it flew away. I thought about the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a movie I had watched a couple of times recently. In the movie, a humming bird comes to symbolize the passing of a life. I had prayed for a sign and, as the moment passed, I think maybe I finally received it.
My wifey says that, if she were alive, she’d have returned because she had such an easy life. “Yeah, I know,” is always my response. And I do. But I’m still hopeful, though not as much so. That’s why every night, I leave the blinds open just a little so I can look out — in case she’s standing there with her nose pressed to the glass waiting to come in. And, occasionally, I’ll turn on the light in the backyard – you know, just in case she’s out there trying to make her way back home.
The End
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