An Ever Fixed Mark

When you came home  the first time, still and silent in the backseat, I could see your golden eyes in the rear view mirror. I wondered if I had acted in haste. After all, I'd only known you an hour or two and our relationship was already complicated. At the urging of two women who loved you madly, you and I had crept out the back door without saying goodbye or following the proper procedures.

I went to the Bradshaw shelter in Sacramento seeking balm for an aching heart. I had lost my big joyful- no, blunderful -Weimeraner Spencer after 12 years. I found him as a puppy wandering a Safeway parking lot in Guerneville on the Russian River. And for twelve great rollicking funny years, we lived life large because Spencer filled all the space around him and was impossible to ignore.The loss was only a couple of weeks old but the house- and the world outside of it -felt empty.

You were in a kennel with 4 others and I asked the attendant if I could see the German shorthair pointer. Your beautiful shiny brown head was so dark that I could not see you in the shadows.  She slipped a leash on you, and we walked quietly to the little fenced area outside. I sat at a table and you sat down comfortably next to me. I can smell the grass, I can feel the soft Sacramento air. I recall everything of that moment. I looked at you, and you looked at me. I stroked your ear, the softest velvet I have ever felt, then or now.

And I told you straight off that I wasn't ready to fall in love again. I wanted that to be clear between us. I still had a broken heart. I could offer you a loving home and good food and someone to care for you but you could never take the place of the one I had lost. I said if that was all right with you, it was all right with me and did you want to come home with me? You listened intently, and seemed to give your assent.

And so we struck our bargain. But the young man back at the kennel was not as enthusiastic.  He had eyed you up, realized you were a beautiful and well trained hunting dog, and clearly had you in mind for himself or a friend. He told me you had not had a temperament test, took you into a room and came back to announce you had bitten him. I had been filling out the paperwork and was astonished to learn I could not take you home.

There were  two women at the shelter that day who decided your fate. One worked with German Shorthair Pointers. You had caught her attention and she wanted to see you in a good home. The other worked at the shelter. As I wandered once more out to the cages, they brought you to me and urged me to take you home. They said you were gentle and quiet and they knew you had not bitten anyone.  The rescue worker gave me her card and two phone numbers. "If you don't want him, for any reason, I will drive to your home and pick him up, " she assured me.

Neither wanted you to go home with the young man, and so, here we were, you and I, running away together like lovers in the night.

When we arrived, you jumped down from the backseat, looked around, and took up your place at my side. In fact, for the first few weeks, I never walked alone. Hence, your obvious and unavoidable name...Shadow.  Gradually, you trusted in me enough to let me out of your sight, but not often. We went to the lake and you ran through the fields, once capering off with a coyote but returning calmly as if it were an everyday occurrence. Your quiet nature and unfailing devotion were just what I needed as I moved through my grief over the loss of Spencer.

I wondered about your life before I met you. You were perhaps two years old. Someone had spent a lot of time training you. You were the smartest, best behaved dog I had ever brought into my life. You knew every command I could think of, and others I only discovered over time. One day, more than a year after you joined me, I held your treat up a little higher. You did a smart half circle, plopped down and lifted your head high. You surprised me all the time with what you knew. Once you slipped your head into a bush and came out with a small bird held ever so gently in your big mouth. I told you to let it go, and it flew away.

From the beginning, you were devoted only, and entirely to me. And over the years, you became my constant, unwavering companion. Though I have other dogs I have loved and cherish, you were at my side faithfully wherever I went in or out of the house, and without question, quietly allowing me to do my work, to talk with friends, to laugh, to weep, and at times to heal, as you did when I returned from open heart surgery and was so exhausted I could only fall into bed. You lay down on the floor next to me, not moving once in five hours while I slept, waiting patiently for when my feet would next touch the floor and you could accompany me wherever I wanted to go.

You have always been a perfect living example of Shakespeare's 'ever fixed mark,' his description of love that cannot be changed with time or age.

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.


How does one let go of such devotion? How to find the will to send such a caring friend away? As you grew forgetful, confused...as you became anxious if I were not near or in your sight... as your back legs  began to fail,  as medicines lost their power...I knew I had taken too long to make this decision. Everyone who loves an animal knows there is never a good time, not even an acceptable time, to let go.  But there is a right time.

So today as I sent you on a journey you have richly earned and were so ready for, as you looked around one last time to fix me in your sight, I told you to remember the talks we have had. We have a plan, you and I. You know that when I come, be it sooner or later, I will call to you. And I know you'll be there. I know you'll be listening.

Oh, and one last thing, Shadow. You know that bargain we struck, how I told you I would never quite love you the same way I did Spencer, that you and I would have a good and caring life together, but you could not expect me to love you as much?

It appears I was mistaken about that. But you knew it all the time.