My roommate Nate and I recently became owners of a curious and mysterious and malnourished white Siberian Husky. We don't know much about her, where she came from, or about her previous owner(s). But she has an interesting past. We're sure of it. Her frail body and her sweet (and almost clingy) personality tells us volumes. They point to a missing story of her, a story maybe saved only for the eyes of God Himself. The pages to her book are God's pages, surely full of pain and suffering, but maybe some intrigue, perhaps a few chapters of fun.
Nate named her Aurora after the Northern Lights. She has one blue eye. The other one is dark brown. She's a gorgeous animal, especially if you have an imagination. She looks like a dog that could, in 6 months or so, look as if she had jumped straight out of the pages of the novel, Call of the Wild. When she fills out and her coat grows back, she'll look legitimately exotic, especially beautiful.
But tomorrow is Tuesday. And borrowing an act of God, she will still look and act like a stray, she will still be throwing up, wetting the floor, and want to run every chance she gets. She already figured out how to dig under the fence, escape two sets of collars, attract various suiters of differing breeds, and unlatch herself from the chain in the backyard that keeps her from running to Alaska.
She is an escape artist. And I have a funny feeling, deep in my tummy, that Nate and I have a few precious days to make a few precious decisions on her future here, whether or not to make the adjustments to house and home required to keep a curious and wild dog alive and happy and safe from the wild wild world. I have this feeling because I've seen into her beautiful crazy wild eyes. She will make that decision for us if we wait much longer. She simply isn't the kind of animal to sit idly by as I wait for Nate to return home from Christmas in Missouri. She is a Husky. She's a beautiful mess. To be continued...
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Instapaper 4: Deciding to Read
13 years ago
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Update:
After finishing this blog post, I placed few phone calls to local shelters and vets, looking for a suitable place to take her. I even had a random neighbor knock on my door to give me the most random and helpful advice about who to call to get rid of animals.
And just then, after said conversation with random neighbor, I got a phone call from my uncle, who spent some time with the Husky this past weekend. He asked if he could take her off my hands. I warned him about her howling, about how dominant she can be, about how she'll walk all over him if given the chance, and about her love for running wild. He said he wanted to give her a chance to live on his land in far eastern Oklahoma.
So I loaded her up in the cab of my truck and met up with my uncle, who was in Tulsa for the day picking up supplies. And I again went over with him all the various ways she's a mess. And he just smiled. So I figured, by the smile he gave me, he had been around a dog like her a time or two before.
So I handed her over to him and watched him drive her away, as she sat quietly in a crate, in the bed of his pickup.
I didn't think I would ever grow to like that girl. But I'm kinda sad to see her go. In the middle off all the craziness she hand-delivered over the past week, she also brought to my house a bit of wonder lust and love for life. She was all go, all in, and always ready for adventure. She drug me through that wonder and adventure. And I kinda sorta began to get used to and appreciate the rugged and wide-eyed nature of being responsible for such a rugged and wide-eyed animal.
I will miss those things about her. But I won't miss the way she could shed ten pounds of hair simply by sneezing. And I won't miss the regular occurring pee stains she would leave behind on my living room rug.
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