Touchá Puppy Love: November 2016

Iron fist in a velvet glove. I was too much velvet, and he's dead. He disregarded my recall, didn't sit. He was playing and over aroused. Such an innocent goober. All those micro transactions where I said a command then indulged his independence haunt me. Dragging his feet was almost always acceptable. He was inevitably good, that was enough. No recall word was truly sacred. "Come" was inadvertently mixed with the "Come on" of our potty walks; "here" hardly used and rusty.

Couldn't he hear my panic, or anger? Did that nervous energy just make it worse? He was gay and leading the way on a new adventure, like when we hike, and now he has to take it without me. I miss him.

We communicated through different leash tensions. Want to go that way? Well, I don't. "This way." Well, what do I care?-"okay. Let's go this way! Come on!" "Don't pull" too hard. I think that it let him tune me out, he could feel the slight pressure. Shauna said they let their minds go when they lean into you. That they aren't learning good habits, imagining things their way. It probably translates to leash walking as well. He didn't respect my space in herding lessons half as much as Shauna's.

He did such a good job of ignoring cats and other dogs when I said "leave it." He controlled himself with sheep. Why was the deer so different? I hate this. I hate everything about this.

NOW I know that when the weather changes, to go straight paranoid like we've never been somewhere before.
To go back on leash and/or exercise obedience whenever we roam over anything new to keep them in a controlled state of mind.

I'd shown him we could walk in the bog our bridge spanned now that it was frozen, then we just continued on our routine.
A couple minutes later Jory greeted a riled up husky through the fence. I was glad it couldn't touch him. How nice fences are. He lost interest and went to relieve himself. Right then. If I'd put his leash back on RIGHT THEN.

But hell. We'd played along that walking path and the soccer field on or off leash loads of times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqUcmXmmjzc He always stayed by me, and listened to me. The dog was behind a fence. I was being paranoid, no one was around. If anything he'd gravitate back to it. We just had to play "chase" running in circles to get the dog buzz out of his system. A leash would just pent him up more.

I wish he'd been pent up. We could have jogged home. He could have paced the kitchen in safety. I don't care. His life would have been preserved. I would have gotten him a play date with a dog. We were going to herd sheep and show Alpha Male our new hiking path on Saturday, or explore that rocky canyon on it if he declined. Jory's quality of life would have been similar if I'd expected him to stay calm enough to reasonably leash walk after seeing another dog.

Of course, it loops back to that was the reason we were at the soccer field to begin with! Let him romp around before the 8 hour day. I thought it was statically safe. Lesson: Nothing is safe if his mind is so independent that he doesn't pay close attention to where I am, what I'm doing, and especially what I'm telling him to do.

I thought people expecting their sitting dogs to stare at them constantly were egomaniacs. I thought we had a good middle ground between obedience and levity. Yet his life is worth the change in mind set for him to keep his eats pricked, and regularly glance at me.
(If you haven't seen us, and only read this tragedy, you'd assume I was deluded. But he LIKED being "good." It was a game, and he was proud of himself. He knew he'd get something he liked even if he thought I was being a wet blanket. He'd literally stare at me and sigh like a martyred soul. I just had to repeat his name a few times for his attention, or break out a flat "ehEH!" To get him back on track.)
Well, he started coming back when I said he was wandering too far. He stopped without looking my way, then turned. But he proceeded on our walk circuit instead of coming back to me. A 90° angle. And that's when he stiffened. (Jory always points first.) And I matched his gaze. One big ol' deer smack in the middle of the avoided side of the soccer fields. I yelled "NO" but he started bolting anyway. I vainly tried to cut him off, "JORY-SIT!!!!" He didn't hear me. "NO! Jory, COME!" I'm so slow. I followed their very wide tracks across the snow.

Alpha male says that if I'd been more fit, Jory just wouldn't have paused for me. He waited based on his perception of my fitness. I was calling for him, trespassing in someone's yard at 7am. Squinting, I saw him down the block and yelled again. "Jory! COME! No-you SIT!!!" He saw me. He just had to come to me. The neighborhood was a quiet road. But he bounded in an adorable 180 on the spot like saying "come get me!" Or "I know the way!" And disappeared behind the house.
I ran to it, but there was just an old man walking his little monster. "Yeah, I just saw it a second ago, he was in back trying to play with my dog. Seemed friendly, but this one just wanted to eat it."
I don't think I should have talked to him. I don't think it would have mattered, by the time it took me to jog one block he must have already sprinted down the rest of the houses and into the highway. He was so fast, especially when he was happy.

I never took him over there. NEVER, it was too close to the highway. We didn't have a routine rout. I had to look for him based on the smell of the dog park. I was calling, then realized if he'd crossed, and I kept calling I may lure him back into the highway. So I started squinting, he blends in like a ninja to dead grass and branches.

'Must have headed back to the house instead, like how he went to my car when we were separated on a trail head last year.' But I saw police lights. They saw me calling, and swung out of the turning lane to park and approach me. Jory wasn't in the police car with them. I'd hoped "bad news" was his idea of a joke. "Psych! He's fine with us." I rounded the corner and sprinted. Just be shocked, just be hurt.

Jory was laying on the side of the road like he was asleep. "Jory!!! NO!" I buried my hands in his griffonage and chest fur. His tongue was a dead tongue. I wish he'd been breathing. We have insurance. I could have fixed this if only he breathed. But he was already gone, staring straight ahead. I'd just seen him 3 minutes ago. I wasn't there.

"He was only TWO!" I was already sobbing. The police man was very kind. "I'm so sorry." "Do you ever have a moment, where if you changed *one* thing, your whole day would be different?"
"Yeah. And you're gonna think about this over and over again the rest of your life. But it's not your fault."
"There was a deer. I was letting him run around in the soccer field... I was just trying to let him be a DOG!"
"You were a GOOD owner. Don't blame yourself. Sometimes things just happen. Where do you live? Is there anybody you can call? Someone who can help you get him home?"

So then I called alpha male. He was getting a burrito to share with me after his paper rout. Jory would have begged us for a scrap of the tortilla, and when he gave up and laid down he would have gotten one. He LOVED tortillas. And a little bit didn't upset his tummy.
But we didn't eat that burrito.

I asked about alpha's lack of crying, wasn't he upset? He was furious when someone left chocolate outside for Jory to eat. "Honestly, I'm about to throw up."

Alpha male went to talk to the policeman. All I could do was curl into a ball. My side along his back in a final half snuggle. A police truck pulled up, alpha didn't want me to watch. I couldn't close Jory's eye.
"Don't have your tongue out stupid like that. Have it in your mouth normal." Blood was all over my hands. Last time I saw his blood was his scratched cyst stitches in the spring. It was awful. I can't remember where I wiped it. I think alpha gave me his sleeve. Alpha male walked me to his car, and that was the last time I touched my baby. I can't believe it. He looked fine. "It's not like the cat. It's not like the cat!" "No, it's not."

Alpha handled everything so I didn't have to see him dead. I didn't want to leave him to do it alone, but it's what he wanted for me and I didn't fight it hard. I've had nightmares just from the roadside, so I guess he was right.

We cried for hours. Jory's life is sprinkled across our house. How can he be gone, just like that? How can I face a future without his smile? Where is he? Alpha coined a final puppy term for Jory. "Doge-nipotence." I texted Shauna, our herding instructor. When I could talk again, I called Beth.

"Oh our poor, sweet boy." Don't make your breeder cry.

It stabs, it burns. It's unbearable. People say I'm taking it remarkably well. Alpha is helping the slow path of my emotions, but I feel myself disassociating to get through the day. I'm afraid I'll forget the details of how he moved, the expressions on his face, his favorite Awkward Pressure contortions.

He just had to come to me. To wait.

My brother said, "He was happy, and he enjoyed his levity. I think the only way you could have spoiled him more is if you were rich."

Jaren said, "It's NOT your fault. What IS your fault is that he was the happiest dog alive! And we are going to get through this together. One day at a time."

The situation may have had no direct fault inside of it. 'It was right for who we were and our relationship.' 'The field was safe until it wasn't-I made the best decision I could with the information that I had.' But I made it. I failed somewhere leading up to this scenario. There has to be a way to prevent it from ever happening anywhere again. Or how could I mother a dog ever again? Mothers protect their children.

Possible conclusions are: His obedience wasn't strong enough. I didn't understand the value of consistent boundaries and higher expectations in *every* transaction. How can he be expected to go from a casual free-for-all to pristine obedience? I'd dampened the nervous alarms in my head, gotten comfortable. If there is even a small chance something can go fatally wrong, then it's unsafe. Don't let it be a chance. Your dog NEEDS to regard you as well as love you. If Jory doesn't notice you walk off the sidewalk until you call him, he can't be loose. I shouldn't have drug my feet getting out of bed, so that I felt rushed to give him a chance to poo. My walk prep was sloppy. I didn't respect his instincts enough. Did I secretly believe it could never happen to him?

I just need one second chance, and it will never happen again. But we don't have that. Jory deserves a second chance. He didn't "get" cars. Life is cruelly indifferent to how I feel. No matter how smart, cute, curious, rambunctious, and sweet he was; how much I valued him and poured my resources and love into his life, a puppy can't beat a fast truck. I wish there'd been a way to teach him that.

Waiting at the side of the road and only crossing at my command his whole life didn't work this time. He still thought he got it, that he knew better. Without me there to remind him, when his instincts were in high gear he just ran right into danger.

Jory made me and alpha better. He was our child that couldn't go into restaurants. He was my motivation, my shadow, my wing man. The person openly judging me for looking at my phone too much. It ruined half of his pictures. Sheep feared and respected him. Children loved him. He was a friend to dogs that didn't have friends. Disinterest, rough play, *dog aggression, he was their miracle. The world is darker without him.

*He was unflappable. Once his answer to a highly aggressive dog a block away was to pee higher and obviously scrape his paws. He was quick like lightening dodging cranky dogs' snaps. It was a fantastic game that he may have never grown out of.