Callie, Again

By Dan Beauchamp

When our retriever Dexter died in September of 2008, shortly after we returned to Bisbee, Arizona, a town we had lived in for 10 years and then left and then moved back to, we vowed we wouldn't get another dog, at least not for a very long time. It wasn’t the trauma of his dying that got to us so much; it was the huge gap it left in our lives.

When he died I wrote about that gap.

The things we miss are in the absences, the gaps in our glances. We get out of the car and find ourselves looking and not finding him. We turn around at the pantry expecting him behind us and he isn’t there. We pull away from the house to visit friends or a restaurant and his solemn face is not at the door, watching, waiting, hoping.

The things we miss are in the silences, the shuddering sound as he shakes himself in the night, waking us up to go out; the bark at the door that announces his readiness for return; the sound of him slurping at the water bowl that goes on forever, the whimpering as he dreams.

The things we miss are in the loneliness: gone is his constant presence, his palpable joy that filled so many of our moments. Left is the empty room, the morning walk that is only exercise, the vacant porch without his regal watching. No longer will heads in a crowd turn, smiles break out, hands reach down as we three walk through the small farmer's market.

About nine months after Dexter died, Carole and I, one Saturday morning, walked to the Farmer's Market in Bisbee, a block behind our house, a weekly ritual for a lot of people in our small town of 6000.

Each time we did it, we had to pass through the small group of “rescue dogs and cats” at the stand of a local group called Border Animal Rescue (BAR) and each time we steeled ourselves to keep on walking. “Don’t look,” Carole would say, and mostly we didn’t.

This particular morning I did look and I noticed this small puppy under a chair, sort of cowering from a group of playful children trying to lead her around with a short leash. She seemed desperate.

For just a moment I caught her dark, mournful eyes---eyes that had seen too much in her short five months of life, as we found out later.

I turned to Carole and said, "We're screwed. I think I've just seen our next dog."

Three days latter we brought her home. She was spooked, anxious, suspicious and fearful. We picked her up at the auto repair shop owned by our mayor and his wife, Jack and Pat Porter where she was to be dropped off by the BAR volunteers. Callie tried to hide from the four or five of us waiting to see how she was. She was trembling constantly.

The BAR folks warned us that she would be a problem. She had been raised in a "hoarder" house in Douglas with as many as 20 or 30 dogs at a time. She likely never had a moment when she felt secure and safe. And then she was adopted by an older man who abused her and BAR took her back.

The first times we tried to pick her up and hold her she peed.

Callie was a year old yesterday. She's still “nervous in the service” as we used to say in the Army, but she has grown from 15 pounds to almost 40. She's happy, playful. She’s a little manic and when she isn’t adequately walked and exercised, she starts this tail chasing number.

A good part of life is simply abiding with those you love, and we love the most those who are close to us, our wives or husbands, our partners, our children, and, yes, our dogs or cats. We move over in our self-preoccupations and make space for them and they do the same, and our worlds expand and grow more delightful and complicated. Life itself is life together.
Callie can be a pain in the ass from time to time, but she could tell you a thing or two about me too, if she could talk.
And so we abide with each other and we turn and find each other, and really, what else is there?
The things we miss about Dexter we still miss.
Sometimes I find Carole reading about Dexter with tears, and I am briefly sad, too. But now, when we turn, we see Callie, part retriever, part Australian shepherd or Border Collie, and totally tubular joy.The remedy for border collies is to get them tons of exercise and to try and stay ahead of their startling intelligence. So I’m pretty sure that my walking life is about to expand sharply.

A good part of life is simply abiding with those you love, and we love the most those who are close to us, our wives or husbands, our partners, our children, and, yes, our dogs or cats. We move over in our self-preoccupations and make space for them and they do the same, and our worlds expand and grow more delightful and complicated. Life itself is life together.

Callie can be a pain in the ass from time to time, but she could tell you a thing or two about me too, if she could talk.

And so we abide with each other and we turn and find each other, and really, what else is there?

The things we miss about Dexter we still miss.

Sometimes I find Carole reading about Dexter with tears, and I am briefly sad, too. But now, when we turn, we see Callie, part retriever, part Australian shepherd or Border Collie, and totally tubular joy.

Writer Dan Beauchamp, who holds a Ph.D. in Health Policy, lives in Bisbee, Arizona with his wife Carole. He formerly held several high-level positions in health policy in state government. This piece first appeared in his blog, Tales of Copper City, at http://www.talesofcoppercity.com/talesofcoppercity/