Megan McMorris - Womans Best Friend: Women Writers on the Dogs in Their Lives

Table of Contents

For Corvus and Otie

foreword

A Year Without Dogs

Pam Houston

We were put on Earth to be educated. Im convinced of it. The Universe has a plan to make sure we dont ever stop learning, not only in our minds, but also in our hearts.

Nearly a year ago, my novel Sight Hound was released. It is the story of Dante, an Irish wolfhound, very like my own Irish wolfhound (coincidentally, also named Dante) who was and remains the one great love of my life. Dante (in the book and in real life) was diagnosed with bone cancer on his fourth birthday. Chemotherapy and an amputation earned him three more yearsthe three best years anyone could ask forbefore the cancer came out of remission and took his life. Dante lived with grace and died with dignity, and touchedchangedmore lives in his seven years on the planet than some people do in seventy. No ones life was changed more than mine, as Dante parceled out lesson after lesson, as quickly and as many as his recalcitrant, resistant, and eventually grateful student could take.

Dante taught me that if your paws are too big to fit in your ears, you have to get someone else to do the scratching, and that if you want your hand to be licked, you might have to put it under somebodys nose. He taught me that sitting in the grass together doing nothing isnt really doing nothing at all, and that sometimes, even if you havent acted perfectly, the good thing happens anyway. He taught me that if you really love somebody, cleaning their bodily excretions off the carpet is no problem, and in the end, the money doesnt really matter a bit. He taught me that loving, in the face of inevitable loss, is the single most important challenge of our lives; that without loss, life isnt worth a hill of beans, and without love, life is nothing more than a series of losses. He taught me that everything is forgivable, that every moment contains eternity, and that loving unconditionally doesnt mean you are a self-annihilating fool. After he died he taught me how to live without him, but also that I didnt have to. He taught me that because we loved each other so completely, a part of him would always be with me.

My novel sold a lot of copies, which led to my giving a lot of talks and readings, 157, to be exact, and more are scheduled down the road. I have flown 90,000 miles this year, domestically, on United (not to mention the other carriers), which ought to be against some kind of law. I have been through airport security so many times that I can probably set a land speed record for undressing. I am thrilled with the response to Sight Hound ... who wouldnt be? But the success of the novel has been inversely proportional to the time I have gotten to spend with my four living wolfhoundsTegan, Fenton, Mary Ellen, and Roseand because the time I get to spend with my wolfhounds is directly proportional to my sanity, 2005 has left me feeling more than a little insane.

I have spent the last year with wonderful strangers, dog people from every corner of this country who want to tell me their stories. They have shown up at readings in North Carolina and Alaska and St. Louis and Albuquerque with letters and photos. They have filled my inbox and my mailbox with stories of Utah and Bosco and Tripper and Archibald, the dogs that found them when they were ready to change their lives. I have sat up in hotel rooms reading these stories, crying quietly while SportsCenter or The Weather Channel drones on in the background, missing Fenton and Tegan and Rose and Mary Ellen, missing the big man Dante most of all.

My fathermy last living relativedied in February. My marriage, which has spent the last several years amicably dissolving, has finally entirely dissolved. The traveling Ive done this year has taken away mornings at my friends kitchen tables, it has taken away the comfort of my favorite sushi bar, my favorite bike ride, my favorite Peets Coffee & Tea, my favorite hikes with my favorite hounds. Sometimes, at the end of a long trip, I take the long-term parking shuttle out to where my car has been sitting for ten or twenty or thirty days, and when I get behind the wheel I weep from the relief of my cars familiarity.

I know that this year, my dogs are better off without me. They have spent the time on my ranch with my ex, who adores them. They have each other, 120 wild acres to play on, horse poop to eat, rabbits to chase. No amount of wishing is going to squeeze an Irish wolfhound into a carry-on bag. They miss me. Especially Fenton, the little boy who so takes after his Uncle Dante, but there is no doubt that the dog who has taken this years separation the hardest is me.

It is Thanksgiving morning, and for the first time since September, for only the third time this year, I am spending several days in a row at the ranch with my dogs. The Broncos are on television, the turkey is in the oven, and there are six hundred pounds of dog in the living room. Tegan is on the bagel bed, Rose is on the throw rug, and Fenton and Mary Ellen are butt-to-butt on the big yellow couch. It is sunny and warm by 9,000-feet-above-sea-level standards, and there is no reason that the dogs should be inside on a day like today. But mom is home for a change, and we all took a walk up Shallow Creek this morning, and now no one is about to let her out of their sight.

Rose, Fenton, and Mang Ellen

My friend Gary is here with the dogs and me for Thanksgiving. He lives across the country from me and is as busy as I am, but somehow we have carved out this peaceful week. I call him my friend Gary not to be coy, but because that is what he has been for twenty years. This past summer we slid into more-than-friend status. When our coupling doesnt seem highly insane, it seems perfectly natural. Most of the time it seems highly insane. I loved Gary a lot as a friend, and now I love him in so many other ways too, I can hardly stand it. This is the first time I have been afraid to lose anything since I lost Dante, and now, when it really matters, I seem to have forgotten everything Dante taught me. I can feel this big love cracking me open. I dont know what to do with myself.

Gary and I have a lot of fights, and usually it is me who starts them. They are about all the things that dont matter at all: exgirlfriends and poorly worded emails and why he hates to talk on the phone. After the knock-down drag-out we had on Tuesday, Gary said, Pam, the defense has been on the field now for a long time.

Arent the humans perfectly marvelous creatures? Dante whispers in my ear, the way he does when hes hanging around near my left shoulder, How they use all those highly developed language skills to drive away the very things they love the most?

Some of our fights can be chalked up to being friends for so long that we are capable of saying anything to each other, and we do, without allowing for the particular sensitivities of new love. And there are the pressures of long distance. But I suspect the real reason I keep fighting with Gary is that I havent had my dogs around to remind me how to love him; how to just be happy at the very sight of him; how to not take things personally (that he doesnt know how to send flowers, that he sometimes goes into the bathroom with the newspaper, and forgets, for an hour, to come out); how to remember the good things (like when he sang You Can Close Your Eyes to my voicemail when I was having trouble sleeping); and forget the bad things (see, Ive forgotten them already); how to have faith that if we get through today, tomorrow well have even more time to go out in the yard and throw the ball.