(Fair warning; This post is about my dog and I. I honestly do not expect anyone else to take much interest.)

Kenai lived 05/25/94 to 02/24/10. He died in the afternoon, 6 pm or so, following a stroke.

Kenai came into my life in early July, 1994, shortly after I arrived in Alaska with my then girlfriend, Robyn. After settling in Anchorage we headed to Homer to visit my aunt Susan. At the Eagle grocery store in Homer were some kids with a box of pups, strange looking buggers at that. Half black faces, partially blue eyes. They said they came from Seldovia across the bay and were a cross of Catahoula Leopard Hound and Australian Shepherd. I later met a woman in Fiji who grew up in Seldovia and remembered the parents.

Robyn wanted to get a pup. Up to this point I had only had cats, though my folks had small dogs during my formative years. The deadhead lifestyle was not conducive to raising something as bonded as a dog. Cats can be left at home for a few weeks with no permanent damage. Dogs will eat your shoes and kill the chickens. Too much work for music bums. We had given that lifestyle up, in theory, so I had no reason to disagree with her desire. I wanted a little female with a harlequin face, but Robyn chose a male. He was fearless and demanding, and cute as hell. He was christened Kenai Eagle in honor of his distribution point. So began my adventures in dog ownership.

Kenai gave us hints of what was to come on the way home. Leaving him in the VW bus for a half hour when we went shopping, we came out to find that he had chewed the steering wheel, doing an amazing amount of damage for an 8 week old pup. I still have that gnawed-up wheel in my bus, when the bus fades away I will pull and mount it somewhere in honor of Kenai’s refusal to play nice.

As he grew his personality started to worry me. Some dogs are grumpy, but he got bloody well mean after about ten PM. If you approached he would growl, and he wasn’t above nipping if he was unhappy. He was Robyn’s dog, and she would not let me physically discipline him, so we had our problems. One night we were driving home and I reached into the back seat to grab my pack, to discover my hand being aggressively gnawed on by an 8 month old Kenai. He very nearly died that night, but Robyn was determined. We enrolled him in obedience classes. They did not impress him.

Meanwhile I acquired another dog, a flat-coated retriever mix named Gaia. It would be hard to find a happier dog, and she balanced Kenai well, unless she ran faster than him. His herding instinct had already come to the fore when we would run in his presence. He would immediately go for the ankle to slow you down and herd you back. With Gaia, he would play until he was done, then he would hobble her by going for the same back leg until she could no longer run away from him. Clever, but mean.

Robyn and I split up, and she was going to return home to Sonoma County. She wanted to take a dog with her but acknowledged that Kenai had grown out of control, so somehow she ended up taking Gaia instead, leaving me with Kenai. Given the above description, why did I agree?

Kenai was never fully domesticated, and that charmed me. I never worried that he would go into full dog-maul mode, but he was not around to be a toy for humans. He had his space and limits, and was willing to let you know where they were. He also seemed to decide that I was the more interesting human about. He would lick my beard obsessively at any possible moment and for as long as I would allow. He slept next to my side of the bed and walked with me in the field. He and I played fetch for hours, something Gaia neither showed interest in nor aptitude for. Kenai’s favorite fetch item was a softball, which he would give to me to kick and which he would try to block. I suspect those repeated blows contributed to his pronounced arthritis in later life, but he enjoyed the hell out of them at the time. He was still a grumpy SOB, however, and some changes were going to have to occur if he was going to stay with me.

After returning home from escorting Robyn south Kenai and I had a talk. The next time he nipped at me or growled inappropriately I alpha rolled him and held him there until he urinated on himself. I had to enforce the submission a couple more times, but as I was getting involved with a lady that had two small children I could not let Kenai think he ruled the roost. When he growled at Karen, she did the same thing. He had grown into a good sized dog, 70 lbs or so, so it took some force. I never had to repeat it after that first two months. He seemed to accept the reality and get on with his life.

When I moved in with Karen and the boys I took time to introduce them to Kenai and go over the rules of interacting with him. I told the boys not to try to stare him down, so Dylon, being Dylon, immediately gave it a shot. Kenai walked toward where he was sitting on the counter, put his forepaws on either side of Dylon, and barked once, loudly, in his face. Dylon bowled over with a look of shock, and I knew Kenai was my boy.

Being around the boys seemed to mellow him as there were no real incidents I can think of, which surprised me. He just would wander away if not interested, and the boys knew he got grumpier at night. But if you scratched him on the butt he would wiggle, and if you lay down he would clean you thoroughly. That tongue managed to get much deeper into my nostrils than I care to admit. Dylon and Justin used to drape him with blankets while he stood there patiently taking it, and then wandering away after he felt he had given enough.

He was never a lap dog, never demanded attention, wasn’t as food driven as Maggie (though he was not above snatching from an unguarded plate). Oft times we would have to coerce him into eating by acting as if we were going to take his food bowl, which would lead to barking and growling followed by maddened eating. This wasn’t the best idea since he then took future, real, attempts at retrieving his food as part of this process, and went at it full force. This meant feeding him alone when there were guests in the house. Pizza also negated all the above comments. Pizza was the meaning of his life, for brief interludes.

When the other dogs arrived, first Maggie then Cassidy, he took it with a fatalistic attitude. He would play, but not all the time. He started showing some signs of arthritis at age seven, so he was sore longer than he was not. Maggie was bigger and tougher than him, and Cassidy was far faster, so aside from some hobbling attempts and food protection he didn’t push the issue much. An exception was sticks in the water. He never got over his desire to fetch, even near the end when he didn’t move much, and if you threw a stick in the water he would dive in and fight for that piece. He frequently emerged from the damp sharing a twig with Maggie. He traveled well with the girls and very rarely fought, participating fully in the ‘walk’ dance every night as we prepared to go out. In the end though, he would much rather be pushing between my legs for a butt rub than playing around with other hounds. With strange dogs he could be yippy and grumpy, but was not as dominant as the girls. He seemed to be depressed when they passed; perhaps he was a surprised as any of us that both of the younger girls in his pack went before he did.

Rereading this it makes him sound like not a great deal of fun. He was rarely goofy. He was attentive and by my side, at a slight reserve, whenever I was home. Up through the last days he would follow me around the house, keeping me in sight, especially as he went deaf in later years. When I was angry, Kenai and I would go for a walk together. If I was lonely, I could lay down with my head on his flank. He’d howl with me when I got going, and would rub faces with me as a greeting. My relationship with him was different than that with my other pets, perhaps because of his intelligence or perhaps his slightly untamed presence. He was a bit more of an equal, and for that more of a companion. He wasn’t pretty, wasn’t loving like Cassidy, wasn’t absurd like Mag. He was intent, stubborn, and interesting, like so many of my good friends. I am very glad I did not break him of that. He was my dog, 100%.

People frequently thought he was blind because of his part-blue eye. I had heard that this was a likely sign of hearing loss, a warning that in later years would prove very true. My mom called him one of the ugliest dogs she had ever seen, with his long mottled coat. Shaved he was striking, full-coated he would have been camouflaged in the ruins of Stalingrad. Grey and black with some brown and white, his coat was thick enough to hide many a burr and tick. His nails grew like mad, and we had to keep his attention with a treat in order to be able to two-man him on trimming day. When done he would always jump up and be at his most playful for a few minutes, a behavior I never understood. Perhaps it was a bit of joy at being released? Those same paws attracted ice balls such as I have never seen. This necessitated frequent stops on walks during Nome’s six month winters.

I’d suggest that this made him a warm weather mutt, but that would be untrue. He loved the snow, and the cold within reason. On the -60F days in Bethel he wouldn’t go outside to save his life, and in his final winter he had no interest in going out on colder days. Yet in the heat all he wanted to do was find some water and plunge himself into it. On one trip he spent 8 consecutive hours in Lake Havasu.

His independence could be frustrating. He would wander away, slowly but deliberately, and would be gone for hours, which was a problem when we had driven to a trailhead somewhere. I used to be able to call him in by starting the car, but as he went deaf it became a trial of vision and perseverance. One day while I was at work he ate about $1000 of Native art which he had lived around, apparently without taking an interest in, for ten years. He never bothered any other pieces. It becomes hard to adapt to behavior when you cannot predict it.

For all of that I was always glad to see him when I got home. A quick approach, sniff, acknowledgement, and his return to his previous activities is all I usually got, but from then on he was within eyesight of me the rest of the night. I suppose that is a strange thing to find comfort in, but I did.

He started seeming old at age seven, which then proceeded for an additional nine years. I have been half expecting his death for so long that I can’t believe it has really happened. He started to show arthritis about then which eventually advanced to some serious bowleggedness, and his hearing started to fade a couple of years later. He had been diagnosed with kidney ailments as a pup, and his liver enzymes were frequently wonky. We could never get them balanced or his BP down, but eventually we stopped worrying about it. He got an aspirin twice a day in a chunk of hot dog, and lived just shy of 16 years. His breath the last five might have suggested that he was dead already. The frequent visits to the vet did not encourage him to like them more, he still fought the door and the leash. But at home he’d let me clean his eyes every day, and when he grew the extra head on his neck he was pretty good about my fussing over it. The last few years he also developed the habit of keeping his tongue slightly out of his teeth, making him look moderately unbalanced in a quizzical way.

His aging mellowed him, more than anything else. He played with the day care kids at Pat’s house and never let out so much as a growl, just a hobble away if he was being handled too much. He kept MaxCat in line when nothing else could, but did not care to go for walks much. He hurt, and you could see it, particularly after a slip on the ice. I took him around the block one last time before I left, about a month before he died, and it took half an hour. Part of this was his continuing need to mark everything in his range. He grew into a very tolerant, mellow, occasionally loving dog, but when I’d come home for a visit a bit of the puppy would come out, just for a flash. It was damned good to see.

Coming home was hard. As he grew older our boys grew up and moved out, and I started planning for my trip to NZ. As Kenai was past 12 when I started my planning I had little expectation that he would live another three and a half years. We assumed that Cassidy and I would go over first, followed by Karen and whatever of the older dogs survived. Transport was going to be very difficult and there would be a one month quarantine, despite my scheming to the contrary. Yet as the time approached we lost Maggie, in 2008, and then surprisingly enough early 2009 saw Cassidy’s death. By the time I actually left in February, 2009 Kenai was the last dog standing, but was clearly in no shape for 24 hours in the kennel and then 30 days in quarantine. He moved in to Pat’s home, along with Karen, and I left, never expecting to see him again.

That was rougher than it sounds. I think I had more guilt over leaving Kenai than anything else. Karen and the boys are adult and can care for themselves, the cats really don’t mind either way. I was sad to leave my wife and family, but not guilty. I felt like I had abandoned Kenai. Although I know he had it sweet at Pat’s place: bacon most mornings, lots of plates to clean, the run of the house, I felt wrong about leaving him behind. Still, with each of my visits home in the past year he seemed to be doing well, and we slipped into the same old pattern without missing a beat. That made leaving again just as hard.

I spent 6 weeks in Nome in December and January, and hung out with Kenai a lot. He hurt from his arthritis, but seemed happy otherwise and in no better nor worse shape than in the past two years. I left with a sense of finality, as I would not be back until October. It turns out this time I was right. I can’t complain about the way he went; I had always worried that he might have a long and painful end, with a decision having to be made about euthanasia (and given the lack of a vet currently in Nome, I would have to administer it as I did with Maggie and Chief). Instead on the morning of the 24^th of February he got up and ate as usual, cleaned off the kids plates at lunch, went outside a bit, and lay down in the hall. Pat found him aware but unable to move, and called Karen home. By the time she had him to the vet he was fading fast, but with no sense of pain or distress. They gave him a painkiller/sedative just in case, then helped him along. It was time. Methuselah was gone.

Karen and I have been placing our dogs when they die in a fairly remote area outside of Nome, a spot where they loved to play and that Karen visits for berry picking. Once we had placed Maggie there it was natural to put Cassidy, and then Kenai, in the same spot. No hole, they are left open to the elements to rejoin the system as quickly as possible, as I hope someone would do for me. I was not around to help, but Karen and Dylon went out to place him with the pack on Saturday. Being Kenai, the situation could not be simple and it was one of the coldest days on record for late February, a brisk -38F. They persevered, however, and I will go and visit the spot when I return.

After losing all three of our dogs in two years it is time for a rest. I thank the whatever out there for the way Kenai went, and for keeping him around as long as he stayed. He was my friend, and we had some good times. More than that we enjoyed just being around each other. He was my boy, and one of the longest relationships I have had as an adult. I loved him, and he seemed to dig me. He was a damn fine dog, and was no man’s toy. Rest well, and then go play, old friend. I’ll see you soon.