Cheyenne in Memoriam

I first met Cheyenne on a wet day in the fall of 1991 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My friend Steve had seen an advertisement for free puppies and wanted to see them, so I rode along. Following the directions, we arrived at a decrepit trailer featuring a junked car in the front yard. No one answered our knock, but a sign taped to the door said that, if we saw a puppy we liked, just to take it. Turning around, we walked over to the junked car, beneath which the puppies had taken shelter. Leaning down for a look, we found a litter of puppies huddled together. One of them, bolder than the rest, came forward and sat on her haunches. Looking up at us, she raised one of her paws in salute. Though I didn’t know it at the time, in the years ahead I would become very familiar with that gesture.

They were all extremely cute, and Steve and I stood out there in the rain for a bit just looking at them. The others continued to huddle back beneath the car and, after awhile, the bold one joined them. That was the problem: they seemed so dependent upon one another that Steve just didn’t have the heart to separate them. And so, we finally gave up and left, leaving the puppies to their fate. I thought that was the end of it until a week later when Steve called saying he had decided to get one of the puppies after all. He picked me up and we proceeded back out to the trailer.

When we arrived, we again found no one at home. The sign was still taped to the door however, and so we went back to the junker in the front yard. Only one puppy remained to greet us—the bold one. The rest had either fallen prey to coyotes, been run over on the nearby highway, or had simply been adopted. This time there was no hesitation; we scooped the puppy up and headed back to town. Steve drove while I held the shivering puppy beneath my jacket to warm her. Though she was nervous, she didn’t miss a thing with her pointed, upright ears that took in everything around her. As she grew, the tips of her ears would eventually flop over, as if they were resting.

Cheyenne became a frequent visitor at our house. Steve and I worked opposite shifts at the Coast Guard base in Sault Ste. Marie, and so, when he relieved me, I would go over and pick Cheyenne up. When we arrived home, our dog Bear; who was only a year old, would give me a dirty look and slink off. But it did her no good to hide. Cheyenne would immediately seek her out, and then the play would begin as Cheyenne relentlessly attacked the Bear, all the time snarling like a wolverine.

At first, when Cheyenne was still small, the Bear delighted in attacking her. We would take them to a field and there, the Bear would run in great arcs, building up speed until she moved in for the kill. Cheyenne would try to hide, but the Bear would swoop in and grab her by the hind leg. It looked like something you see on the wildlife shows filmed on the Serengeti Plains. As Cheyenne quickly eclipsed the Bear in size, the game became more of a sporting proposition.

A few years down the road, the time came for us to leave Michigan. We were being transferred to California. We weren’t sure when, if ever, we would see Steve and Cheyenne again, so we said our goodbyes. Time passed, and the Bear and us thought we had seen the last of her playmate. Then one day, the phone rang. It was Steve, informing us that he had been transferred to a ship out of Seattle. He couldn’t keep Chy, and he wondered if we might take her. It didn’t take long to agree to that and, before we knew it, Chy was a part of our family.

Eventually, we moved back to Alaska. There, Cheyenne and the Bear thrived on long walks and hikes. Cheyenne and the Bear were very reliable around real bears, and that was a good thing on Kodiak Island, home to some of the largest bears in the world. Once, while hiking down a narrow trail through the alders on Kodiak, we encountered a monster bear. Cheyenne and the Bear, walking ahead of me, spotted him first.

I hadn’t noticed a thing, but they caught the scent and stopped dead in their tracks. Following their gaze back over my shoulder, I spotted a gigantic brown bear staring at us from the alders, 20 yards away. He was so big he looked like a tool shed with fur. It could have been a touchy situation, but the girls never moved a muscle—just continued to stare at the bear. After what seemed like an eternity, the brownie melted into the alders without a sound. We continued on our way….

As the years went by, we moved from Kodiak to Fairbanks and on to Juneau. By then, Cheyenne had grown from a small bundle of fur into a magnificent, stately creature that emanated a sense of dignity and intelligence. Though Chy was the alpha dog wherever she went, she always deferred to the Bear, who I think she looked upon as a surrogate mother. She was always protective of the Bear, especially around other dogs. Sometimes, if she thought there was danger from other dogs, she would deliberately place herself between the Bear and the threat.

 Like all intelligent creatures, Chy had her personal quirks. Until the end of her days, she liked to raise her paw and “shake hands,” just as she had the first time Steve and I met her. She also loved to be hugged, and she was so long that she would practically wrap herself around you. I guess what I’ll remember most about her was the sense of intelligence and tranquility that emanated from her. When you looked Cheyenne in the eye, she always seemed to be thinking about something. She had, what I’ve heard referred to, as an ‘old soul.’

In the end, our magnificent Cheyenne was dying of cancer. By now, we had moved back to California and leased an old Victorian house. There, in the darkened parlor, Chy lay in her accustomed spot, with her back up against the wall, slowly ebbing away. Now her ears drooped completely, and her fur came out in clumps. Much of the time, I would stay up at night taking care of her and the Bear. Finally, I looked into her eyes and knew that she was imploring me to help her. 

The time had come. And so, on a beautiful California morning, we drove Chy to the vet. On the way, she sat in the back of the car and looked around, all the while maintaining her usual dignity. She knew this was her last ride, she was too intelligent not to. I held her as she was injected and told her I loved her. I felt a shudder pass through her, then she was gone.

That was exactly three years ago, but it seems like yesterday. A year and a half later the Bear died too. I think about them often and, sometimes, when I start to miss them too much, I’ll look at their photos and recall the years we shared together. I don’t believe in an afterlife; for me there is only this life—and death. But sometimes, I catch myself wishing I were wrong because I know, if they could, they would be waiting for me. Take care old friends, as long as I live, you'll live on in my memory.