Monica enjoys telling the story of how I decided to adopt our dog Reina from a litter of Australian Shepherds back in August, 2005. Cupping her hands, holding an imaginary six-week old Aussie puppy, she’ll say in a teasing, smallish voice, “this one.”
Her inference, of course, was that I was smitten with that tiny red merle pup from the get-go–which I was. But if the truth be told, I had just done a couple of temperament tests on her. One of them was to check her reaction after rolling her over onto her back and the other was to pinch the webbing between her toes. Reina squirmed when I put her on her back. And I counted to eight before she pulled her foot in reaction to the pain test. Indications, a breeder might tell you, of being independent-minded and a possessing a high tolerance for pain. That sealed the deal for me. We brought her home two weeks later.
Fast-forward some 12 years to Thanksgiving weekend, 2017. The dogs, Reina and Rafa, and I were hiking out at the Redgate trails. We were heading down the Skull Canyon trail toward the lake like we’ve done a thousand times before when Reina got a whiff of deer and did something she hadn’t done for a couple of years. She sprinted down the trail to give chase, that independent-mindedness rearing its head.
Sadly, it turned out to be her last.
Over the course of that weekend, Reina’s physical condition rapidly deteriorated. By Sunday afternoon she stopped eating and could barely stand. The speed at which events unfolded was stunning and wrenching. I don’t know if she suffered some sort of pulmonary distress in that last great dash or if there was some undiagnosed condition masked by that high pain threshold that suddenly took her down. Whatever it was that fuelled her demise, it was quick. By that evening it was painfully clear: Reina was done.
I took her to the vet Monday morning–Monica met us there–to put her down. “Her heart’s stopped,” I remember the vet saying a few moments after administering the shot of pentobarbital. Monica sobbed.I cried and stroked Reina’s head and neck, whispering her name. She was seven months shy of turning 13 years old.
I stopped by the house before taking her to be cremated. I felt the need to show Rafa that she had died. His reaction: indifference. And that only frustrated my sense of loss. But he’d seen what was unfolding over the weekend and maybe sensed what was coming.
As the news trickled out to family and friends that we had to put Reina down, I got some emails and texts from expressing condolences at her passing. Pat Malone, a former colleague at The Chieftain, sent me text that pretty much hit the mark. His dachshund Rusty had died a couple of months earlier at 14. “We’re lucky to have had our time with them,” Pat wrote. “When the bill comes due for all the joy they brought us, it’s fucking hard.”
Over the course of 12-plus years, I must have walked and hiked thousands of miles with Reina, as hard as that is to believe. In February, Rafa and I took her on one last hike up to Newlin Creek, a favorite haunt, to scatter her ashes. It was a clear, cold day, but snowy and icy in spots along the trail. Rafa meandered along the path as I brought up the rear, carrying Reina’s ashes in the Domke camera bag I use for hikes, her collar strapped to it, tags jangling as we wound our way to the meadow at the top of the trail.
We made good time in spite of the sometimes dicey conditions, not that we were in any hurry. Upon reaching the trail’s end, I plopped down on a log near an old fire ring not too far from Nathaniel Herrick’s century-old sawmill. Rafa, more than familiar with the drill, figured an apple or some other goodie was coming out of the camera bag, but not this time. This time, it was Reina. The apple would have to wait.
I began walking through the aspen, sowing her ashes among them as tears began to well-up. I took my time, indifferent to Rafa’s impatience with our break from routine. When I finished, I rinsed my hands in the icy cold of Newlin Creek, walked back to where I set my things down, and finally pulled the apple from my bag. I snapped off a big bite, then held it in front of Rafa. “Here’s to Reina,” I said, biting it in two, tossing half the chunk his way and eating the other half myself.
We didn’t linger. We polished off the apple and I said a last “good-bye” before following Rafa down the trail. It was a sad but satisfying moment, knowing Newlin Creek was now a place a bit more beautiful, a bit more special, than when we arrived.
