A dog named Cleo

The breeders named her Sarah. Not only is that a ridiculous name for any dog, it was totally inappropriate for her. When Dear Wife brought her home, she spent a few moments sniffing the corners before hopping up on the bed, settling on the pillows and looking around as if to say “This is where I belong”. Dear Wife re-named her Cleo, short for Cleopatra because she quite obviously saw herself as a queen.

Her original role in life was to be a show dog and her bloodlines reflected her pedigree. However, being skittish and somewhat nervous around strangers, at the age of three months it was deemed that she did not have a suitable temperament for such a world. Instead she was sold into the much happier and healthier life as a spoiled rotten house pet. Dear Wife already had one Australian Shepherd, named Madison who was bred from herding stock – a very different animal. Yet although their personalities couldn’t have been more dissimilar, the pair bonded instantly and became inseparable friends until Madison’s death in 2002. While Madison was stiff, serious and hard-working, Cleo was lithe, puppyish and agile, a natural athlete.

She had a turn of speed that had to be seen to be believed. She never actually caught any of the jackrabbits she chased in the deserts of Arizona, but she certainly gave a few of them a good scare. One evening we were taking a short cut across a patch of undeveloped land, not too far from our house when she took off after a cottontail. I would love to have put a radar gun on her because I doubt my car could have matched the speed at which she tore across the ground. Not from a standing start it couldn’t. She and the cottontail disappeared into the night, with only a light cloud of dust to indicate where she might be. I’m not sure how far the rabbit took her but it was a good five minutes before she came trotting back, smiling happily and fortunately, with no evidence she’d won the race. But it wasn’t just her speed – the flexibility of her spine would have been the envy of a yogi and she could leap a good four feet straight up from a standing start. By the time dog agility contests were becoming fashionable she was already past her prime which was a pity as she had all the makings of a champion.

Her coat was astonishingly soft, retaining a puppy-like quality well into her advanced age. Over time we got used to the clouds of hair which entered every aspect of our lives, Clothing to furniture to food, there was nowhere you wouldn’t find Cleo hair. We often thought if we could simply find a way to harvest it and turn it into clothing, we could clothe the entire nation. Actually, we did hear of a lady who for a fee, would take bags of dog hair and turn them into sweaters. Sounds good until you wonder what it would smell like the first time you went out in the rain. Wet dog, mmm hmmm!

For all her distrust of strangers, she was a dog who thrived on human contact and was visibly distraught when separated from Dear Wife and me for any length of time. There were occasions when we had to wonder if she actually realized she was a dog at all as it was common for her to react with horror if we inconsiderately treated her as one. She would often stare at us through the glass doors, quite obviously saying “There’s been a terrible mistake – you’ve locked me outside along with the dogs!”

Despite being plagued with arthritis for most of her life, Madison almost saw her sixteenth birthday; easily outlasting the average life span for the breed. Because she’d always been so healthy, as well as looking and acting much younger than her age, we simply assumed Cleo would live even longer. Sadly it was not to be. When her old friend passed on it was as if Cleo simply gave up and in a matter of months she aged by several years. In no time we had another old dog on our hands and while she never really suffered any illness as such, she was beset with most of the ailments by which old dogs are afflicted. Her eyesight, hearing and eventually, sense of smell left her and she became a confused and senile old lady. Where Madison appeared to be blissfully happy in her dotage, Cleo seemed distressed and frightened; as if she knew something was wrong but didn’t understand what it was.

It’s never an easy decision to let go of a beloved friend, particularly one who’s been such an integral part of your life for a decade and a half. But there comes a time when every dog owner has to recognize that their pet’s quality of life has deteriorated to the point when they’re simply no longer happy. After a lot of long talks, hugs and tears, we finally reached that point this weekend. We’re blessed in that Kris, our dogs’ primary veterinarian, is also a close friend and she kindly agreed to come to the house. The plan was to make the whole process as comfortable and straightforward as possible. Sasha, our nutso dog was locked upstairs but Wiley, an older dog herself these days, was allowed to stay and give moral support. She lay with her head close to Cleo’s the whole time.

But, bless her heart, Cleo had to play with us one more time. After giving a shot to relax her, Kris prepared to administer the lethal dose. As it’s often hard to find a vein on an older dog, this was going to be directly into the heart. Except even with a stethoscope, Kris couldn’t find it, which suggested it was either beating very faintly or had stopped altogether. Not a problem, injecting into the lungs, while not being instantaneous, is as near as. Or rather it wasn’t. Twenty minutes on, dear Cleo was now breathing stronger than we’d seen in months. Curiously, this made the process less painful, particularly as though her body might still be functioning; we were each convinced we’d “felt” her leave a little while ago. That was the point when Wiley placed her nose half an inch from Cleo’s, then settled back down with her head on her paws. Just like she was escorting the spirit on its way. A second dose was administered and finally, after gladdening our hearts for almost fifteen years, our baby slipped away from us.



Happy trails Cleo my friend. We’ll never forget you.

Oh rats!

Regular readers of The Gunsmoke Files will know me as an animal lover. I work hard to keep three dogs in the lap of luxury, lose sleep over how to deal with the mice that are determined to live under my bathroom sink and choose to believe the Pest Control guy’s explanation of what happened to the squirrels he removed from my roof. (Yes there is a Squirrel Ranch in Northern Colorado, go look it up!). However, there are two species of animals for which I have no love whatsoever - mosquitoes and rats. I’ll save my rant about mosquitoes for another day. I can after all, only handle so many traumas at once. Instead I’m going to tell you my rat story.

Spending as I did, several months as a hippy in Indonesia one becomes used to the sight of rats. Deep, wide gutters line most roads with open sewage and polluted water running freely. Not surprisingly, rats love this arrangement and can be seen pretty much everywhere. In the early weeks of my stay I wasn’t fazed in the slightest by their presence. Even a visit to a museum in Bogor, south of Jakarta, which had on display a recently caught but thankfully deceased and stuffed rat measuring (no kidding) 24-inches from nose to tail, didn’t cause me any undue distress.

No, it was during a long and terrifying night in Berastagi on the Island of Java, that I developed the phobia which has stayed with me to this day.

I’d met up with a fellow Brit named Michael who, for a few days at least, was following the same route as me, so as was common among the backpacker crowd, we shared rooms as we went. This had the advantage of affording more privacy than the communal dormitories, without the expense of a single room. These rooms varied tremendously in quality from idyllic beach bungalows with the South China Sea lapping gently a few feet away, to squalid hovels barely fit for habitation even by such impoverished social lepers as us.

At first glance, the lodgings looked better than most. The family run Bed and Breakfast, familiarly known as a “Homestay” was clean, the food was good and the owners were friendly. Our landlady showed as a room which, while rather on the pricy side considering its lack of size, looked plenty big enough for us. We weren’t bothered by the fact that the two single beds were pushed together under the same tent-like linen sheet which served as a mosquito net. After all, we’d both been roughing it for months now and of course, were perfectly secure in our heterosexuality. Possibly because we were focused on this, neither of us noticed that as we were below street level, the outside wall was in fact the lining of the open sewer.

All was well until around 1am when, I turned over and momentarily found myself gazing sleepily towards the gray-white wall of our linen sheet cocoon. It moved. In my sluggish state, my brain refused to acknowledge what I was actually witnessing and because of this, I was allowed to remain in blissful ignorance for a few moments longer. However, my innocence was short-lived because almost immediately, I felt Michael stiffen, then leap bolt upright with a scream. Simultaneously, we both let loose with loud, long and expletive laced discourse, the gist of which was “Oh my word, we appear to be sharing our sleeping space with a number of undomesticated rodents. I’m not sure I’m altogether happy about that.”

For it was true. As our brains rapidly shifted from “Park” to “Overdrive” we realized that we weren’t simply talking about one or two rats here, but an entire herd of them roaming freely around the room. Encased as we were, in linen, we couldn’t actually see them, but the numerous bulges moving along the tent walls were all too obvious clues as to the activity just a few inches away. Not only that, but we could hear many more of the little monsters scurrying around on the floor. I’m not the world’s biggest guy and Michael’s no heavyweight either but it was astonishing just what a small area of space the two of us were currently occupying in the center of that bed. As the rats continued their nocturnal exploration of our bed, our room and our souls, we clung to one another, all the while gibbering in foul-mouthed terror.

“What the hell are we going to do?” yelled Michael at the top of his lungs. “How about we put the light on?” I screamed back, “Maybe they’ll run away.” After a few moments reflection we determined that while this was a stellar idea, it presented the thorny problem of how to reach the switch, located impossibly far away across a rat strewn floor. Grisly though it was, I had no intention of leaving the sanctuary of our cocoon and neither apparently had Michael. We discussed strategy for a while, (“you f*****g do it!” “no, YOU f*****g do it!”), before I scored the winning goal by pointing out that Michael was nearest the light switch.

I reasoned that if I held his left arm, he could lean out of the bed and albeit at full stretch, reach the elusive switch. It was hard to argue with the logic, particularly as we couldn’t think of a better idea so after encouraging me to take my responsibilities seriously, namely by promising retribution involving rudimentary surgery on my private parts, Michael screwed his eyes tight shut, clasped my hand in his, stretched out his other arm, and flicked the switch.

The hideous noise generated by an army of rats scurrying for cover was almost enough to make me drop him onto the floor but I manfully kept my side of the bargain and in moments he was back under the linen sheet, shivering in horror and cursing up a storm. It was a long time before the sun gradually illuminated our sanctuary, but the light stayed on, our eyes stayed open and we stayed upright. I’m not entirely sure, but I think it was around that time my hair first started going gray.

Michael moved on the following day and I didn’t see him again until a chance meeting several weeks later. I had business in Berastagi however, and needed to stay one more night. I moved out of that awful room of course and into the clean, modern and rat free dormitory where I slept like a baby. Until about 1am, when I was awoken from my slumber by a distant and muffled scream. “OH….MY….GOOOOOODDDDD!”.

Smiling smugly, I turned over and drifting back to sleep, thought,

“I bet I know which room he’s in.”