Dog Days

I still remember burying my salty tears in his fur: he was soft, solid, the perfect cushion for my heartbreak.

I was living in Pemberton, B.C., then. My five-year relationship had imploded just days earlier, forcing me to turn up at a friend’s door in Squamish with a few belongings and Chilko, my three-year-old husky mix, while I mourned my unrealized future.

Maybe I’d forecasted this when we adopted Chilko. “You’re sure we’ll last? I don’t want to do this alone,” I half-joked to my now ex. I should have trusted my gut but instead preemptively ensured sole custody of Chilko by paying the adoption fee. I was intent on keeping him by my side — next to my desk in the newsroom, leading me on daily runs, nuzzled into my sleeping bag on camping trips. And then, snuggled up to me in a friend’s spare bedroom.

Our solitude didn’t last. A few weeks later — too soon by anyone’s standards — I introduced him to someone new, an Edmonton ex-pat like me. He was tall, blonde and calm in way that felt like solid ground after an earthquake. Chilko knew he was a good one first: As soon as Darren sat on my friend’s couch, Chilko hopped up and rested his head on the new guy’s lap. Eventually Chilko walked us down the aisle with a flower collar around his neck.

Once, on a short hike with Chilko, I looked down at a fast-moving river in which a tourist had recently drowned and had what seemed then like a totally logical thought: I would jump in that river to save you.

It was hard to imagine my feelings for him waning — but then again, it was hard to imagine my inner world after becoming a mom. My anxiety, once just an ever-present background rumble, now roared as I watched my newborn sleep at night, resting my hand on her tiny chest in case my bloodshot eyes couldn’t be trusted to register the rise and fall of her perfectly breathing lungs.

By comparison, Chilko seemed infinitely more self-sufficient to me and Darren. Much of the time would fly by — nap time, snack time, play time, dinner time, bed time — before one of us remembered to ask if the dog had his dinner. In my postpartum haze, his needs were just another task on an endless list of pressing demands.

Chilko’s status dropped further after baby number two. No, I absolutely would not risk orphaning my girls to rescue him from a river. Yet I felt immense guilt about how easily we demoted Chilko — once the centre of my universe — to plain old family pet.

I thought my feelings of fierce devotion were gone forever. Then, one day on another hike together, I felt it rushing back. We stopped at an overlook where a creek roared down a cliff into a turquoise lake. I rested my hand on his head, felt his warm, steady breath beneath my palm and remembered how Chilko had comforted me through the shaky transitions of life without ever demanding anything in return. He’d patiently waited, loyal as ever, until I found my way back.