Katie.

.

My dad wrote this about Katie after she died a few years ago. Her birthday was Valentine's Day, & I think we still all associate this day a bit with her.

I remember when Jan and Christopher brought her home from the kennel. She was just a big bundle of golden red fur, and as soft as fluffy cotton. For the first 18 months, she was a bundle of energy – and those baby teeth were sharp! She got into everything.

My deerskin slippers were an early victim. Since I wasn't Katie's greatest fan at that time, Jan kept the truth of the damage from me for at least a couple of years – some strategic scissor recontouring of the tongue of the slipper worked magic. I still have those slippers – one with a long tongue, and the other with one much shorter. It will always be a reminder of Katie that will bring a smile to my face.

When Tara came home to plan for her wedding, about two years after Katie was born , she walked through the house, looked out into the back yard, and burst into tears. It took me, Christopher, and Patrick several days to get the yard looking fit for a reception. (Christopher will tell you he spent all spring working on it by himself – a great labor of love, indeed) We had to replace yards and yards of sod (big holes dug in the ground) and numerous bushes that had been pulled out by their roots.

After a couple of years, Katie settled down to the most loving dog one could ever hope for. She slowly became a real member of the family. Kathryn remarked, the kids each began to think of Katie as a seventh sibling.

Katie was spayed when she was six months old. This may have helped her to calm her down – it certainly spelled doom for offspring, which is too bad, in a way. Her gene pool was magnificent, and it would have been nice to have one or two of her puppies frolicking around the house (time does heal all wounds).

Anyway, as Katie became a member of the family, she gradually forgot that she was a dog. I really believe that she came to think of herself as a full-fledged member of the family and the human race. In time, she learned enough English to get along with everyone with whom she came in contact. She was very polite – always extending her "hand" to shake with visitors. And if they stopped, she was always quick to paw her way into another round of handshaking.

We were so lucky to have many years with Katie, as she and the other kids in the family grew up. Tara was away at college when Katie joined our family, and Joanna too. Christopher was just 16 years old – just the right age to forge bonds with a dog that could never be broken. I know he became Katie's special friend, and even, in later years, when Christopher's life became busier with extracurricular activities, he would always make an effort to come by the house to see her. I can see in my mind's eye Christopher and Katie chasing each other around the main floor of the house, first in one direction and then the other, now Christopher chasing Katie, and then the other way around.

All the younger children had years to bond with Katie, and Patrick, Elizabeth, Kathryn, and Andrew must have tested her patience, as they wrestled, rode, poked and prodded, and in other ways developed a physical and emotional relationship with Katie. When I think about it, maybe this is one reason why she was such a people dog – she had endless opportunities to feel the love of so many members of the family.

In 1996, when we purchased our property at Priest Lake, a whole new vista opened up for this dog who so much loved the outdoors and the water. It didn't take long for Katie to figure out when we were making final preparations to go to the lake for a day or the weekend.

She heard the word "lake" so many times that it was like Pavlov's bell– at the sound she would race around the house, and in her ecstasy come screeching to a stop, a madly chase her tail a few times, and then eagerly stand by the front door, all enthusiasm and expectation…body quivering and tail wagging furiously. When the door opened (even a crack) she would push outside and run wildly to one car and then another, in confident expectation that one of us would come and open the car door and allow her admittance.

She was always pretty calm on the way to the lake, and even when we arrived, she would maintain her decorum. But when we let her out of the car, she would run here and there, nose to the ground, experiencing all the new and wonderful smells.

And, of course, for so many years, the dock was the center of her attention. She was made for the water and was comfortable in it for hours on end. We brought bags and bags of tennis balls to the lake, and she would leap off the dock when one was thrown into the water, retrieve the ball, swim to shore, and (sometimes) shake the water off herself before running to anyone who seemed to be available to help her repeat the process.

Once in a while she would get distracted, and not chase the ball that had been thrown. I suspect homeowners down in Huckleberry Bay(about two miles north) wondered more than once where all the tennis balls were coming from that drifted in with the wind.
Christopher soon devised the technique of hitting the tennis balls from either the deck, shore, or the dock (most often, the deck) with a tennis racquet. You could get some real distance by hitting the ball with the racquet. From the deck, Katie would race down the steps at breakneck speed, roar down the path leading to the dock, and run out onto the dock waiting for the ball to fly. She was never very good at following the ball in the air, but until the last couple of years of her life was very good at spotting the ball when it hit the water.

As soon as that happened, with a giant leap at full stride, Katie would hit the water and start swimming. She was a very good swimmer–and totally outclassed the few dogs who came to visit and tried to compete with her to reach the ball first. When she came out of the water with the ball, she would trot out onto the dock, and if we were very unlucky, she would choose the moment she reached us to vigorously shake herself off, spraying water everywhere.

Getting her to release the ball from her mouth was another story. She never seemed to understand that the command "Drop it" meant that the game would more quickly repeat itself. No matter, she had such a gentle mouth that you could take hold of the ball (as slimy as it might be) and carefully get her to release it.

Every now and then, she would drop the ball and it would fall into the water (sometimes under the boat slip). This was always very worrisome to her – she wouldn't get back in the water to retrieve the ball unless it was a challenging distance from the dock.

In her early and middle years, we would throw the ball out into the lake, but when she got tired, we would sometimes throw it parallel to the shore, and finally, during her last summer with us, we would toss it carefully toward shore, so that she would be sure to see it, be able to retrieve it, and make it safely to shore.

Katie left us at the end of summer (2005) - this is a story in itself. During her last winter, I would often drive to the lake with her on a Thursday evening or Friday morning. She was great company in my truck – she always lay down on the front seat with her head in my lap. We'd drive for miles with her just nestled there -sometimes drooling on my pants – a little non-verbal cue that we should stop at McDonald's Drive-through in Newport. Katie loved McDonald's hamburgers. She preferred them without pickle, but was okay with mustard and ketchup. I would generally get her at least two or three, and I'd have to rip them into pieces before giving them to her, because she would just devour them. I have no idea how she could inhale hamburgers, but she made it look easy. (She never really took to French fries, though).

Speaking of going to the lake with Katie. I'm sure that, during the past 10 years, after we bought the lot at Huckleberry Bay, Katie and I drove to the lake together at least a hundred times. She was great company. No-one ever appreciated the trip to the lake more than she did.

After the hustle and bustle of summer, when things would really slowdown at the lake, Katie was always great company. In the autumn, during the years I spent working outside doing "odds and ends," she was generally either by my side, or in the vicinity – checking out new smells, chasing squirrels, lying on the dock or beach, or snoozing on the deck. In the evening, when I would look out at the darkening skies, and realize that Katie and I were probably the only people within 10 miles of the cabin, it would be great comfort to have her there. As I said, she was great company, and would follow me around the house like my shadow. I was always turning around and falling all over her because there she was right behind me.

At night, she would sleep by the bed, and for most of her life, it wasn't an issue, because she was pretty quiet. But during her last year, she had some trouble breathing, and it got pretty noisy at times. (Not to mention the "other problem" with the "other end" of her digestive tract. But I'll leave that out of this reminiscence, keeping in mind that it's often better to gloss over some of the more basic details).

At home in Mead, Katie was equally "needy." I can remember countless times, walking around the house with her right on my heel. She would follow me from the kitchen, into my office; then we'd turn around and go to the living room, and then into the computer room, and so on. I had to be really careful when sitting in the computer room chair, because it has wheels, and after working on the computer, if I wasn't paying attention, I'd risk rolling back to get up and roll right over her – because there she would be, patiently waiting for me to move to another room.

Even now, (just six days after she left us), I have to report that every morning when I've gotten out of bed, I've been careful when walking around the foot of the bed in the darkness, not to accidentally step on Katie, who I expect to be sleeping at the foot of the bed. When I walk downstairs, I have to resist going to the back door and calling her to go outside for a morning stretch of the legs. And when I come home in the afternoon, and unlock the door, I catch myself calling her. When we leave the house, and set the alarm, my finger goes first to "at home," and then reluctantly, to "away" when I realize that she's not here.

I haven't been to the lake yet, but I know it's going to be hard to put her green food dish and water dish away for good, and I wonder what I'm going to do when I first come across our huge stash of tennis balls in the garage. I know we can keep them for Danner, but it's not going to be the same, at least at first. It's going to be hard to pull out the dining room chairs (both at home and at the lake) where Katie used to get herself all entwined in the legs and cross-members. I have no idea why she liked those awkward positions so much – but she was a master contortionist.

Speaking of awkward positions, who can forget her lying on the tile floor in the kitchen of the cabin, with Ellie crawling all over her, poking her finger in her eye, or curling her lip up to reveal long sharp teeth. Ellie had total and complete trust in Katie, and it was well-founded. She didn't have a mean fiber in her body, and had infinite patience with Parker and Spencer as well. It's too bad Parker and Spencer didn't have the chance to "ride" Katie like a horse earlier in her life, when she had more energy (and muscle). Because they really tried, crawling all over her back, and sometimes even lying on top of her.

A part of Katie was "bird dog." I believe that, one time, Christopher actually had to go out in the boat to "rescue" Katie, who had taken off from shore at Huckleberry Bay, chasing ducks who would keep just far enough ahead of her to keep her hopes up. She kind of lost track of her bearings, and was soon several hundred feet off shore. I'm sure that, at that stage of her life, she could have made it back to shore under her own power, but Christopher was always attentive to her, and sometimes fussed over her like a mother hen. Once, when she was very young, our Budgie got out of its cage, and was flying around the house. On one close pass, Katie leapt up into the air and grabbed the bird out of the air. Her mouth was so gentle that not a feather was disturbed, and when we coaxed her mouth open the Budgie was released without harm (although I'm sure it was near to having heart failure).

Other thoughts of Katie:
1. Going to Lion Head – to the rock slides.
2. Chasing ducks into the middle of the lake – and retrieving her with the boat.
3. Falling asleep on the boat with her chin on your lap.
4. Going shed hunting with Phil and Patrick at Soldier Creek – and then getting in the air conditioned car for the ride home.
5. Endlessly hiking in the mountains below the Selkirk Crest, and having her crashing through the undergrowth following scents.
6. Even snowshoeing in the winter, and having Katie following us through drifts up to her chest.
7. Eating Phil's moccasin when she was a puppy.
8. Digging up the back yard before Tara's wedding.
9. Two Thanksgivings in a row – eating the rising rolls in front of the fireplace.
10. Lying on the floor with Parker draped over her – and both asleep.
11. Eating steak scraps at the lake.
12. Running from the deck to the dock chasing tennis balls that had been hit off the dock with a tennis ball.
13. Swimming circles around Bonnie Bell's dog at the lake.
14. Shaking hands.
15. Teaching her to climb the swim ladder on the dock.
16. Buying her McDonald's hamburgers in Newport, on the way to the lake.
17. Sitting in the back of the pick up truck, and sticking her head out the side, in the wind.
18. Waiting in the bed of the pickup at the lake, for us to return from motorcycling.
19. Knocking the screen door off its track on the front door at the cabin, when the bear was on the porch.
20. Chasing squirrels in the trees in front of the cabin.
21. Sitting by the fire pit and having burning embers fly on to her fur.
22. Sitting at the computer and getting up, turning around, and tripping over Katie, who had slipped into the room and lay down behind me.
23. Having her endlessly follow me around the house (especially during the last year of her life.)
24. Giving her steak, hamburgers, and anything else I thought she would like, during her final months.
25. The vet giving her pizza, when she would come in for her chemotherapy.
26. She must have looked in the mirror and thought "How odd! I know I'm human, and am a member of the family, but I look different. Oh well." It never really bothered her that she had four legs, and the rest of the family had two, or that she (as a rule) slept on the floor (on the sheepskin, or on a nice soft blanket) while the rest of the family got to sit and sleep on couches and beds.