nanook

Nanook




1994 - 2006

My Alaskan Husky, Nanook, died very unexpectedly on Tuesday, 19 September 2006.

I've had just over a week now to consider what tribute I might write to the very best friend I've ever had, and I'm not sure I've come up with anything profound. This process takes time. I'm still getting around to telling everyone about his passing, and I've been astonished by the outpouring of love and concern that has been coming my way. Quite simply, everyone loved that dog. He was friendly, funny, and active. Like many huskies, Nanook had blue eyes, but instead of that "crazy ice" color, his were more of a soothing turquoise, and many people remarked on their human-like quality.

His intelligence and awareness were impossible to miss. I've received a lot of e-mails and telephone calls from folks remembering him as more of a person dressed in a dog costume, than a canine.

This loss has hit very hard here at home, for both me and the three surviving critters. Journey, now nine years old, has never been an "only dog" before, and she has been particularly lost.

There have been requests lately for me to tell the story of how I met Nanook, so I'll honor those here.

In August 1994, I was living in the fashionable Fan District of Richmond, Virginia. Some college boys moved in next door; they had spent the summer working in Wyoming, and had come back with an Alaskan Husky puppy. I didn't see much of Nanook those first months, though in winter – once he was big enough for me to reach him over the back fence when he stood on his back legs – I'd pull on my coat and spend some time outside petting him and talking to him over the common fence between the house I was renting and where he lived.

In February 1995, I was at home with a flu one day, and as I sat reading in my bedroom, I could hear a dog running up and down outside the front of the house. I went to my second-floor window to peer out, and came face-to-face with Nanook. He had run out the bedroom window next-door and then had gotten stuck on the shared roof that covered the front porches. I opened my window to let him inside, and he was so excited that he peed in a little circle on my floor. I'm still not sure how he managed to do that. I took him back to his house, but he had learned how to get to my house, and I received frequent second-floor bedroom-window visits from him after that.

A few weeks later, he was big enough to climb over the back fence, and so learned how to escape over to my house that way, too.

In April, Nanook was once again in my backyard. One of the students called over the fence, "You know, we're looking for a new home for Nanook. He seems to like you...." Just as I was about to respond that I wasn't so sure about adopting a dog, Nanook sat down behind me, with the base of his spine pressed up against my heel – the exact stance I had learned to expect from the protective Wolf guide I'd been working with in shamanic journeys for several years. That small gesture sealed the deal. On Friday, 21 April 1995, at about 5:30 p.m., Nanook came to live with me.

He was ten months old. He tore the house to pieces and needed crate training to properly housebreak him. Obedience school was a joke. I used the crate regularly with him for about two years, until he had finally calmed down enough to be left in the house alone, though there were still instances of shredded mail and chairs that were chewed through. But he was always a lapdog – forty pounds of lean muscle and fur. Nanook needed to be at eye-level with people. He once even got up into a porch swing with me and my sister. He regularly sat next to me on the couch, and would lean down to rest his head on my heart.

These sled dogs never completely grow old or become geriatric, and right up until just a few days before he died, Nanook and I were going on long, brisk hikes around the neighborhood together. Three years younger, Journey simply couldn't keep up with him.

Nanook's ashes came back to me this past Monday, and I have his collar and tags hanging from my desk shelf, not even a foot away from me.

Nanook very honestly changed my life. He taught me to be much more flexible with my time and my possessions – since so many were destroyed during those early years, including the teddy bear my father had given to me just after I was born, while he was fighting in Vietnam. Nanook greeted me excitedly when I came home, and stood at the window watching for me when I was gone – even when I'd just stepped out to get the mail. He "sang" with me when I was happy, and sat with me when I cried. Nanook forced me to nurture and revel in silliness, and to learn to live in an imperfect and often messy home. He insisted on making friends with everyone he saw, and so helped me crawl out of my own shell of shyness. I am without a doubt a stronger, more confident, more engaged and grounded person because of his loving and sometimes challenging influence in my life.

How do you say goodbye to that?

The past couple of days, I've started looking into sled dog races and similar topics that I might cover for local and national publications. And in honor of Nanook, the sled dog everyone loved so dearly, I'm looking at going up to Alaska next March for the 2007 Iditarod.

In the meantime, I am lighting a candle for Nanook, pressing my face against his collar to take in the lost smell of him, and talking to him. And I am getting used to not being covered in a thick layer of Nanook hair for the first time in eleven-and-a-half years.