Goldie, the Dog

Goldie adopted us. In the fall of 1992, Dennis drove to the homestead cabin while I stayed in town and worked on a new edition of Facts Plus. He stopped for gas at a highway lodge and Goldie greeted him profusely, jumping all over him. He asked about the dog when he went inside to pay and the lodge owners encouraged him to take him. He was a stray. They already had enough dogs. They had tried to find the owner without luck. The dog pound had already been called.

So, without my knowledge, Dennis took him in to the homestead for a week. During that week, they bonded. By the time I was introduced, it was too late to object. I did say I wanted him to be an outside dog and Dennis agreed, but the first week we had him it was cold, 20 below zero. So he became an inside dog, his preference by far.

One morning, Dennis walked out to put the dog on his chain. When he finished and looked up, there was a huge bull moose only five yards away, head down, antlers swaying from side to side, obviously upset. He must have been just behind the tree when Dennis walked out! The chained dog lunged toward the moose and nipped it. I walked outside just in time to see Dennis throwing snowballs at the monstrous animal and saying, "Go away, moose!" Fortunately, the moose did.

Goldie went with us everywhere. He traveled easily in airplanes and boats, on snowmachines and four-wheelers. He was full of energy. The first time we took him to the homestead in the summer, he stopped at a stream and barked to be carried across! He didn't want to get his feet wet. He soon found out how fun it can be to get wet, and when he discovered that fish live in the water, he began to pounce in every puddle. When we came up the Inside Passage in the boat, he dove in and swam around in circles sometimes, seemingly just for the fun of it.

January 5, 1994 was a dark day in Goldie's life. He was shot. It would have been our last day at Dennis' brother's farm outside Minneapolis. Goldie was let out for a morning potty break and the only nearby neighbor shot him. He dragged himself home and we rushed him to the vet. A few hours later we got bad news. The bullet had pulverized the bone of a back leg, so close to the hip that it was unlikely the leg could be saved.

You can imagine our grief. The neighbor was unrepentant, saying Goldie had trespassed. Never mind that his own dog is never chained or confined and wanders across property boundaries all the time. The police came and said the neighbor had done nothing illegal. Never mind that there were numerous options for solving the problem short of shooting. A small-town dogcatcher was just five miles down the road.

Thankfully, during surgery they discovered that enough of the hip joint was left to salvage the leg. That leg is a good two inches shorter than the other, but for many years, Goldie didn't let it slow him down.

On April 12, as we were on our way back to civilization after ten days at the homestead, we came upon a large lone wolf. The wolf veered off the trail ahead of us and sat down 50 yards or so away, watching us. We stopped the snowmachines and watched him, transfixed. Goldie rolled in the snow playfully. The long magical moment ended when the wolf stood up. Goldie saw him, stiffened, and took chase, ignoring Dennis' frantic calls. The wolf loped away, seemingly uninterested. Goldie raced after him and we thought we'd lost him. Just before he reached the wolf, however, he doubled back. The wolf sat down again to watch us until we moved on.

Goldie is an old dog now, and arthritis has set in, but his spirit is as young as ever.