Companion

Walking with just the girls constitutes a whole new world of experience. Both have strong bully breed looks, striking fear into a few hearts on that basis alone. Both are utterly friendly; if any of my dogs was going to bite someone, it wouldn't be either of them, it would have been Nicholai. On more than one occasion, he put unknown men who appeared suddenly on the trail on a firm "stay!" with lunging body posture and bared teeth. He never actually bit them; however, to a man they obeyed his unmistakable command and stood stock still until I could retrieve him. (As a sidebar, Nicholai never impeded women in this way, and the men he stopped were never the ones with dogs, or even fishing poles. I admit I found them a tad cagey myself, and one apologized for his sudden emergence from the bushes.)

Today, my heart ached for my hiking companion. As I wandered wide grassy lawns and beaches on the Willamette and Columbia, chucking ball after ball for the fetch-obsessed girls, I found myself longing for company, someone to chat weather or dogs with. I realized I felt lonely and it was a foreign sensation for a morning trek with dogs.

In fact, I wasn't alone; Izzy and Kelley were both with me. Izzy spun in circles barking for each toss of the ball. Kelley watched my face and shoulder for signs of intention to reach out to the ball she'd deposited near me and quivered in anticipation of racing off full bore to retrieve it. Soon Izzy, now six years old, tired of chasing her ball and began her regular ritual of chomping on it, saliva soon spilling out of her mouth and foaming over her face, eyes glazing over, obsessively masticating the ball into oblivion. Kelley, still under two years old, could apparently play at retrieving longer than I have either time or patience to stay at the park and raced across land or hurtled into the water for pitch after pitch.

Standing on the shore of the Columbia river so recently visited with Nicholai, I could picture him trotting ahead of me with head and tail held high, scanning the horizon for interlopers, checking each piece of driftwood, sniffing here, marking there, nabbing a bite of abandoned garbage over there; always checking back in with me, meeting my eyes and bumping my hand until I'd pet him. He'd scrutinize my face with a curious expression and often we'd negotiate next steps via head nods and eye movements. I never felt lonely.

As Izzy hunkered down with her full attention on the ball between her paws, spit flying, and Kelley stared at my right shoulder for the first hint of the next toss, the tears spilled out. I love the girls, both super-sweet dogs who fly in the face of breed stereotypes, but they are a little more like kids than companions.

Nicholai was my friend. I miss him.