Sans Souci - in Memoriam

She was something else this one - firs month she tore the house plants to shreds, had 'the stomach flue' (code for diarrhea), and chewed her way through a wall like a convict in Shawshank Redemption...and I miss her still! As much as we sometimes might think we want 'the perfect pet' isn't that just what we have no matter what? In truth, if they didn't come replete with personalities we could just buy mechanical dogs - chilling thought. Like children it's the imperfections that endear them to us and make them unique. Indeed it's having personalities that makes us fall passionately in love with them. I remember taking a class in which the instructor asked us about the most important people in our lives...wanted to know if we were married or in committed relationships, had children, other family, whomever it might be we cared for the most. It was an ethics course and the question was about how far we would go to protect the ones we loved. The circuit made its way around to this older farmer/hunter type of guy and he said, 'Well, I'm married sure enough. Have been for 40 years. I wouldn't do a damned thing to save her life'. The room gasped and people looked really uncomfortable. The instructor reminded us that this wasn't a morals class but ethics and she needed to know what made us tick. You could tell she was intrigued. She asked whether he had children, living parents, etc and he confirmed that he had all those and wouldn't break the law to save a single one of them if required. It seemed outrages and though you could think it was a show for effect we had the very real impression he was as serious as a heart-attack (something a few of the wives probably hoped he'd have that night). She asked, 'Okay, is there anything in your life you would break the law to save if required'? 'Oh yes', he replied, undoubtedly'. We all sighed a little sigh of relief. He wasn't totally sociopathic afterall. 'My dogs'. And at that quite a few of the other guys in the class laughed, shook their heads, and mumbled under their breaths. Even the women, who were royally offended by this guy, had to admit it was possible to love a dog more than some spouses. 'Sau-Sau' (Sans Souci's nickname), sure, could be a handful, a total individual, and much of the time that personality bounced me between infuriated and exasperated. But regardless I couldn't and wouldn't ask her to deny her personhood - with which she was richly endowed. She also faithfully watched over me like a highly paid bodyguard, licked my tears when I cried, scooched next to me when it was cold, and always, always, always made me feel like the only person who counted! Never quite content she brilliantly found ways to foil any attempt at keeping her contained and safe in my rather large garden. A free-spirit she learned to leap over the signal of my $2400 electric fence, chew through the wire leadline I zig-zagged from tree to tree so she'd have full use of the yard, and, yes, open her kennel door to again work on the wall that kept her from the magnificently enticing world beyond. I spent more than a few hours driving the area stopping, calling, stopping, calling only to find her galavanting with a gang of strays she'd rallied like a coach and a rag-tag ball team. Car door open I would emphatically point to it. She would casually say goodbye to her brood and saunter defiantly to the car slowly hoisting herself up to the oversized luxury of her tinted back window seat. As we drove home she would star out with her nose haughtily raised in the air. When I eventually bought a farm I realized what had been wrong all along. She'd needed a job and I had carelessly not provided one. With another dog, cat, geese, and horses to watch over her true nature emerged. She helped herd and protect every one of them from her very particular high-spot at the barns and all was right with the world. She had more pain than I could bear but I asked her to bear it as long as she could because I selfishly couldn't bear letting go. She did it valiantly and with grace until she couldn't. Sau-Sau passed in 2010 and I miss her every day, hope she knows how much, and hope she's with me now.