This is not a post I want to write but not writing it, I feel, would be a great disservice to a wonderful dog taken all too soon from us. On Monday night, our dog Bode unexpectedly passed away. I don’t think I have ever been so stunned. For a long time, I simply held his lifeless form and wept hysterically. Bode didn’t eat his morning meal that day — but this is not unusual behavior when a bug is going around a kennel; I had several dogs who didn’t eat that day. Still, he seemed a little bit sluggish so I spoke with our vet when I went in to check on Flo and described his symptoms. We decided to give Bode the same antibiotics that I was using to treat my other ill dog at home, Grace. Flo continued to stay at the vet’s to be monitored as she was very weak. If Bode wasn’t back to himself the next day, I would take him in for further evaluation.
If only I had known…
Words cannot describe the sense of loss Travis and I currently feel. I last was with Bode at about 6:30 pm. I’d been working downstairs on our indoor dogbox. He had moved around the basement several times before finding a spot to lie down. He did not seem like he was about to die. When I went down to check on him after eating dinner at 8:30, he was gone. I still can’t believe it. We have not lost a young dog before and to have this sassy playful dog snatched from us so early in his life seems incredibly wrong and a gross injustice.
Bode was born this past February. His father Joe is the beloved cheerleader of our team and Mama B. a quirky surefooted female who we were sad could not race last season due to the fact that she was rearing pups. We had the litter inside the house for almost 10 weeks and grew very fond of the three dogs: Bode, Teddy, and Fergie. But Bodie always stood out from his sibblings.
Once Bode was old enough to bark, it seemed, he never stopped barking. He is the loudest dog I have ever met. I keep going back to this idea I heard a few years ago: You only have so many heartbeats…… I know it doesn’t make sense but I keep thinking, does a dog only have so many woofs and barks?
I know that probably sounds stupid but my heart aches so deeply and I struggle to make some sort of sense of this terrible situation.
I often wish I could have taught Bode to be silent for at least five minutes but now the dog yard, without his endless yipping and yapping, seems too quiet: adjusting has been hard.
We have had several other dogs in the kennel who have been sick recently. Flo, another puppy, was hospitalized last Friday due to dehydration caused from uncontrollable diarrhea. I take comfort, though not much, in the fact that she and our other dogs have gotten well and the fact that our vet has said that we have done everything we could for our dogs, including Bode.
Still, we are left with the question: Why Bode?
It’s been tougher dealing with this reality with Travis gone. He is training out on the middle of the Denali Highway, hundreds of miles from here with little to no phone service. When I told him the news on Tuesday morning he was in disbelief. And to be truthful, I was too. Honestly, I think I still am.
Travis kept asking me if I needed him to come home. How badly I think we both wanted for me to say yes! However in no way would that have benefitted our kennel. We were not yet sure if the antibiotics we were giving were working and the last thing I wanted was our race team to get sick incase the bug was contagious.
So Travis stayed North and has continued working with his race team. I know these training miles have been particularly tough on him. The lone quiet of the trail can truly make your heart ache especially when something as heavy as this weighs upon it. “He was my favorite,” Travis confessed later. “I know we are not supposed to have favorites, but he was my favorite dog back home.” And how could he not have been with his energetic, happy-go-lucky, loud mouth personality?
It is always hard to lose the dogs we love, harder when they are taken too soon, and still even more difficult when we are left with nagging questions: What could I have done differently? Where did this bug come from?
Still, I have been told that I could have done nothing differently. And it is true that I always acted with my best judgement. The swiftness with which he died, my musher friends have told me, must have meant that he had other undetectable health issues that we never could have known about. His mother did not pass her EKG in 2010 for Iditarod but at the time it was thought that it was due to the fact that she had been ill as she has passed it since. Perhaps Bodie had some sort of genetic disease or mutation which made him more susceptible or weak that he possible inherited. I do not know. All I know is that he was my dog and that I loved him dearly…
I think there are many lessons that as young mushers we must learn. Grief is one of these lessons and loss, of course, too. Knowing that these things happen does not make it easy. We all know that we will (hopefully) outlive our dogs but we love them anyway. We give our dogs our whole heart knowing full well that one day they will leave us.
I will never forget Bodie. I just wish I could have got to know him longer… As Dee Dee Jonrowe once said the only flaw with dogs is that they don’t live long enough…
On a positive note, everyone is feeling better. Today we had our first play day in awhile and it was clear the dogs were feeling good. I took comfort watching them run loose and play together. I couldn’t help but feel that even though I couldn’t see Bode that he was somehow still there, running wild…
Bode is remembered in our kennel by his parents, Joe & Mama B, and by his siblings, Teddy & Fergie. He is also remembered by the dog box we are building indoors as he was the first dog to test it out.
Rest in peace Bode and keep us safe on the trail…