I met Shadow the first time I went to Elaine’s house as we started dating. A barking dog of fifty pounds greeted me and it was clear she wanted to chase off this stranger to protect her mommy. For the most part dogs and cats like me and I have various stories of how I was told their pet would stay away only to have them unexpectedly make an appearance and sometimes even quickly accept me. But Shadow was a tougher nut to crack and I finally won her over by keeping a box of Iams doggy biscuits in my trunk and bringing her a treat every time I made an appearance at the front door. She would grab the biscuit and quickly retreat to munch it in a few seconds. The way to her heart was through her stomach.
Shadow demanded two daily walks and our routine was Elaine would walk her in the morning before work and I got the evening shift. The normal route was a 0.7-mile loop from our house to Renwood to Hollendale to Rose Bower to Marshall and back to Larriwood. It was a combination of her stopping over and over to smell whatever dogs like to smell and using all her strength to make us walk even faster. This stop-and-go was a good workout for us also and on most walks, we enjoyed it as much as her, except when the temperature dipped below freezing or thoughtless neighbors would not shovel their sidewalks.
Shadow did like the snow and she would come in after needing a backyard potty break with her black fur covered in white snow. The exception to her love of snow was the year we got two-and-half feet in February along with freezing temperatures that kept that pile around for weeks. The snow was deeper than her legs were long so I shoveled a path from the backyard patio to the back fence and then halfway down that fence. She didn’t quite get what I had done, so I had to put her on her leash and pull her down the path to get her familiar with it. After a week I felt sorry for her so I shoveled again to create a loop around the backyard. Shadow walked to her previous stopping point then turned around and came back. Again I had to put her on her leash and drag her around the entire loop to get her to understand. I wasn’t going to waste all that extra effort for nothing.
Like all dogs, Shadow didn’t like rabbits, squirrels, or any critter invading her territory. On one beautiful spring day, I discovered a rabbit nest in the backyard and found about eight babies, each about two inches long, and no mother in sight. Shadow tried to get close enough to eat the babies, but I sternly told her no and she complied. Each time she was left outside she would slowly circle the nest getting closer with each pass thinking she could get close enough before I could chase her off. But I would let her see the babies and sniff around, always careful to keep her far enough away. One day I laid on the grass on my back and put the babies on my chest so Shadow could get a closer look and smell for a few minutes and then returned them to the nest. Baby rabbits grow incredibly fast and after about two weeks they decided it was time to leave the nest and take off on their own. When Shadow saw them make a beeline for the back fence, she went crazy. All her little friends were leaving her behind. She went so far as to try to leap the back fence at its low point, getting painfully caught halfway over, and making me rescue her. For several days after she would patrol the backyard looking for her buddies she had come to love. The neighbors didn’t appreciate that we had more rabbits lurking about, but the hawks did.
Shadow’s morning walk during the workweek wasn’t a problem, but try sleeping in on the weekend and she would whine at the bedroom door. It started low and infrequent, building and building until you couldn’t ignore her. We always kept the bedroom shut and we figured out that the whining was partially due to her being closed out. So we started keeping the door open a few inches so she could see us and that delayed her “I need to go outside now” shining for maybe another half-hour, granting us some well-deserved minutes of slumber.
Shadow’s nickname was “fence-jumper” and I’m told when she was young she was quite the escape artist, clearing fences at ease. Elaine and her young sons, usually at the most inconvenient times, would drive around the neighborhood to fetch her back. I never experienced the “fence jumper”, but on a snowy day, I found out how devious she could be. I was shoveling the driveway and sidewalks and let Shadow join me, off leech, figuring I could keep an eye on her and stop her if she tried anything. At one moment she was sniffing through a snow pile and the next she was gone. Panic grew inside me that I would never be forgiven, particularly after I was warned, if she was gone for good. We looked all over the neighborhood to no avail. Then she came trotting up the sidewalk with what I swore was a big grin on her face, acting like she had done nothing wrong.
She did not like loud noises and between Elaine’s screaming at football games and my shouting “BOOM!” when my team hit a three-pointer, she wanted to get away. Shadow would make a beeline for the door and demand she be let out. She could bark as loud as she wanted, but the humans had a limit.
Shadow spent a lot of her final days in the basement. In retrospect, she probably wanted to be alone with her illness and that’s how she dealt with it. One day we found her at the bottom of the stairs having a seizure. I carried her up the stairs knowing the end was near. Not wanting her pain to linger, we had her put down. The crying goes away, but are memories of her are forever.
