Anyone who
has ever met Wesley has been touched by him.
In fact, it was so common for people to stop their cars on the street to
ask about him that it didn’t even seem strange to us anymore. At times we had talked about investing in a
set of autographed headshots for his many fans.
His unique appearance was certainly part of his charm. He has been compared to Master Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a skeksi
from The Dark Crystal, and Gandalf
from Lord of the Rings. One of our friends just called him Narnia.
But it was more than that. There
was something about his spirit, a certain gentleness in his eyes, that people
responded to in a way that didn’t often happen with other dogs. Or any other beings, really. No one has ever forgotten meeting Wesley.
Wesley
began his life as a wild Irish rogue.
This little lurcher grew up as a Pikey dog, traveling across Ireland in
a gypsy caravan. Sometimes he was tied
up to an old crate with a piece of wire, and the rest of the time he was racing
through traffic, eating out of trash cans, and hunting rabbits. His rescuers tried to catch him for six
months, but he was so fast that they finally had to break down and buy him from
the Pikeys so that they could treat his severe case of mange and take him to
America.
I fell in
love with Wesley from the moment I first saw him. He was still recovering from his mange and
had hardly any hair, but he was a handsome lad and so full of spirit. On our first meeting he sprinted around the
yard a few times, then ran right over to me for a belly rub. You could see that
he loved life and wanted to live every full minute of it. “Joyful” was always the first word that came
to mind when I thought of Wesley.
Wesley’s
introduction to his new home was not easy.
He had never spent a moment in his life alone, so his initial separation
anxiety was intense. The first two days he was with us he barked for hours,
tore up two dog beds, and pooped all over himself. I used to have to drive him to work with me
and just leave him in the car all day because the car was the one place he felt
relaxed and secure without me. Wesley stole food constantly, once snatching a
freshly-iced birthday cake right off the table, another time eating an entire
chicken carcass. I would regularly find
a combination of both treasure and trash hidden in his bed: empty cottage cheese containers, my
checkbook, a chewed-up Bluetooth, loaves of bread. Once he ate a whole package of flour tortillas
and didn’t poop for days. It was not
unusual to see Wesley scampering off with an open jar of peanut butter, or
standing on top of the piano with a package of hot dogs in his mouth.
In his
youth, Wesley was always up for a scrap. We were initially worried about this, but our
trainer assured us that Wesley wasn’t dog-aggressive, he was just “Irish
socialized.” As the trainer put it,
Wesley was basically running around the other dogs yelling, “Come on,
everybody! Let’s go blow some shit
up!” He was a known murderer of small
animals and even tried to kill our own cat early on before he learned to treat
her as one of the pack. Even as he
mellowed with age, he always carried a hint of the feisty rascal within.
Wesley
loved being part of the pack. He was
devoted to his first sister, Lupe. Then after my first husband and I separated,
Wesley and I moved into a duplex owned by the Dunmore-Hodge family, who
welcomed us both into their pack. Scott
Dunmore is a gifted dog trainer, and Wesley spent as much time upstairs in
their apartment as he did downstairs in mine.
On one occasion, Scott took a group of dogs out to try dock diving at a
nearby pond. Wesley was thrilled to tear
along the dock with the other dogs and leap off the end. However, as soon as he hit the water he gave
Scott a look of instant regret as if to say, “Wow, I did not expect this to be
so cold and wet.” Scott fished him out,
dried him off and warmed him up, and that was the end of Wesley’s dock-diving
career.
Wesley
loved every person he ever met, and he was famous for leaning his full weight
on you whenever you pet him. He
regularly hogged the couch and was not shy about putting his head in your lap
whether he knew your or not. He was
incredibly gentle and kind. I once caught a toddler trying to pluck out
Wesley’s eye as he lay patiently beside her.
He warmly and trustingly opened his home and heart to his new dad, his
loving uncles, and any number of foster dogs, friends, and houseguests. Wesley was a gracious host and a terrible
watchdog. One day I came home to find
the house burglarized and Welsey lounging comfortably on the couch. I have no doubt he had helpfully offered the
burglars a fresh pot of coffee as they were ransacking our belongings.
Sometimes
Wesley could be aloof and he would sit like a pharaoh receiving tribute when
you would come over to give him a cuddle.
One of the reasons we got a second dog was because I was worried that I
loved Wesley too much, and it didn’t always feel like he had the same devotion
to me. However, I was proven wrong in
that regard on the day he was attacked.
Wesley was in horrible pain, lying in a pool of his own blood, but as
soon as he heard me pick up his leash, he stood up and came to me. His wounds were so bad that I could not carry him, and so he slowly and painfully walked
himself down a flight of stairs, in and out of the car, and into the vet’s
office. Simply because I asked him
to. On my last visit with him
he stood up for me, ate from my hand, and shifted his body closer to me so he
could put his head in my lap. So while Wesley did not always carry his heart on his sleeve, no, I will never
again doubt the devotion he held for me. I will never again doubt that he loved me as
loyally and as fiercely as I loved him.
A friend
once told me, “All animals dream, but dogs are the only animals who dream of
us.” Wesley’s life was an eventful one,
and there were times over the past ten years that we were certain we were going
to lose him. He almost died of bloat in
2009, and last year a bad reaction to medication made us believe he was near
the end. However, he was always a
fighter and he fought fiercely each and every time so that he could come home
to us. His people. His pack.
We were always at the heart of Wesley’s dreams, and even in his last
days, his dearest dream was to live and live and live so that he could return home
to us.
Wesley had
the soul of a poet, the heart of a lion, and the iron will of Margaret
Thatcher. His gentleness, loyalty, and
incredible courage will be forever unmatched.
Sir Walter Scott described his own deerhound as “a most perfect creature
of Heaven,” and I can think of no more apt description for Wesley, my beloved
and dearest heart’s companion.
Complicated and flawed, yes, but perfect, nevertheless. No dog could be a greater blessing to his
people than Wesley was to us.
As human
beings we always want to learn things.
We want to come out of an experience feeling wiser, feeling
enriched. We always say that our dogs
teach us about things like loyalty and compassion and unconditional love, and
all of those things are true. But what
else did Wesley teach me? Wesley taught
me about courage. And grace. He taught me to believe. To fight fiercely
for what is dearest to your heart. But
Wesley also taught me that all things end.
That suffering is real, and unavoidable.
That our worst nightmares can and do come true. However, what I learned
most from Wesley is that suffering, pain, loss…none of that really matters.
Because everything that is worth doing will break your heart eventually, but
you do it anyway. Of course you do.
And that, I
think, is why dogs do dream of us.
Because dogs understand that we know
they will leave us, that they will devastate us, that they will break our
hearts, but they never doubt for a moment that we will love them even so.
And so it is in this spirit that I bid farewell to our Wesley, the most gentle, valiant, and gracious of creatures. The joyful, blessed treasure of my heart. Gypsy, thief, and soggy-bearded rogue. Dearest companion and cherished friend. Our pack will forever mourn your loss, beloved one. May we ever honor your memory. And when it is my turn to leave this earth, if our afterlife is truly a return to all those we have lost, I dream that it is you, precious one, who will come to lead me home.
And so it is in this spirit that I bid farewell to our Wesley, the most gentle, valiant, and gracious of creatures. The joyful, blessed treasure of my heart. Gypsy, thief, and soggy-bearded rogue. Dearest companion and cherished friend. Our pack will forever mourn your loss, beloved one. May we ever honor your memory. And when it is my turn to leave this earth, if our afterlife is truly a return to all those we have lost, I dream that it is you, precious one, who will come to lead me home.