dogs were sent me: the coming of xena

 
When Joe Moneyas showed up at my house in 1996 with a tiny, sickly puppy, I told him in no uncertain terms that I did not need a dog, a dog was the last thing I needed, I needed a dog like a hole in the head.
​ 
​I had taken a job on reserve while my husband remained in the city, I was single-parenting my three children, and by two months into a teaching contract I couldn’t get out of, I had realized that I was in way over my head.
 
I kept the dog, of course, a worm-ridden, starving pup who, at just three weeks old, had lost its mother to a speeding, swerving truck. My sons named her Xena, “the stranger” and we fed her milk from an eye dropper and let her sleep in Mommy’s bed.
​

My sons named her Xena, the Stranger, 1996

I thought I didn’t need a dog the day she came, but I was wrong in Spades.

Sometimes, gifts are sent to us that we don’t even know we need. And when I think back now to the many years that followed—hard, painful, disappointing years—I see that the only real friend I could count on for most of them was Xena.
 
She sat with me in my loneliness, guarded me in my terror. She gave hours of quiet company as I worked into many a late night; companionship and stress relief on our long walks down gravel roads and up the trail to the Ferry Landing. With her quizzical expressions, crazy antics and boundless energy, she made me laugh a million times. She loved to swim in the Big Lake and to haul around gigantic logs that were many times her size.
 
Though she looked more like a Border Collie than like her Rottweiler mother, she was a tenacious fighter, surviving several attacks by packs of reservation dogs, all of whom towered above her.

Fisher and Xena, 2007

​She taught me about dogs and she taught me about people too, myself especially. I threw myself into those pack fights without hesitation, kicking and punching, willing to be torn to pieces for Xena.
 
Until she came, I did not know that I was the kind of woman who would literally face death with a big "F you," just for the sake of my friend.
 
The great Irish hero, Cuchulainn, was called The King’s Dog because of his undying loyalty and fierce fighting skills. I think dogs epitomize loyalty, not just because of their unswerving commitment to us, but also because of its reciprocal nature—they inspire us to return that loyalty in kind.
 
She knew when I was hurting, my Xena, sometimes even before I knew it myself. When I wept, she would stay close, often touching me with her nose, showing care and attention. It makes sense that she could figure out what crying meant since dogs howl and kiyike when physically injured and distressed.
 
But once, a woman came to my house who was not my friend and said some very unkind things to me in a completely normal tone of voice. Trying to fake not caring, I sat very calmly, matching her pleasant tone. I felt a light touch on the outside of my knee and, looking down, there was Xena, gazing up at me with rapt attention and deep understanding. It seemed she did actually sense my inner turmoil, even without any visible body language cues.
 
After our first year at Hollow Water, Xena and I were often joined on our walks by three, four, or five other of the roving, mongrel dogs. A man once told me that the reason I was never bothered by bears or wolves on all those long walks on deserted roads was probably because we all were perceived by watchful eyes as a pack, the dogs and I together.
 
In the ten years I lived at Hollow Water, I grew to know and love so many of those mongrel dogs, and they me. And their lives and hardships were often heavy on my heart.

Their lives and hardships were heavy on my heart

Sitting together after a sweatlodge once, an elder named Brightnose answered my question about how to help the dogs. He nodded and said, “You know, before our people were horse people, we were dog people.”
 
And then he told a story about how, when the People were in a time of great crisis, dogs were sent to them by Creator as a gift. And dogs worked with them, dragging heavy loads and assisting in the hunt, dogs loved them and protected them, and brought them healing.

“That’s the dog’s job,” he said. “To heal the People.”
 
But he said the People have forgotten that now, and they don’t treat dogs right or feed them or take care of them. And they don’t allow dogs the honour of healing them anymore, they don't let them do their job. And that is one reason why the People struggle. Because they have forgotten Creator’s great gift, the dog. 

It’s interesting how spirit teachings often align with science. I read a National Geographic article on the evolution of dogs and it said that, although most animal species emerge gradually over many thousands of years in a certain place on the globe, the archaeological evidence seems to show that dogs emerged, and merged their lives with ours, in multiple sites on many continents at around the same time, ten to twelve thousand years ago.
 
Almost like they were just set down there, I thought, by some compassionate, unseen hand.

Set down by a compassionate, unseen hand

​Many years have passed now since Hollow Water.
 
Sixteen years after Xena came to me, I sat with her on the floor of a vet’s clinic on a red-checked picnic blanket at the end of her life. I told her that she was a good dog and that she had done her job.

“Xena, I wonder if you have any way of knowing,” I choked through my tears, “how much I love you.”
 
And she gazed back at me, that look of complete adoration in her eyes, as if to say, “Mom, I wonder if you have any way of knowing how much I love you.” Then she lay down her pretty head on her delicate paws and went to sleep.
 
The poem still kills me, The Rainbow Bridge. It says when dogs leave this world, they go to a beautiful meadow beside a rainbow bridge and for countless happy hours, they play and frolic with the other dogs there. Then, one day a dog cocks their head, looking down the road afar, and runs with joyous abandon to greet the person coming to them there.
 
I see now that dogs have always come to me. In almost every photo from my childhood, you will see a dog. There was Pepper and Lady and Snowball, and then Sich and Sir and Hamish. Then the dogs of Hollow Water and all the others down through the years.
 
I have always been a dog person.

Fisher Lavell with Lady's puppies, 1972

I live again now on the edge of my small town, and down the yard is a space I call Xena’s Rest, a peaceful grove where my old dogs are laid.
 
My Xena, of course, beneath a young poplar tree. Then Sasha, a beloved though troubled old German Shepherd dog. And then, beautiful Dagger, a huge Malamute husky whose grandmother was a wolf. Brave and strong and true to the end. They lived to be old, old dogs, every one.
 
And that is where, long years from now, my other dogs will lie, including the two snoozing under the camper here as I write these words, Crazy Ed the boxer and Shy Maggie, the big black I got from the Rescue.
 
I was never big on the standard concept of Heaven: a dry, ancient city, streets paved with gold, a mansion of my own. Raised a barefoot country child, I wondered, how would I be happy there? No poplar trees, no crows or dandelions or dirt roads, no dogs.

But the great evangelist Billy Graham once said, “God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he’ll be there.”
 
So perhaps, in time, I will cross that bridge and find my dogs awaiting me there. My God, what a glorious pack we’ll make.

Xena forever