Losing Baxter

Baxter and Fundy

Our house feels empty today.  Baxter, our magnificent fifteen year old Australian Shepherd, died yesterday. We've known that this day was coming - but still the grief is deep. Without thinking, my eyes drop down to the spots where he would always lay and when I'm in another room, I hear him stirring.

Amazing how enormous the love of an animal can be. There's such a beautiful trust and joy to it.  I treasure the moments, the trips, the laughs we had together.  He always had a great smile and a sweet way of being in the world. He was a well traveled dog - tallying up trips with us through forty-one states and six Canadian provinces. Whenever we'd arrive at our destination after many days of driving, we'd notice he wasn't around and find him back in the car, curled up in the back seat and ready to go again.

He came to us when he was nine months old. We were his third family and already had Fundy. The two dogs were six weeks apart in age and became great friends -- except for some food aggression -- requiring dinner to always be eaten in two separate rooms. They worked everything else out without our help and rollicked through life until Fundy died two and half years ago and broke our hearts.  And now it's happening again.

It's the end of an adventurous era with our Aussies. We went through our days, our clothes, our chairs, and the insides of our cars covered with dog hair. Because of them, we took long walks in the foulest of weather, searched out deserted Nova Scotia beaches where they could run, met all kinds of interesting people who stopped us on our walks, delved into homeopathy, and abandoned cross-country skiing and discovered snow shoeing because it's something you can do with dogs in the snow.

I miss their beautiful souls, the sweet smell of them, and their call to adventure. They'll  be with me always.

And one more thing, one more legacy from Baxter.  Because he grieved so deeply, and looked like he was giving up on life after Fundy died, we adopted Louie - out little corgi/cairn terrier imp.  After Louie came, Baxter regained his love of life, and in the end, relied on Louie's bark when he couldn't hear us call.  So we haven't given our clothes brushes away because now we're  covered in wirey dog hair and love.

Will we get another dog?  We don't know.  That's the thing about life, you never really know.