Love Once More
My stomach knotted and ached. I could barely drag myself out of bed, and I had to change the tear-soaked pillow daily. I wanted to hide in sleep and pretend she was there beside me, her black muzzle resting on my shoulder and her deep breaths a rhythmic lullaby. In the space of an instant, my search and rescue partner, my beautiful German shepherd, was gone, hit by a motorcycle.
Tears dripped onto my keyboard as I read this email: “You have our deepest sympathy over the loss of your dog. However, you must realize this puts the team in a difficult situation. We were counting on Clara for the national Top Off drill in a few weeks. Please let us know how you are going to resolve this problem. We will work at this end to fill the roster.”
Didn’t they understand? I’d lost more than just a dog! Clara wasn’t a tool or commodity to be replaced with a quick phone call. Clara had understood me as no dog ever had. She cuddled when I needed it or hit a scent at a thousand yards and barreled away to find the person who had her toy, sure of my location and response to her actions. I had lost my best friend and these people were worried about a stupid training exercise.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand and called Clara’s breeder, Julie.
“Hey you, how you holding up?” Julie’s cheerful sympathy set off another round of tears.
“Not so well. If I want to stay on the state team, I have to come up with a dog—immediately. An adult, mostly trained.” Tears choked my voice.
“What did you have in mind? Do you want to look at the adults I have here? I don’t think any of them are really what you want, but you’re welcome to look and test them and take anything you think will work.” Trust Julie and her generous heart. Those German shepherds were her livelihood and yet she had just given me carte blanche to take what I needed.
“Actually, I need your opinion and maybe a phone number.” I grabbed a tissue. “At the International Kennel Club dog show, a couple approached us about a male German shepherd they wanted to sell to a working home. Ula was the mother and Zillo was the father, so with that bloodline he must be a pretty intense working dog. And he had to come from your kennel.”
“What’s his name?”
“Lektor. What do you know about him?”
There was a slight pause. It sounded like Julie sniffled too. “You would be perfect for each other. I think it would be the saving of you both.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem. He’s a very high-drive, working-line male with nothing to do. They wanted the best training for a working dog, so they sent him to Germany to train in tracking, obedience, and protection. He earned his Schutzhund I title and a bunch of others before he was shipped home. The Germans were so impressed they didn’t want to send him back. His current owners don’t have time to work him. He’s two and a half, six months younger than Clara, and still able to bond to a human.”
“Yeah, but is this human able to bond to a new dog right now?”
Julie didn’t attempt to answer that one.
Four days later Lektor arrived at my door. The entire search team, past and present members, were enclosing my side yard with a six-foot chain-link fence. The place resembled O’Hare Airport with all the people coming and going, motors running, and heavy tools getting tossed from person to person. Anyone not digging postholes or stringing fence crowded into my tiny kitchen, cooking for the team members working outside.
A handsome couple got out of a pickup truck and the husband reached into the dog crate in the back. A huge black sable shepherd exploded out of the truck, instantly hitting the end of an eight-foot leash. The man demonstrated the dog’s obedience. The dog reminded me of a caged lion, waiting to unleash mayhem.
I turned to my husband, more than a little intimidated by the dog. “Do you think I can handle him?”
He smiled and hugged me. “You’re probably the only person on the team who can. Write them a check.”
I still had my reservations. I invited them inside and watched the reaction of Lektor to my other dogs. First came blind Taz. At ten, an inoperable brain tumor had stolen her sight and gradually her fat reserves. But she still ran the place as alpha dog, and this would be the biggest test Lektor would face. If there was a problem, he would not be staying.
Lektor had a good thirty pounds on Taz and moved like lightning to her arthritic molasses. She cornered him coming through the door, pinned him to the wall, sniffed him all over, and nudged him around like a mother would her puppy. Lektor dropped his head lower than hers and moved wherever she wanted him. Fully capable of slicing her to pieces, he gently acknowledged her as queen.
Next came our four-year-old Afghan hound, Crunch. Since we just lost Clara, Crunch had nibbled at his food and lay on the sofa with his head hanging over the arm. The two dogs had been playmates and he clearly missed her. Lektor and Crunch sniffed noses and ignored each other.
Lektor lay down in the dining room while people hurried back and forth, stepping over his prone form. One of the handlers had brought her five-year-old daughter. Every inch of her little body indicated boredom. She motored over to Lektor and pulled his ear before I could intervene. He ignored her.
I turned to his owners. “How is he with children?”
They both smiled. They’d seen the interaction between the girl and Lektor and had confidently ignored it. “He’s great with kids. Our daughter used him as her 4-H project. No problem.”
Their confidence relaxed my concerns, and I watched the interaction between dog and child without interfering. The girl found the dog toy basket and tossed the dog an old tug. He snatched it out of the air without rising from the down position and snapped his powerful jaws shut. She laughed and hurried over to him. Grabbing the tug handle, she pulled. Lektor held on. That brought giggles and a smile. Grabbing with both hands, she leaned her entire weight into pulling on the tug. Lektor held on and didn’t move, holding her with just his powerful neck muscles.
Shifting position, the child stuck one hand in the gap the tug created between his teeth. Lektor immediately opened up, working his tongue to get the human appendage out of his mouth. She took away the toy. He waited, watching the tug intently but holding his down position. The little girl smiled, tossed it back, and played tug, using the method of her hand shoved into the dog’s mouth to get him to release the toy. His gentleness with the little girl relieved my misgivings. After all, in search and rescue we’re supposed to bring them back alive, not slightly gnawed.
I took a deep breath. Time to find out what this living keg of gunpowder would cost. They showed me the receipts for his training in Germany—over $10,000 worth, and that did not include his purchase price. They had an offer from a celebrity looking for a guard dog to patrol his estate, but Lektor would be a kennel dog without serious human contact and they wanted a home life for him. They liked seeing my dogs comfortably enthroned on the couch. They wanted that for Lektor. They also knew he needed to work, and I would be using him for search and rescue. They had discussed it, and he was mine for $4,000. I wrote the check. They hugged Lektor and left.
I always trained my dogs at sunrise. Lektor obviously had been worked in the evenings. That first morning he yawned, stretched, and looked at me like he had a hangover. I grabbed a tug and he did the Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde switch. Eyes alert and focused intently, he tried to steal the toy from my hand, bouncing his hundred-plus pounds off my hip repeatedly. I struggled to keep my balance and hold on to the toy.
First things first: would he obey me? A deer took off from my orchard, and Lektor launched straight for the road, hot on its heels. Visions of Clara’s body and sightless eyes slammed into my mind. I screamed Lektor’s name over and over. He ignored me and disappeared out of sight through the trees.
I collapsed in a ball on the ground, sobbing. I waited to hear the screech of tires and deadly thump that would herald his death. Silence, then heavy breathing, and a large tongue slurped my neck. I sat up hugging his mud-slimed, burr-coated body. He went to work cleaning my face with a tongue that could lick the cheese from a large pizza in two swipes. Obviously, we needed to work on control.
Lektor’s obedience training must have been done with force. I found a ridge of scar tissue on his neck telling me just how much force had been used. If I did a recall and told him to down before he got to me, he would lay back his ears, duck his head, and crawl to reach me, every muscle tensed in anticipation of the pain from a correction. We needed to start over.
Using boiled beef liver, we worked on the obedience. Speaking softly to force him to concentrate, I switched commands to English when the German word he’d been trained with brought out a stress reaction. Within a few days, the jingle of the obedience collar brought him dancing and excited to my side, ready for playtime.
I still missed Clara horribly, and on more than one morning I rolled over, crying uncontrollably. I didn’t want to care about Lektor. Losing Clara was a raw, bleeding wound, and there wasn’t room for a dog. But having learned training came in the morning, Lektor came to get me as soon as the sky started to lighten. He would jump up, landing with his bony elbows digging into my chest while dropping his slobber-covered ball on my face. He took away the option of staying in bed and dragged me back from the abyss. It was get up or have tears licked away.
One morning before dawn, Lektor came to get me. No ball. No friendly jump up. Instead I got a loud whine and strong, almost painful shoves with his nose. I’d spent enough time with shepherds to know trouble hovered nearby.
I jumped out of bed. “What is it?”
Lektor hurried away, looking over his shoulder and moving forward as soon as I started to follow. He took me straight to Taz, who was in the throes of a grand mal seizure. I stroked her until the seizure stopped but another followed almost immediately.
I yanked jeans and a sweatshirt on over my nightgown, kicked into loafers, and grabbed my purse. At a break between seizures, I coaxed Taz into my SUV and rushed to the emergency vet. The tumor had grown more, and it was time to say good-bye. I held her in my arms as they gave her the shot, and she slipped away. In the space of five weeks I’d lost both my canine partners. They had been almost as close to me as children and certainly had been my best friends. It was all up to Lektor now. Like it or not, it was time for me to accept and love him.
I had signed up to take Clara to a disaster search training seminar in Connecticut along with two other team members. I called and they switched Lektor in for Clara.
Lektor sat quietly in hectic O’Hare Airport. He ignored everyone and everything in the crowded hallways. People had one of two reactions—a gushing “Can I pet your dog?” or a face-blanching, hug-the-wall move to get around him.
We started down the Jetway and Lektor’s relaxed stroll morphed into a muscle-tensed, crouching stalk. He leaned hard against my leg and glanced around with swift movements. The smell of aviation fuel must have triggered memories of his flights to and from Germany. On board, I murmured soothing phrases and slipped into my seat. Lektor crawled into my lap and buried his head in my neck. My teammate across the aisle laughed uproariously and threatened to dig out his camera. All he could see were my legs and head sticking out around my huge dog. I coaxed Lektor onto the floor where he lay, panting heavily.
A man got on the plane and turned to the flight attendant. “I’m not sitting next to that dog.”
“Not a problem, sir.” The attendant picked up the microphone. “Would anyone like to switch seats and sit next to a search and rescue dog?” A sea of hands filled the air, and a teenage girl climbed in next to us. The third man in the row had a son working as a canine officer. He stretched out, tipped his seat back, and went to sleep. Lektor used the man’s ankles as a pillow. By the time we reached LaGuardia, dog and man snored in unison.
The first night in the hotel room, Lektor stood guard at the door. Anyone passing along the walkway hurried their steps after he rumbled a deep-chested growl. The morning found us both exhausted from a restless night.
———
On an obstacle course, Lektor slipped, banging both his knees. At first he refused to put his weight on one leg, eventually standing on it but obviously uncomfortable. I was crying. After class, my teammates and I visited a couple of attendees who had a car full of first aid gear. They handed me an ice pack for Lektor along with some sage advice: “Get over it. SAR dogs get hurt and heal.”
I applied ice to Lektor’s knee while he relaxed on his side. A teammate explained the situation to the others and they left me alone. I sat on the sidewalk with my dog, letting conversation flow around me in unheard words. I’m not sure how much later Lektor and I staggered up to our room and collapsed on the bed. We fell asleep next to each other while I held an ice pack on his injuries and he snored in my ear.
From that day on, Lektor was mine and I was his. Wherever I sent him, he went without hesitation. I refused searches that put his life at risk. His obedience and tracking improved to the point where he earned his Schutzhund III title, and he once tracked a potential suicide victim across paved parking lots and roads in the pouring rain.
Lektor is my current partner along with Belle, a niece of Clara’s. At nine he is still a showstopper and my go-to boy. I think we’ve had close to fifty search assignments, mostly deep wilderness, and he’s always delivered everything he had to give. He recently fathered a new litter of puppies, and I’m taking a son of his named Kobalt to train. One thing is sure, this boy won’t be the same as Taz or Clara or Lektor or Belle. But who would want that? I’ve learned there will always be room in my heart for one more four-footed friend.
Lektor came to me when sorrow was a lead weight sinking me into darkness, a pit I didn’t want to climb out of. There was no fight left in me, a fighter since I was knit in my mother’s womb. God sent a hundred-pound, four-footed angel to drag me back to the world of the living, to a world where I could make a difference. In doing so, he opened a path of joy and peace for both of us.