When she howls, we all howl

I always wanted a wolf. Or at least a dog that looked like one. When I was denied owning a wolf-dog for practical reasons of living on a ranch, I decided to morph into one in protest, alternating my persona from dog to horse, depending on my mood. To my old man, all dogs over 20 lbs were predators, but eventually he conceded and we brought home a tiny toy poodle puppy who grew into the dreadlocked and sticker filled love of my and my mother’s life.

I believe my father was appeased in his belief that toy poodles can’t kill a calf, don’t shed fur, and arguably make the best nannies and pup-siblings to wayward girls who howl at the moon and demand their meals from the floor. Indeed, despite her tiny size and totally impractical hair situation, she was a formidable opponent to stunned cottontails and tree branches that brushed into an open truck window, but held up poorly against angry hens, cow mommas, and pollen. She was the queen of the ranch and thrived for almost 20 years.

Cindy was my sister, a best friend, a perfect poodle in every way. But she wasn’t a wolf, and it took years before I could even teach her to do a half-decent howl with me. I loved her nonetheless and stopped biting people’s ankles.

In the back room of my grandparents’ ranch house, which was only inhabited at Christmas, they had a bookshelf filled with a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannicas, large and leather bound. My nana was an RN, and my grandpa was a WWII Veteran who studied to become an educator through Nana’s coaxing and the GI Bill. I spent hours every day with them, immersed in the soapy smells of their hugs, with such love and adoration the memory brings me to tears to this day.

That back room held many curiosities, including the miniature horse collection of an uncle I’d never met whose little black and white paint pony taunted me from a shelf that I was forbidden from touching. Where walls of black and white wives and husbands looked down at me blankly and shelves of photo albums collected dust in a corner obstructed by a piano no one played anymore. In that room of cowhide rugs that always itched my legs, where the jaws of a cavernous fireplace gawked menacingly at me, smelling of a faint sweetness from the ancient beehive thriving in the hollows of its chimney, I poured over two books, D for dog and H for horse, and learned words like Palamino, German Shepherd, Appaloosa, and Husky.

The back room was also the home of my beloved Nana’s salt and pepper shaker collection – a set for every holiday that we ceremoniously chose together; of her icelike figurines from a time when she blew glass, and her hundreds of rosaries from around the world that hung from a bald juniper branch in the corner of the ceiling. It was where she let me touch the aging cloth of a red silk slip, lace hankies and small delicate gloves and showed me a secret drawer full of old perfume bottles and a menagerie of lipsticks I’d never seen her wear on the ranch, held in a tin decorated with Rubanesque angels that I keep close to me to this day.

In this room I held the artifacts of a woman’s life. In this room I discovered a sliver of who my grandmother was before becoming a wife, mother, grandmother. In this room I taught myself the names of animals I idolized and gained my first inkling into the mysteries and complexities of womanhood. Even as I held a fragile glass poodle Nana created from breath and fire in a world long before me, I learned to spend more time on two feet, to make good grades, and eventually add my photo to the wall of silver frames.

Some 30 years later, I am the mother of a little dog-girl, cat-girl, horse-girl, depending on her mood. Covered in paint and poorly applied red lipstick she drags me outside to howl at the moon, to gallop along the river, to whisper love poems to the bees.

So in one of my more rebellious moments, I broke my father’s cowboy code and I took her to the animal shelter to choose any dog she wanted, knowing in my heart whichever baby she chose would be the one to guide her wildness as they grew together, who would protect her from dangers only a dog can sense, and who would run and howl with her until his last breath.

She chose a wolf.

In honesty he’s turned out to be a completely deaf husky, shepard, mix of unknown but potentially coyote origin who will never learn to howl because of his disability and thinks he’s the size of a cat. But you know what, in no era of my life could I have dreamed up a better wolf for my pack. He is perfect for us because of, not despite his disability, and I know he will spend every beautiful year he has on this earth being my baby girl’s companion, guardian, and best friend, and between him and me, she will, God willing, never stop howling at the moon.