Gotcha Day for Curtis Loew

I let Curtis run on this first real snow of the winter. He loves snow and cold and he loves nothing better than to run. When he’d been gone for about an hour I set out after him with the Marco Polo tracker. I knew about where to start because I’d been with him when he picked up a coon trail, ever his favorite. So I headed west, out the old orchard, and in the direction I’d last heard him bark. No dice. The signal said he’d gone southwest. So out the meadow I walked, snow clinging to my boots with that crunching tramp I’d had yet to hear this winter. 

Man, he was a long way off. I heard him bark, and plunged down into the west valley. He was clear over on the other side of the Chute! I called, and the tracker sent a little ping to let him know where I was, and before too long he appeared on the slope above me. He wove through the trees and was so happy to see me. Not as happy as I was to see him!

We found a deer bed.

And an old cast iron bathtub, on our land, one I’d never known was there! It shows up a lot better in snow. For those who wonder (and I do, all the time), farmers use them to water cattle. They place them in a natural spring and let the spring keep them filled.

Bonus score. I now own an old rusty bathtub, and I can tell you it’s staying right there. I wondered who lived in it, but didn’t feel strong enough to tip it up and see. 

Since we were sort of in the vicinity, I decided to show Curtis the Chute. The Chute used to be where I went when I needed a destination. It took me about a half hour to get there, tramping quickly through the woods on trails I maintained with a clippers. Chet Baker and I went there all the time. 

In fact, in my very first blogpost, which I think was called Chet Likes Ice, back in December 2005, I told about how that pup skibbled  up and down this watercourse with a huge grin on his face, like it was no big thing to race up and slide back down a slick icy creek bed. That’s the kind of dog he was.

Curtis is not that kind of dog. He doesn’t do a lot of things just to be silly. He is a more serious kind of guy. He is all about independence and freedom and exploration, about hunting and then finding his way back home to keep me company in the most marvelous way. 

He’s the kind of dog you have to let go, so he will come back.

To see this magnificent dog, my Curtis Loew, in the Chute for the first time was a wonderful and wondrous thing. To look up the stream that feeds it

And down the path where Chet and I used to walk, now completely obstructed by fallen beeches, was incredibly moving to me. Could he know what it meant to me? This is where I hiked with my babies in backpacks, and later with the Boston terrier who made me a dog lover for life. 

I think he knew. He stuck to me like a tick the whole time, when he could just as easily have gone off on another toot.

I’m writing this in honor of Curtis Loew’s Gotcha Day, which is February 19, 2019. What all my family was enduring at that time I cannot and will not even describe. Adopting Curtis was the best decision I could possibly have made, for all concerned. How I connected with this dog, first through a chance viewing of his photo in my friend Kelly’s ( @ballabing) Instagram post; how an arrow pierced my heart when I saw his face; how I thought about him the entire time I was at Klamath Falls, Oregon; how I decided in Medford’s tiny airport that I had to adopt him, and then how I stayed overnight at Kelly’s home in Columbus just so I could meet him the next day... it still melts me just to think about that chain of events.

And how that dog connected with everyone who needed him, how he guided us through the darkest woods anyone can walk with the sweet light of his love...he saved US. All I had to do was say yes, please open that stainless steel door, and let that brindle one out. I want to meet him.

I led Curtis up out of the Chute and he kept looking over his shoulder to the northeast, toward home. No, sweetheart. Follow me. I want to take you somewhere else.

He fell into place beside me and I took him to the Overlook, where I had stood so many times with little Chet. We gazed out at the view, which is different, and still the same.

Here, the coyotes had milled around, greeted each other, and undoubtedly howled in the night. Oh, he was all afire investigating their news.

Here I used to come when I needed to clear my head. Now the paths I so carefully cut are all grown to briars and crossed by tree fall after tree fall. It is hard to get here now.

That makes me sad. But it made me happy to know the way like the back of my hand, even when I had to detour for hundreds of yards. I know these woods.

And it made me so very happy to have a fine dog at my side to hug and talk to, a dog who cares about me and loves nothing more than to see me happy.

In one of my tree fall workarounds, I slipped and fell deep in the forest. Unbeknownst to me, my iPhone 6 bounced out of my pocket and into the snow. I didn’t discover it until we got home. I explained to Curtis that we had to retrace our steps until we found the place I’d fallen, because I knew that was where the phone would be. Thank God for snow! I could follow my steps exactly, looking the whole way for the little slot in the snow I knew that phone would have made. 

And there, 3/4 mile back, was the big floofmark where I’d gone down, and the little rectangular slot off to the left that the phone made when it landed. I laughed out loud to see the phone standing pertly upright in the snow, waiting for me exactly where I knew it would be. I hugged Curt and thanked him for coming back with me to find it. He danced and his eyes sparkled, and we loped even faster toward home.

Back up the meadow, to the red house with the red garage.

Back to the place that feels like home, because of who lives there with me. 

I don’t know that there’s anyone who could have helped me through this ongoing labyrinth of grief the way Curtis has helped me. And, seeing him coursing through snowy woods, I don’t think there’s anyone who could have given him just exactly what he needed, exactly when he needed it, either. Some things were meant to be, some souls were meant to meet and be together, as long as Fate allows. And Fate has allowed a great deal here.

Curtis, finest of brindle curs, thank you for gracing all our lives with your wise, warm, mellow presence. Thank you for, under all the loving, still being the purely wild thing you are, for knowing the ways of the woods and of wild animals, for perfectly embodying whom I most want to be, in canine form. You truly are my spirit animal.

No thanks for being skunked three times in 8 months. No thanks for thinking that getting sprayed is perfectly worth it, because next time you’re gonna grab that little animal just right, before he sprays. You big dummy. You’re the smartest dumb dog I’ve ever known. And the best. Happy Gotcha Day, dear Curtis Loew. Let’s have many, many more.