Remembering Tiah

by Ilene L. Railton

Tiah was my very first dog. Actually, she was the first dog I had a chance to fall in love with. When I was seven, my father brought home a puppy one night, as a surprise early birthday present. He had the little dog tucked inside his coat. I don't think I had ever seen anything so adorable. One of the few pictures I have from my childhood is of me, in a long bathrobe, cradling Blackie in my arms. I have a very serious expression on my face, as if I was realizing that loving an animal was an important job. About a month later, I came home from school to find that my mother had given Blackie to the milkman. She said she was tired of getting up in the morning to let the puppy out.

I guess you could say that I waited 31 years to get Blackie back. Only this time the puppy was a female husky-lab mix, with lovely black and white markings that bespoke her Arctic heritage, and floppy ears that were a tribute to her lab mother. She was a beautiful dog, but I often thought that if her ears would stand up she would be perfect. I named her Tiah, from a place on Martha's Vineyard named Tiah's Cove. That little girl in the bathrobe, holding the puppy, was now a mother of two, but still took life a bit too seriously. I was a phobic adult, afraid to do many things by myself, such as walking in the woods, or driving long distances in the car. Tiah changed all that.

Tiah graced us with her presence for twelve years. During that time she taught me how to enjoy life. When she was a puppy, I would take her for morning and evening walks in the neighborhood, not straying too far from home. Gradually, with Tiah eagerly walking a bit in front (she was a sled dog in another life, I am certain), we walked further from home. By the time she was about 6 months old we had found a wonderful four mile loop that we walked every morning, often in the dark, enjoying the sounds and smells in a time that belonged to us. When my son and I started running together, Tiah became our running partner. We never had her on the leash on those mornings, because she stayed close to us, and the streets were empty. My favorite memories of those years are of the mornings when it had snowed the night before, and Tiah ran through the neighborhoods with her nose down, joyous in the cold.

Driving the car continued to be a terrifying experience for me. My job had changed, and now included presentations to parent groups in other parts of the state. On my first trip across the mountains to a business about an hour and a half away, I decided to take Tiah with me. Somehow driving with her in the backseat made it all possible. She had her head out the window, enjoying the brisk air, and this trip that I had dreaded became an adventure. When we arrived at our destination we were early, so I took her for a walk through the town, and thanked her for helping me make it through another level of fear. I didn't always take her with me after that, but she was there, in the backseat, smiling at me in the rear view mirror.

Right up until the weekend before she died, Tiah remained healthy. Yes, once when she was about 8, she tore the ligaments in one of her legs and had to have surgery. But she came back from that injury and had many more years of running through the snow. And she did go blind about six months before she died, but even that didn't seem to rob her of her joy. Then one weekend in May 1998 she looked very weak and sick, and when we took her to the vet he thought it might be cancer, although the x-rays were not conclusive. We could have chosen to do more invasive kinds of tests, but we really just wanted to take her home. She had a good day, followed by a bad day through the next week. I remember that on Thursday morning she seemed to feel very poorly again, and had to be coaxed to come out with me on a short morning walk. Then she came home and jumped up on the old couch on the back porch, with a low moan. I went to work, thinking that I would come home at lunch to check on her.

That morning at work a strange thing happened. I was in a staff meeting that regularly occurred on Thursday mornings, when I just lost it. I felt very anxious, almost panicked, and started shouting at a couple of my coworkers. The meeting ended and I decided to go home before lunch, embarrassed about my uncharacteristic outburst. When I walked into the living room I could see Tiah lying on the back porch floor. At first glance I really did think she was sleeping, but as I walked towards her, I realized her mouth and eyes were open, and that she was dead. She must have died at that moment when I felt the panic. I lay down beside her and stroked her beautiful coat. Her ears were standing absolutely straight.