Too Soon

     He was magnificent. Big, beautiful, bold, and ball crazy.  He answered the call through cold and wet and muck and mountain laurel and dark.  He was able to bring two people home in his career. And he was only 8 years old when it all came to a crashing end.

     He was not the most social of dogs, Chessie’s rarely are. They like their person and not much else. He liked to wreak havoc in his world.  Stirring up trouble everywhere he could, mainly because he was bored when he wasn’t searching. So when not searching, he appointed himself the job title of “pot stirrer”.  He had his job, and get out his way when he was working. Self-appointed job or out in the search field.

     He ended up with his handler (who was a pointy eared dog lover from way back) after basically being dropped on her door step as a puppy.  He was suffering from puppy strangles and looked like he was at deaths door. His face and muzzle swollen to two or three times its normal size.  Gobs of green pus rolling out of his eyes.  And skin lesions everywhere. A little prednisone, some antibiotics, and a tincture of time, viola, a Malinois in a floppy eared body.

     He was a thing of beauty when he was in his search harness. He cleared logs with wings on his feet; crashed through underbrush, ripping hide from his side with nary a sound; climbed mountains with springs in his legs; and danced across rubble like it was a ballroom. All the while not so patiently waiting for his handler to catch up with him. But that’s the case for most of our search dogs.

     His career was cut short by a horrible disease called Degenerative Myopathy. It is a disease that is as cruel as it is devastating. His mind still sharp, but his rear end quit working. He was supposed to be able to retire when it was time and enjoy a well-earned rest.  But, maybe, just maybe, that would have been shear torture for him, not being able to work.

    

     It was a beautiful sunny and cool morning. We followed an easy path, one that wouldn’t tie up his barely functioning rear legs in knots.  Put his harness on, with the bell. And he changed from an old tired dog that didn’t understand what was happening to his body into one that we remembered from before.  His nose in the air seeking that scent, ranging far and an extra spring in his step that we hadn’t seen in a long time.

     He found his last person, then left us in the arms of his handler, crunching on his favorite ball and talking smack.

     There will never be another one quite like him. 

Uzi, you son of a bitch, you will be missed.