My first loyalty was to the two wonderful senior dogs that had been living with us for over fifteen years. Certainly no dog or puppy no matter how perfect could ever take their place.
Brandy passed away just before his seventeenth birthday. My heart ached and burned. He’d been my beloved (if often bohemian) friend for so many years. It was months before I could even consider inviting another dog to come live with us.
But finally spring and renewed hope arrived. In reading a dog magazine I came across the name of a breeder of Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers. I hesitated. Would calling that breeder and inquiring about a pup be disloyal to Brandy’s memory? It took a lot of soul searching until I finally decided Bran, with his love of life, would want me, while keeping him safely in my heart, to get on with mine.
Later that summer my very first actually selected dog arrived. Harbourlights Highland Chance was beautiful, vivacious, clever and gregarious. Here, at last, was the dog of my dreams.
Two years later Jet, who had never fully gotten over the death of his life-long beagle companion, passed away. As a result of this sad event, there was room in our home for another dog. Pleased with Chance, I called her breeder for yet another NSDTR, but this time I was looking for a mature dog. Chance, a lovely dog in maturity, had been a hell raiser as a pup as she attempted to devour the toes of every family member.
The dog the breeder sent this time was Chance’s half-sister, a lovely three-year-old named Ceilidh that had been returned to her birth kennel when her owner, a naval officer, had gone back to sea. She’d been obedience trained, housebroken, and seemed absolutely perfect. Except for one outstanding problem. For the rest of her life, she would suffer severe separation anxiety.
Chance, on the other hand, appeared flawless. Not that she was loved or respected any more than the rest. It was just that she was the chosen one who turned out to be the perfect show dog, the excellent hunter, the amazing companion. She went high in trial in every show of a two-day Canadian Kennel Club event and two days later headed out to the marsh to attract and retrieve a hunter’s limit of ducks. The following week she worked as a therapy dog at a veteran’s home and posed for a number of magazine photos. She was definitely destined for canine stardom.
Sadly fate was about to step solidly and unrelentingly into our lives. The trend began one day in early September when we returned to our cottage the year Chance turned six. There we found a surprise. Under our barbecue, shivering in the cold rain, was a very tiny mixed breed puppy. Unassuming and totally charming, the little waif immediately captured our hearts. We never in our wildest dreams expected to have three dogs but this little one asked so little, offered such a heart-full of unconditional love that we couldn’t give her up. We named her Barbie-Q.
Two weeks later Chance began to act strangely. She’d climb into our bed each night, panting, slapping at us with her paw. We thought she was simply jealous of Barbie-Q and told her to be a good girl.
We couldn’t have been more wrong. Two weeks later Harbourlights Highland Chance CD jumped off the couch at our cottage and died. The shock was overwhelming. One minute we had a beautiful, vibrant dog and the next moment a small red corpse.
I couldn’t allow an autopsy. I was too broken hearted. We would always accept her passing to be the result of a heart attack.
In recompense, Barbie-Q reached out to us in our sorrow, climbing onto our laps and offering all the comfort one small heart swelling with love could offer. In retrospect, I believe Barbie-Q was sent to us in preparation for our losing our too perfect, too wonderful Chance. I cannot imagine how we would have gotten through the shock and the aftermath of Chance’s death without Barbie-Q.
In the wake of the tragedy, Ceilidh also surprised us by suddenly opening her heart to the little orphaned puppy and adopting her as her very own. Although she would remain mostly aloof with us for the rest of her life, she’d found something of her very own to love and nurture in Barbie-Q. It brought her out of her shell of loneliness and gave the little foundling the mother she so badly needed.
We mourned Chance all that winter but by now we’d learned that what we’d cherished in our hearts we could never truly lose. By spring we were able to move on and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever puppy Molly joined our family. Molly was a sweet, quiet little girl who immediately became Barbie-Q’s best friend and Ceilidh’s second puppy. The job of mothering two active pups took up so much of Ceilidh’s time I think a good deal of her initial homesickness fell by the wayside.
Six years later Ceilidh left us to join Chance. Her two puppies, now wonderful dogs, stood solemnly by her grave. It would be a long time before they saw their surrogate mother again.
The following Christmas our daughter Joan and I jointly adopted a beagle that had been much abused in a puppy mill. Scout, as Joan named her, although milder than Brandy, nevertheless was pure beagle in personality. She quickly became a source of joy as well as astonishment on numerous occasions.
Five years later Bruiser a Pug whose “mother” in the military could no longer keep him joined our family. He and Barbie-Q quickly became a couple, a couple of canine culprits I nicknamed them, four-legged Bonnie and Clyde’s as they traveled around our neighborhood at the cottage in summertime, raiding other dogs’ kennels for bones.
This Christmas our yearly card bears the images of these four very different dogs, only one bearing a resemblance to the dream dog I wished for all those Christmas’s ago. Molly the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever sits on one end overseeing her strange little pack of three; Barbie-Q, Scout the Beagle, and Bruiser the Pug. I love them all dearly but as I watch them sitting in the bay window in front of the Christmas tree I can’t help thinking of the old saying, “Be careful what you wish.”
When I first wished so fervently for a dog I never envisioned over a dozen dogs a-barking their way through my life. I’ve never had a single moment of regret that Lassie never did come home. Each and every one of them have kept the unconditional love and eternal optimism that is a goodly part of the Christmas spirit glowing in my heart not just at the Yuletide but all year long.
Invisible Gifts
Last Christmas I received a wonderful gift from my grandfather who’d passed away twenty-five years ago. It was in the form of an inspiration for a story. It didn’t surprise me. It was only another in a long series of intangible presents I’ve received from family members, living and deceased, over many years.
From my paternal grandfather I received a love and respect for all creatures great and small. His farm where no form of cruelty or disrespect toward animals was tolerated provided lifelong benchmarks for me as an appropriate level of caring for all God’s creatures. Later in my life, this perception would emerge in a series of magazine articles on animal care and three dog books.
My paternal grandmother, dying young before I had the opportunity to know her, gave me an insatiable curiosity about my ancestors and, indeed, all those who had gone before. This interest in the past would eventually manifest itself in my researching and writing a number of historical pieces for magazines and two history books.
From my maternal grandfather, I received a passion for the detective story. He introduced me to Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiel Hammett, Agatha Christie, and Rex Stout when most children my age were devouring Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. These days, with five mystery novels to my credit, I’m grateful that he did.
His remarkable wife presented me with a fascination for romance and adventure. As a child I listened enthralled as she conjured up memories of Victorian ballrooms where elegant, high-collared gentlemen gallantly signed the dance cards of beautifully gowned young ladies to gain the brief pleasure of their company in a waltz or quadrille before they marched off to fight in a foreign war. These images still have the power to spark my creativity and fuel my imagination at a moment’s notice.
My mother gifted me with a passion for the printed word. She read to me every day from the time I was born until I had mastered the skil
l for myself. I remember her leaving dishes in a sudsy pan when, at age four, I stood behind her pulling at her dress, book in hand, and begging, “Please, just one chapter. Just one chapter.” A devoted amateur actress, she read with verve and emphasis and forever instilled in me the magic to be found on the printed page.
From my father I received a love of poetry and the outdoors. A man with an eighth grade education, he taught me to see the beauty in a summer sunrise, an autumn resplendent in red and gold, a winter’s day magnificent in virgin white, and how to set it all into descriptive blank verse. He found his strength and religion in nature, truth, and beauty and taught me to do the same.
My husband has given me four decades of commitment, of being there when I faltered, of believing in me when I no longer believed in myself. He’s partnered me in my writing career, letting my fads and fancies lead the way. I’ve seen exasperation and bewilderment mirrored in his face from time to time but never doubt. There definitely must have been times he’s wondered exactly what I was up to, where this new scheme was going but he’s never once questioned my judgment. It can’t always have been easy.
My children have brought me pride in their achievements, in the strength of their characters, and, most of all, in their many acts of kindness that reach well beyond the realm of family and friends. I’ve seen them unobtrusively slide change across a supermarket check-out counter when the person ahead of them comes up short. I’ve watched them adopt abandoned animals, bury fallen sparrows, and stand up for what they believed against daunting odds. I’ve seen their compassion for the less fortunate and less lovable in our society and marveled at the genuineness of their sense of equality for all. This world will truly be a better place because they passed this way. What better gift could a mother receive? Their altruism has formed the basis of a goodly number of my stories.
Thank you, everyone! And Merry Christmas!
A word about the author...
Award winning author of 32 published books, a graduate of Queen’s University, Gail has had articles and short studies published throughout North America and Western Europe.
Visit her at:
[email protected]
Other titles by Gail MacMillan
available at The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Heather for a Highlander
Counterfeit Cowboy
Rogue’s Revenge
Shadows of Love
Holding Off for a Hero
Ghost of Winters Past
Caledonian Privateer
Lady and the Beast
Highland Harry
Thank you for purchasing
this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
How My Heart Finds Christmas Page 13
