Emergency Back up Dog

    My post about losing Baldr, might give the impression that he was Tracy's only dog. Trace actually had two dogs at the time of his death, and one of them is still with us, Mykah. The problem is, Mykah is just the emergency-back-up dog. Tracy's first dog was one of two pups left in a shopping cart at a grocery store. His fiance liked to rescue animals and gave the Husky mix puppy to Tracy. He named him Odin. When the relationship broke up, Odin was also parted from his playmate, her Blue Heeler. Odin needed a friend, so Tracy traded a gun for a Malamute hybrid, who looked for all the world like a bear cub with a lolling tongue. He named him for Norse mythology's lesser know son of Odin, Baldr. When Tracy came to live with us, the move included Odin and Baldr. 

    Every time those two went outside they played, biting each other's necks, running circles around the shop, stalking each other--face to face. (No one claimed they were good at stalking.) When Odin died of cancer at age six, Baldr stopped eating, stopped everything. We knew Trace needed to get him a playmate, so he bought a three year old Husky named Mykah. But she was not a playmate. As one of three Huskies at her last home, one who fought over (what we now refer to as) food insecurity issues, she regarded Baldr's attempts at the neck biting game as threatening. So they did not play, but they became companions. Baldr figured out that he had inherited Odin's role as alpha of the pack, even if it was only a two pack. Odin had been the one racing to the back fence to strike fear into those who dared intrude on the path behind us, while Baldr looked at him to see why they were running. Now Baldr raced to the back fence and Mykah took her cues from him.

   Mykah is a sweet natured, blissfully quiet dog, whose worst trait is trying to lick people's tonsils. But, by her own choice, she prefers to fade into the background. Thus, the emergency back up dog. We know this because we used to have an emergency back up cat. Even though Sola came to us three months before Maynard, Mayn was our main cat. The zen master within the house. The menace to mice outside the house. Sola, on the other hand, spent most of her life at the foot of our bed. She only received visitors within that chosen realm. 

    Mykah will never be as strong a link to Tracy as Baldr was, though Tracy liked her and she looked on him as her rescuer. With Tracy, she even dared to play, spinning adorable triple circles. But Mykah sleeps in a corner or under the table, instead of under our bed, like Baldr did. Odin taught Baldr as a puppy that the proper place to sleep is under the bed and Baldr continued the practice after he became a full grown 80 pound dog, though by then, it required a lot of squirming. Mykah may not even want Baldr's role as main dog. Some people, by nature, prefer to be unnoticed, and some of nature's creatures do too. Baldr's death was a heartbreak, if not an emergency, and we are grateful our inheritance from Tracy included an emergency back up dog.