I have this photo of Rose hanging in the dining room, the sunlight fell on it first thing in the morning. It was taken in the upper meadow, in the tall grass of a rainy Spring, Rose was watching over a flock of about 36 sheep, 10 or 12 of them lambs that she had seen born, had helped birth.
The photo is framed, it is one of my favorite photos. It captures the spirit of Rose, before she fell ill and died a few years ago. It called out to me to remember her and write about her.
And rather than grieve for Rose, I remember her, and writing about things is how I remember them.
Don’t grieve, says the poet Rumi. Anything you lose comes around in another form.
The bad news about losing someone or something you love is that your heart will break. But this is also the good news, says Anne Lamott. They live forever in your heart, and you come through. I have come through.
If you are open to it, the things you need and love will return to you in one form or another. And the animals and people you lose do live on forever in your heart. This is how I feel about Rose, an important dog, an important presence in my life. And here and now, there is Red and Fate. Everything comes around in another form.
When I moved upstate, Rose was six months old, a quieter, more businesslike and less joyous version of Fate. Rose came with me, and we figured out how to survive on Bedlam Farm together, through many trials, lambing dramas, and bumbling by me. I wrote an e-book about Rose, The Story Of Rose. It is one of my favorite books, a work of the heart. It has nearly 300 five-star reviews on Amazon, it never sold many copies. My publisher, Random House, had gotten so large that they thought five or six thousand copies was not worth the bother, but I have never written a book people loved more.
When I wrote The Story Of Rose, I was inspired by Jack London’s Call Of The Wild, a great homage to the spirit of the dog before the saccharine age of the Rainbow Bridge. Rose would have hated waiting for me on the Rainbow Bridge, I would have hated it too. My wish for her is that she spends all eternity running in golden fields, sheep stretching out on the horizon forever. Not waiting for me and chasing balls for all time.
London didn’t see dogs as cute or piteous, as objects for rescue and endless grieving. He wrote about the great partnership between people and dogs, and the awful beauty of it – they will almost surely die before us. That is what I felt with Rose, the great partnership.
Rose never really made it as a pet, she did not care to be cuddled and mostly just wanted to work and keep an eye on me. I rarely touched her. She was a ferociously brave dog, taking on coyotes, blizzards, belligerent rams, recalcitrant mothers, hysterical lambs. She saved my life several times.
She had no use for people who thought she was a furbaby or a cuddle bug.
She was always there when there was trouble, she gave me the strength to get through those first years, we were alone together most of the time, and for years. I thought my family would come to join me on the farm, but I was blind. Everyone but me could see they were never coming. I remember the night Rose stood down three coyotes heading down the hill towards the lambs. I couldn’t call her a way.
I remember when a ram snuck up behind me, knocked me into a fencepost, tore open my forehead and crushed my glasses in the falling. I was blinded by blood and confused. Rose, young then, frantically dug herself under the kennel fence and came tearing up the hill, she attached herself to the ram’s testicles, he screamed and spun, and ran for his life.
Rose saved my life several times, I think the wolf was still alive in her. She was a tough dog, intimidated by nothing. At night, the farmers would call us when their goats or cows or sheep got out and Rose would round them all up and put them back in their pastures. We charged $10 a call, I still have the basket, filled with cash, in the living room. There is a few hundred dollars in it, I always meant to buy her a steak, I never got around to it.
When I fell down on the ice and was knocked out, she would nip at my ear until I got up. I took her to the Mall Of America in Minnesota on a book tour and she slipped out of the bookstore, ran to the other end of the mall, and returned with six sheep she liberated from a 4-H shearing exhibition, navigating them through heavy crowds of shoppers. Rose was all about work and loyalty, she was never interested in much else. She didn’t play with dogs or wish to be near them, had no interest in children or people with biscuits.
I never knew where Rose slept, it was always in a hallway, down by the back door, or near an upstairs window when she could keep an eye and an ear on the pasture.
I remember Rose, and think of her often. I do not miss her or grieve for her, as that seems selfish to me, we had a great life together and everything I lose comes around in another form.