I had seen him every two to three days after he was five weeks and it seemed we had bonded almost immediately, and he came home when Mackenzie was eight weeks old (dob 87/01/15). He became my shadow, wherever I went he tagged along, even if it was to the bathroom! He would lie on my feet and watch TV with me. Mack and my other Mal, a female, Kelsey, were great pals and that says much because Kelsey hated anything with four legs - oooh, she could be nasty, exceedingly dog aggressive except for one, and Mackenzie knew it. One time I had to take Kelsey to the vet a few blocks away. Mack started screaming as soon as we left the yard and continued as we headed down the hill. I remember telling Kelsey not to worry he'd quit soon, when all of a sudden, indeed, he had. We continued on our way and very shortly afterward I heard heavy footfalls of a gallop behind us. I turned around and there he was barreling after us! I double leashed the two together and we continued to the vet's office. Later, when we got home, I found three fence boards laying far out in the alley - he had just put his head down and crashed through!
Mack was one of the happiest of characters and he loved to wear sunglasses!! If I was in the back yard working and I had sunglasses on, Mack would nudge my glasses to let me know he wanted his. I'd put them on and he would walk around the yard looking at everything - flowers, his toys, dog house - and then would settle down on the deck and watch me.
Mack
Mack was very good with kids, too. My good friend and his wife were over one day with their one year old daughter. It was warm so we were out on the back deck. The deck was far from child proof as I had no children except the dogs. I put a blanket down on a portion of the deck, put my buddy's kid on the blanket and we sat in our chairs talking the afternoon away. Well, whenever the kid went to crawl to an edge of the blanket there was Mack, on his belly, preventing the little duffer from leaving the blanket and potentially falling off the deck. Kelsey soon followed his lead and I instantly had a living, adaptable child proof railing on my deck. I had heard that the Natives who created the breed often used them as 'nannies' for their children, but had sort of pooh-poohed it as "one of those nice stories" - but there it was right in front of our eyes!
He was a good sledding dog as well. He loved
to go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was new and there were
things to see along the way. One day as I was getting the sled
ready and he was chained to the truck fender, Mack got so excited
he started to pull the truck, a full size half ton, towards me!
He also knew his commands and did them faithfully.
When he was four and a half years old, as we were training for the coming sledding season, I noticed that he was coming up lame fairly often. It would first affect his right front leg and then the next time his left back leg. With the advice of the Vet, I changed the training as we thought, perhaps, I was working him too hard. Eventually I cut the work to once every two days, then three, then four. As time passed and my investigation continued, he began to cry whenever he had to lay down, or get up, he really laboured. There were times Mack would not lay down and stayed standing for hours! I had taken him to the vet many times and we were eliminating possible problems one at a time. Before too long I stopped doing anything strenuous with him. We finally had a Myelogram done (in effect an x-ray with an tracing agent in his blood, iodine isotope, I think) of his neck. Low and behold a culprit was found, he was finally diagnosed with Wobbler's
Syndrome.
It is quite the debilitating thing with the vertebrae expanding on his discs and causing pressure on his spinal column, which gave him the pain from one corner of his body to the opposite and eventually throughout his limbs continuously. Horses and Doberman's are also susceptible I found out from the literature provided by my Vet. I decided to go with her recommendation of Dr. Stone (a noted vet surgeon here) and his spinal fusion operation on the worst of the discs. It was quite the thing - Mack was shaved from chin to elbows and a square foot on his hip. Dr. Stone had taken a square chunk out of Mack's hip and grafted it onto two vertebrae and then removed the interfering disc. Oh, he was a sight. Mack had to have constant supervision for the first week of his recovery and could not do any stairs, no jumping, and no getting excited for at least six months. Thank goodness, in the beginning, he didn't feel much like it anyway. His throat was so sore, because of the airway they put down it, that he had to be fed one kibble at a time by hand and I soothed the throat with vanilla ice cream - you could actually see the relief on his face.
For the first two weeks I would take him to my classroom during the day and he would lay quietly by my desk as I carried on with my classes. He never lacked for attention, there was always at least one student looking after him at all times, and when we had to leave the building or go to the office he would come with me and I would carry him down, or up, any stairs we had to negotiate. No small accomplishment considering he weighed a robust 125 pounds.
Dr. Stone said that the operation was dicey with a fifty-fifty chance of working, and that even if it did the rest of the vertebrae would continue to malform and that Mack would have maybe a year, two on the outside, to live. Well, after one month he was out of control. He felt so good that he began playing with Kelsey again. Taking him for walks was a treat he loved, but they nearly killed me! I was not allowed to put a collar on him anymore, so, as not to put any undue pressure on his neck, I used a pulling harness instead. He felt so much better he pulled like a train and eventually put me in the care of a Chiropractor!! I thought to myself that if he could pull so hard and was getting bored with the locations of our "walks" that I would design a new ultra-light sled and have him, and Kelsey, pull again. If he was to have only one or two years left, I decided to let him do what he loves. Later we began skijoring and had a wonderful time! Well, he pulled for the next three seasons every bit as good as he ever did. We had our good boy back for what seemed, back then, would be a long time.
One Sunday morning, after getting up and having a cup of coffee, I looked outside and saw Mack get up and sway like he was drugged or drunk. I ran out to check him. He seemed okay except that he was very groggy, almost to the point of passing out. I checked his gums and they were white as paper! Off to the emergency vet we went.
Mack had some tests done and the vet there told me he had Hemolitic Anaemia, an auto-immune problem. His liver could no longer differentiate between old and new red blood cells and so was cleaning his entire system of red blood cells. It was extremely serious, they would begin treatment right away and would have to keep him overnight.
I went back the next morning to pick Mack up and take him to our regular vet. As I was at the counter paying, and getting more info, an aid brought Mack in. Mack recognised me and promptly collapsed on the floor. He fell like a tree. He had gotten so excited, his heart rate rose and, without the red cells in sufficient numbers, he passed out. It shocked me to the core. He soon revived and I carried him to the truck for the ride to my regular vet. Upon getting there I had to take him downstairs and I put him in one of their cages. He was tired and seemed okay with it. I left and later in the day I went back for a visit. He had tubes in his leg and looked pitiful, but when he saw me, as I bent down to say hello, he lifted his head and promptly crashed into unconsciousness again. It was horrible, his tongue hanging out and face mashed against the cage wall, I felt so helpless - I knew all he wanted was to come home with me. The vet told me not to come back for a few days as this was too stressful for him.
The red cell count should be in the forties in a normal dog, Mack's was 14 when I first brought him to emergency. His count continued to fall, we did have a glimmer of hope on the second day as it spiked to 13 from 8, but by the third day it had fallen back to eight. My vet was using some pretty rough anti-cancer type drugs in a last ditch effort and asked for another 24 hours. It didn't help.
I had been off and on crying for my dear Mack throughout this time and had come to the conclusion that above all else I did not want him to suffer too much. Those last twenty-four hours were the worst in my life. I arrived at the vet's the next day on my lunch break from my school. I had been a wreck for days, and, I must say, so where some of the staff and many students who knew Mack. I went downstairs and our vet was already crying as I approached the cage. On my knees I opened the door and Mack was unconscious, breathing shallow, when I slid my hand under his head and held him close. I said my goodbye. The vet gave the injection through the IV and I felt him slowly give in until the whole weight of his head sagged into my hands and I knew he was gone. I had never felt such loss for any living thing. Rest in peace my friend, wait for me.