This post is a tribute to Luna, the best mama dog I have ever known.
Luna passed away recently. She was likely 17 or 18 years old, and we had her for 13 of those years. It is still very fresh, but I wanted to tell her story: how we found her, the chaos she brought into our house, and why we loved her so much.
We got Luna from Big Dog Ranch Rescue, where my daughter's friend worked. Gravy, our last dog had passed away about six months prior, and we were lured in by a picture of a beautiful husky puppy with blue eyes. I asked my wife, and she said, "Let's go."
When we arrived, they told us all the puppies were taken. But they had the mom.
And I thought, you know, that's great. The mom is probably more our speed anyway. We connected with her pretty quickly and after a while got to take her home.
About two weeks later, they called to say one of the puppies was available after all. So we got her puppy too. That's how we ended up with Luna and Ghost.
Ghost was Luna's son. We think he was part Malamute, because he grew much bigger than she was. He came home a 10-pound puppy and ended up around 100 pounds. She stayed around 60.
None of that mattered to Luna. I think she trained him. She kept him in line. She would wrestle with him and fight him and keep him on a straight and narrow path.
Ghost was a big baby. He was our baby. Luna brought a different kind of energy to the house.
It is hard to talk about Luna without it sounding negative, because she was so crazy.
She was very nervous. She took a lot of tranquilizers. She worried a lot. And a lot of her personality came out when I wasn't around. If I was traveling, she would pace and bother my wife, asking where I was.
We tried a lot of things to manage her anxiety before we ultimately medicated her. There was the Thunder Shirt, a snug anxiety vest for dogs, sort of like a straitjacket. She did not get along with other dogs either, which was a problem at family gatherings where everybody has a dog. We had to keep them separated.
She was also an escape artist. One time we came home after she had been spayed. She was wearing a cone, and we had her in a crate. We found her outside the crate, but the cone was still inside it.
How did you even do that? I have never been able to figure out how she got out of there and left the cone behind.
When we first got her, she was emaciated, really thin, and it was hard to get her to eat. We had to do all kinds of things to get her excited about food. Early on, she just wasn't motivated by it.
Which is crazy to say, because toward the end of her life you would have thought she was starving. She became so obsessed with food. I think my wife was spoiling her, sneaking her things, which made her more food-obsessed.
It is funny to think she didn't care about treats. When you train a dog, you need some little reward, and she was too willful to go for that. Ghost, on the other hand, would eat rocks. Literal rocks! He'd hoover up landscaping stones. When training, I would have treats and he would be all about it, and she would just be like, no, not interested.
I made their dog food myself. Once a week, in a big Instant Pot, mixing up sweet potatoes, pork, oats and carrots. They ate better than a lot of people do, I think.
Ghost passed away about three years ago. His decline was worse. He wasted away rapidly. He had lost a ton of weight, he was throwing up blood. Letting him go was extremely hard and felt like mercy.
Luna was never the same after that.
Huskies are very, very talkative. One of the things I only recognized after she was gone is that she had not really talked since Ghost passed away. They used to howl together. Once he was gone, she had less to focus on. She had always had him to look after.
At the end, it was just hard. She was struggling to stand up. She lost control of her bladder, and I was walking her every two hours just to stay ahead of it. You could tell she was miserable.
It is never an easy process or decision. With Ghost, it was easier in the sense that he was so obviously not well. This was an act of mercy too, but it was different.
We did give her a send-off. She had burgers for dinner. She had bacon and eggs for breakfast. She had steak as her last meal.
I feel like I have been talking about problems instead of what was great about her. But she was a lot of fun, and a really, really good dog. Very loyal and very sweet. She looked after us just as much as we looked after her.
One of the things you think about is coming home, and she is not there to greet you.
Run free, Luna. Go find Ghost and howl together again.
You are missed.
