Following Moses

Last winter Moses started going out in the middle of the night. He’d bark, Sam would let him out, and then he’d take off. I protested at first, worried that he’d freeze to death. He was skin and bones; there’s no way he could have kept warm. Sometimes he’d be gone for a couple of hours and Sam would search for him; this happened many times at first, but a black dog in the black night is hard to find and eventually we started to trust his return. He always came home, eventually, barking to come back in. By the end of winter, instead of barking to go out for a short adventure, he just insisted on sleeping outside the whole night, so we put a bed out on the covered front porch. For five months the day ended with Sam letting Moses out when it was time for bed. And for five months the day began, usually around 4:45am, with a single gruff bark waking us up. If ignored, it would be repeated until answered. "Ruff!" Pause. "Ruff!" Pause. Eventually we’d relent and feed him, even though it was long before our time to wake up.

Before Sam left for Chile last month, he brought Moses to the vet for the latest of his ailments. This time a droopy eye. He didn’t look good. At fifteen and a half, what could you expect? Dr. Hadden didn’t think he was in pain, but Sam and I, aware that winter is coming, acknowledged that this fall would be his last season, we just had to get through the September trip, hope for some good days in October, and then prepare to say good bye. While Sam was away, I worried about whether or not Moses would make it through the two weeks until he could be home. 

Mosey spent most of his time on his bed on the front porch. He slept for most of every day. Still, when I’d reach for my sneakers, he’d spring to life, jump in circles, and be ready to go. We’d walk up to the brook and back, or occasionally walk the lower loop. He’d be behind, but he’d be there—always happy to go. One day he wandered off from the porch and enough time passed that I had started to think about looking for him when the phone rang. It was my neighbor, Karen, from down below. Mosey was wandering around in their meadow, about a half mile downhill from here. I drove down to pick him up and met Karen in the road with Richard, who is using a walker at this point, while Linda, our other neighbor, guided Mosey toward us. While we waited, Karen lectured me about tying him up so he wouldn’t get lost. I felt duly scolded for being careless, but at the same time thought about how Moses had never been tied up; his whole life has been a free-spirited wandering on this hill.

We got Moses in the spring of 2007, during the final months we were living in the parsonage, as we were getting ready to build our house, and he has been here for all of the projects that have been our life in the time since.

Mosey was always a gentle dog. Tall, sweet, easy going. Compared to Boone, he seemed so laid back. While Boone would manically fetch a frisbee, Mosey would try to get it just to get Boone to chase him. He was happy to just be along for most of what we did; he never needed much. 

The only time he ever seemed particularly intent on anything was when I was expecting Quinn. I remember lying down for naps during my pregnancy, a time when we still allowed the dogs on the bed, and Mosey would rest his chin on my belly. Later on, as we got closer to Quinn’s arrival, Mosey would sit right next to me when anyone other than Sam was in the house. He was protective, quietly so, but his attention to the presence and purpose of her was clearly expressed in the way he sat, tall shouldered and alert, pressed up against me. And for her whole life, this has remained true.

Unlike Boone, who always had some sort of agenda, Moses was easy going. He never needed much; he was never the center of attention, never the boss, but he was always paying attention and he was always right there.

The weather in September was particularly stormy. It rained nearly the whole time Sam was away, with some torrential days and nights. I pulled Mosey’s bed back from the edge of the roofline to keep it dry, and kept him inside whenever he was willing to be there. One night, as we talked to Sam on Zoom at the dining room table, Quinn looked over to the living room and said, “Mom, look.” Buddy and Moses were lying right next to each other, bodies pressed together in a way they never did. Quinn took a photo and then, before we said goodbye to Sam, we brought the computer to the living room rug so Sam could see Mosey and be reassured that he was doing okay. Mosey woke up when he heard Sam’s voice nearby. He looked toward the computer, but who knows if he could see Sam’s face. 

The rain was so unbelievable that night that the thought of putting him out on the porch was awful. He was sound asleep in the living room, safe and dry. When it was time for bed, I left all the lights on and tiptoed upstairs, thinking he might just stay asleep if he thought we were still there, but as soon as I got upstairs, he knew. He started to pace, and to whine, and he paced and whined and barked until I relented. I opened the door and watched him go right to his bed. He lay down and looked out into the darkness as the rain poured down. Thinking back, I recalled that he didn’t lay his head down before I closed the door. I wish I had waited for that. Maybe that was the sign that he wasn’t going to settle, and I missed it. 

I woke up the next morning and it was lighter than normal. I looked at the clock, having had a good night’s sleep, and celebrated the fact that I had slept until 6am. Until I woke up enough, a moment later, to realize that Moses hadn’t woken me up as he had every other day for months. When I went to the door, he wasn’t there. And when Quinn came down, a short while later, I convinced her, and myself, that he was just out for a wander and he’d be back. 

I dropped her off at school and was headed toward work, but as I approached the base of our road, I knew I had to go back up and look for him. I cancelled my meetings, changed my clothes, and headed out into the rain. I walked our usual loops and paths. I called his name. I retraced those steps in the opposite direction. I went back to the meadow by the Richards’ houses, and walked along the brook. I let all the neighbors know I was looking. And the hours of the day passed this way, with Buddy and me wandering the woods, calling for Moses.

Eventually I started searching off the trails, wading through ferns on the steep sections of hill, trying to imagine where he might have accidentally fallen, or gotten tangled up. I started covering ground I’d never seen in fifteen years of living here. When Buddy and I got to the bottom of Richard’s ski hill and came up behind his pond, a place I’d never been, with rain and fog all around, a Great Blue Heron lifted up just in front of us and flew off down the hill. It was so close and happened so slowly, its spindly legs dragging behind its massive wings. That’s probably when I started to think I wasn’t going to find him.

Quinn was surprised when I picked her up at four o’clock and he still wasn’t home. I worried it would undo her. For years after Boone’s death, she would explain her tears and dark moods by saying she missed Boone. And she’s been doing so well this year—managing life’s natural worries, putting herself out there, being open to joy. She kept her feelings close and didn’t have much to say about Mosey being gone, but when I went to shut the front door that night, after Quinn had gone to bed, I saw that she put a treat on his bed on the porch. We were both hoping he’d come home.

After a couple of days of searching, I finally told Sam. Even though he was the one who insisted that Mosey was happier on the porch at night than inside, I still felt like I had lost his best friend. I heard my neighbors’ insistent instructions to keep him close and knew I should have listened. Guilt and worry kept me wandering the woods that whole week until Sam came home, but I never found even a trace of him.

There is no doubt it was his time, but of course that is not how we imagined it to go. We all wanted to be there with him, to be sure he knew he was loved, and that his years of loyal attention mattered. Driving to school one day I realized that just as it had been for Boone, Mosey’s passing was like his life. He never caused any trouble. He never asked for anything. 

In the days that Sam was away, when I was searching for Moses, I kept thinking of the brook. I walked down the middle, in water high from all of the rain. I climbed over branches and downed trees, and forced my way through ferns and brambles, and I thought there was no way Mosey could have made it that far, even though it turns out he did. And as I walked along, in the ravine carved out by the brook, and followed along the pools and little falls, shin-deep in cold clear water, I also thought how beautiful it was and how grateful I was to Moses for bringing me there, after fifteen years of living on the hill without fully seeing what is here. Following Moses, I saw so much beauty.

We got a call this week from a man who was walking down Dowsville Brook and found his body, and then Sam went and brought him home. I picked Quinn up from the bus and told her the news. She turned her head to the window and cried without making a sound. We are sad but also relieved to have him home, and to know he will rest here, near Boone and the garden, with a view of the house, and the hill on the other side of the valley, and the sun and the moon when they rise, and the distant peaks that Sam knew we’d see, back when Moses was a puppy and the life ahead of us was still unknown.

Moses  ~   March 2007-September 2022