27/09/2024
It has taken me three weeks to get to the point that I can now tell everyone. It’s the end of an era here at Rain Mountain. On Friday, September 6th, Ch Hurricane Elizabeth in the Rain went to the Rainbow Bridge. The single word that I keep coming back to, when describing Elizabeth to my friends is simply “spectacular.” And that I was lucky enough to spend thirteen years with her.
Elizabeth was the product of a surprise accidental breeding. Joyce Maley of Hurricane Chinooks was loading up her van in western South Carolina for a trip here to the Northwest for the 2011 Chinook National Specialty when she found Hurricane Mercury delivering four female pups, all buff like she was. The plan had been that Mercury was coming on the trip and would be given to Carie Taylor (Moonsong Chinooks), who had great success rehabbing shy dogs and Mercury was definitely shy. But she was a gorgeous girl, the daughter of Joyce’s Hurricane Electra and my Rain Mountain Tonasket Thunder. (Mercury was the only pup from her litter that wasn’t at least a UKC Champion, if not Grand Champion, she didn’t like the show ring at all)
After a flurry of phone calls, we decided that Joyce would drive up here as planned, setting up a maternity ward and nursery for Mercury and the pups in her big 15-passenger van. When Joyce arrived at my place, Carie was on hand to take both Mercury and the pups; Carie raised the litter of four girl pups while working on Mercury’s shyness. She bloomed and came out of her shell to be a very happy and well-adjusted girl and went happily to a new home where she lived a long life.
Over the next few months, I spent many hours on the phone with Joyce when, upon arriving home from her cross-country trip, discovered that her previous breast cancer had come back with a vengeance and spread to her bones and several organs. Joyce and I had been close since I’d got my first Chinook in the 1980s, we’d visited each other’s homes, and knew each other’s families. We had also done several joint breeding projects. This time Joyce was terminal; she was not going to beat cancer no matter how hard she fought. Along with Ed Bigos and Laura Morgan, I tried to help find homes for the dogs that she had at her farm. She was retired from the military and had been breeding Chinooks as a full-time job, so she had more Chinooks than most breeders. Laura and Ed logged many miles, and each took in several of Joyce’s dogs; I took in the last dog to leave her place, my wonderful Kai who passed away in December of 2022.
While I was trying to place Joyce’s adult dogs, Carie was raving about Mercury’s pup, known as “Guppy Puppy,” who was just too gorgeous to go to a pet home. While we searched for a breeding home, I would occasionally have her come for a weekend so she could burn off excess energy romping all over the Slug Ranch. From the start she got along great with my dogs, even the very opinionated reigning queens in residence, Lolo and Salishan. Joyce was not always tracking when she was in a lot of pain and/or on a lot of medication, but she was adamant that we find a breeding home for Elizabeth. When I told her we were having trouble with that, Joyce wanted me to send her back to South Carolina. It became a sore spot between us. I kept trying to tell her that this wasn’t realistic; I was trying to find homes for all Joyce’s other dogs so her adding one just didn’t make sense. (We were placing them one or two at a time and had help from her local friends, Melissa and Mary, with getting them shipped out around the country.) Finally, I broke and told Joyce that I would take her just to calm Joyce down. So, Elizabeth left her Guppy Puppy moniker behind and moved in with me permanently when she was roughly six months old. I named her after my childhood next door neighbor from when I lived in Alabama – Elizabeth Ann Hamiter – who had been such a perfect little princess that I frequently ditched her to play with the neighborhood boys.
The first step when a new pup comes to me, not counting potty- and crate-training, is to go to a basic manners class. This began Elizabeth’s hilarious journey with dog training. First time out, she aced everything but was such a failure at “leave it” and walking past the pile of food on the floor, that she didn’t pass. Second time up was a repeat. She learned to walk nice on a collar and least, sit, lie down, off, and to wait at doorways. But again, she would not walk past that pile of treats on the floor that she was supposed to ignore. For the first time ever, I tried taking her through the obedience class a third time. Liz thought it was fun to go places as an only dog (I had five or six adult Chinooks and a litter of puppies at this time) and getting a lot of treats for doing sits and downs, but she drew a line in the sand about food stupidly (in her opinion) lying around on the floor when it should be eaten. For the third time, Lizzie did NOT graduate from class. She went on to have amazing vocabulary, but I had to face the fact that she was going to be my housemate far more than being my dog. That became my practice of negotiating with her rather than foolishly thinking I could give her commands.
Elizabeth had three litters for a total of twelve pups. First, with Moonsong Never Cry Wolf (Peter), she had a single pup which I named “Hurricane Pilchuck in the Rain” (aka, Lightening) in memory of Joyce. Next, she was bred to Brownstone Cascade Mt. Trask and had four pups, my Irish Revolutionary litter. Finally, I bred her to her true love that she’d been flagrantly flirting with for years, Frontier Time & Tide, the handsome Dylan. Since Dylan belonged to my BFF Susan Fletcher of Frontier Chinooks, they had seen each other often over the years and Elizabeth made no secret of her crush on him. Susan and I dubbed it our “Heroes” litter and all seven pups were gorgeous. This was enough pups and Elizabeth was spayed.
Her showing career wasn’t lengthy since she had whelping box duties, but when she did show, she blew away the competition, quickly winning her UKC Championship. Once she was a demo dog for the nascent AKC Chinook club at a Judges Education event. As I took her into the ring, the judges oooed a sound of respect. “She’s beautiful!” was heard repeatedly. However, Carie Taylor, who was leading the presentation, quickly added “No, no, no, she’s the wrong color!” Under the limited AKC Standard, Elizabeth’s buff color was (and still is) a Disqualification. So much for AKC. If they didn’t want buff and gold Elizabeth (or any black and tan, or gray and tan), they could jump in a lake. [Note, I’m in mourning for her so will not distract you with this soapbox. Most of you know I have strong feelings about the AKC Standard.]
As the years wound on, Lizzie was instrumental in helping run the household. When Lolo and Salishan went to their new homes (they hated each other and were fighting), Elizabeth became Head Girl. She helped raise Toketie after Toket came to us from Susan Fletcher. When Toketie was old enough to have pups herself, Elizabeth cheerfully played Grandma, playing with them and teaching them respect for their elders with her not-very-ferocious growls. When I decided to keep Toketie’s daughter Umiak, Umi treated Elizabeth as a complete second mom-dog in all respects except nursing. Umi knew that if she was respectful, she could talk both Elizabeth and Umi’s grandsire Kai out of just about anything. It was hilarious to watch her crawl up to them, begging for whatever she wanted, and just smiling if Elizabeth pretended to growl.
Elizabeth had one habit that started with Toketie and carried on with Umiak. If I was petting Elizabeth and Toketie pushed her way in (Toketie felt that she was the center of the universe and everything was about her; just ask her), Elizabeth would simply start nibbling on Toket’s whiskers, hoping it would irritate her enough to go away. It never worked and Toketie spent much of her life with barely any whiskers. When Umiak was a baby, it must have felt good while she was teething, or she simply loved the attention when Lizzie would nibble her whiskers. She would solicit Liz a few times a day to nibble her muzzle. Even now she has short whiskers. Liz didn’t just nibble whiskers either. She loved to nibble fabrics, and I had to keep a fabric painters tarp over my good duvet because Liz had nibbled several straight-line tears in a couple of them. I even found her occasionally nibbling the upholstery on the couch or armchairs. Go figure. She was a nibbler to the end.
There were several people in the world that Elizabeth was quite fond of. Obviously, her “first mom” (the name that dogs give to the person that raises their litter, aka their breeder), Carie Taylor. Even after Carie moved back to Syracuse, she would sometimes say “hi to Guppy Puppy” during our phone conversations and Liz would perk up. She also loved Michael Choy, who has watched her for me on several occasions. (Toketie just plain decided to stay with Michael after I moved into a rental home where I’m limited on the number of dogs I can have.) Everyone who visited would declare that Elizabeth was their favorite and I can understand this. She had a huge smile and a regal bearing but was quite willing to raid a garbage can or steal off the counters. Her nickname was ‘Elizabeth Ann the Garbage Can’ after all. She had a prodigious appetite and wanted to weigh 150 pounds; she was quite upset with me when I wouldn’t accommodate her. And she could eat things that would make any other dog quite sick. She went so far as managing to get visiting Moonsong Brynn’s medications off the counter about dawn once while Brynn was visiting with us shortly before she passed away. It took quite a few medications to keep Brynn going in those last months of her life. A friend camping on my property came into the house to use the bathroom early one morning and found Liz chowing down on gabapentin, tramadol, and her anti-senility medications after the liver flavored Rimadyl tasted so good. She felt a good compost pile was a candy store and loved to dig them up. Slug bait? One of her favorites. Try as I did to keep things away from her, I never saw her get sick from any of the horrendous things she ate.
Her other habit was books. Yes, she was quite smart but no, she didn’t teach herself to read. At least not that I was aware of. But she had a taste for books. This is difficult for someone like me; during my last move, I had to pack books from six full height bookcases! Blame it on my English degree where I had to knock down a book a week in each of my classes. They added up. She loved to take books out of the bookcases and nibble them, tear a few random pages out, and cause general mayhem. And she seemed to have a knack for selecting books that I had borrowed from someone else. I often had to buy replacements. He love of books never died down; she was eating them up until the end.
About two years ago Liz blew first one knee and a month later blew the other. I was so worried about her that I was in tears! She was in a lot of pain, and I had to carry her up and down the two steps in and out of the house. With my spine injury, this was not easy. Luckily the vet got her medicated to control her pain and, within a few weeks, she was going up and down stairs by herself. Clumsily but on her own. I got a small stair for her to use getting in and out of the car. She reduced her exercise dramatically, but she was 11 at the time so I wasn’t surprised. Shortly after she blew the second knee, I knew our life would be the same as previously when I found that she – who would have told you she needed a disabled parking permit – was able to climb up to the top shelf of a six-foot high rack and steal a whole box of stuffed cow hooves that I’d put there to specifically keep away from her.
Other body parts started having problems too. A cyst opened on her back and wouldn’t heal; the vet thought the surgery to remove it would be too drawn out for a dog of her age. It became an open sore that I had to clean several times a day. She developed a mammary tumor the size of two golf balls. But she was happy, and she smiled at me whenever she woke up, though her naps were almost twenty-three hours a day by now. When it got to the point that she was too tired to eat her dinner and lost bladder and bowel control, I knew it was time. We had a vet appointment so he could examine her. After he gave me his opinion, I took her home and started treating her to a wonderful last week, full of special foods, extra massages, and a lot of love. When the day came, she smiled at me until she was asleep. It was a long drive home without her.
I was very glad that her last litter of pups almost all went to friends who’d had multiple Chinooks from me. Scott and Christie have Tiki, Scott’s brother Jeff and his wife Jen have Marv; Susan has Tova and Anastasia has Minerva; Kossy is with Bryan in Tennessee and Cree/Indy is with Rachel, hanging with the Edmonton Chinook gang. Marv, Tova, and Minerva have had litters of their own and Kossy may yet. From her “Irish Revolutionary” litter, Nika went on to found Rain Mountain North and the Enatai Chukchi Chinook x Siberian cross line that is part of our Chinook Breed Conservation Program.
Elizabeth was here to help me with my first second-generation cross litter. She ignored them while they were in the whelping box but once they were scampering around the house, she taught them respect for their elders. She loved when people would come to visit the pups and insisted on coming out to the front yard to get her share of attention. Though it scared her when the smoke alarm went off one night while I was driving home from work. I got her, Umiak, and the puppies out of the house then called the fire department (I live next door to them) so they could check out the house. Elizabeth loved all the attention from the fire fighters, once they determined that it was just a bad smoke alarm, and they all ended up hanging around to play with Liz and admire her great-grand pups before packing up to head back to their homes (it’s a volunteer fire department).
Elizabeth will live on in my mind as one of the Chinooks that grabbed the largest piece of my heart. Despite her frequent puddles on the rug by the door. (“I gave you the blink that told you I needed to go out and when you missed it, I went where I was!” Her potty training had always been approximate, you might say.) My house seems empty even with Umiak and the last of her pups here (Lulu leave later this weekend to go to Canada with the Nenningers). I haven’t been a one-dog person since about 1982 and I worry that Umiak will be lonely until I find the right dog to add. My heart feels a bit empty as well. I've lost my last link with Joyce as well as losing Elizabeth. Nothing will cure that though except time.
