I had not intended to get another dog. I already had three collies: Raleigh, Randolph and Byron. Ridiculous names for dogs of Scottish heritage. For generations, our family had embraced only this one breed. I have a picture of my grandmother, taken in 1930, with a collie in the front seat of her Studebaker roadster.
But in the 80s I lived on a ranch outside Tucson, Arizona, and had plenty of room for more dogs. When my dearest friend, Artie, asked me to foster a stray she had picked up on the Nogales highway, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t.
Reina – the name Artie had given her – was far from queenly; she looked as if she had survived a famine. She seemed to be part alsatian, part wild coyote, both of poor quality. There were bare patches in her thin biscuit-coloured coat. Her sides were concave; you could count every rib. Her nails were stubs, sad clues that she must have run miles on the asphalt after the car that had abandoned her.
My collies were affectionate but their love wasn’t unconditional. They wagged their tails and licked my hand, fully aware of their own charm. They were like hopped-up teenage boys. At sundown they would run with the coyotes, only dragging themselves home at daybreak. That was the free life a dog should live, and could live in that open country. These dogs slept all day, completely uninterested in going on hikes with me – unlike Reina. She never ran ahead, and walked at the exact pace that I did.
Reina wasn’t possessive and she wasn’t needy. She rarely barked and I wondered if she thought barking was undignified. She had the most expressive eyes and she often tilted her head slightly to one side, appearing to assess the situation. I think she was content enough, but she always looked a little nervous, as if expecting bad news.
I moved away from the ranch one winter to a neat suburban house with a swimming pool and a small garden. All the dogs were elderly by then, and spring was bleak with incessant trips to the vet. The collies died one by one. In contrast, Reina’s health seemed to be holding up, which was surprising considering her rough start in life.
But then she developed a nasty cough and the antibiotics didn’t help her. She was always thirsty and ate little; she was too lethargic to go for walks around the neighbourhood. I wasn’t shocked when the vet diagnosed cancer. He took pity on me and one milky-skied morning he euthanised her at home. I buried each dog just off the hiking trail that ran behind the ranch.
I had carefully chosen each collie, driving hundreds of miles to meet puppies and their parents, to learn about their backgrounds, their pedigrees. But Reina had found me, and I was fortunate that the cross-currents of life had brought us together.
