She was born December 28, 2008, and we found out about her through a friend who was acting as a foster parent for the ASPCA. There were seven puppies, and the parents had been given up when the economy hit the skids and the owners could no longer take care of the bred Lhasa Apso pair. When we first met the litter, eight days after their birth, I was able to choose her (or is it that she chose me?) within the first minute. She was dark, active, and one of the two larger puppies. She had a little white spot right in the center of the back of her neck. And of course, she was adorable. She nestled in the hollow of my lap between my legs contentedly, and fell asleep while I fell instantly in love. I named her Karma on the way home.

Those seal pup eyes we fell in love with

Valeria & I were granted play dates to visit the puppies periodically. Sometime around the sixth week, I discovered that my once business partner and once close friend, Dawn, had stage four pancreatic cancer. Her being a dog lover, I hurried over for one of my last visits with her, toting pictures of my new puppy, to make plans for her meeting it once the puppy was in my home. While there, I announced I was naming the puppy after her: Karma Dawn. Her response: “How fuckin perfect.” And it was. I guess you had to know Dawn to understand how perfect it really was. Dawn was the first person I’d met with whom I talked about karma, and how karma juxtaposed into our lives. She used the word incessantly…..and when I first asked her how she felt about having pancreatic cancer, she told me “Like the other shoe finally dropped and I no longer have to be wary of it. Karma.”

Karma Dawn came home with me on March 12. Dawn “went home” March 1st. They never did meet, but they are inextricably linked in my mind. Whenever anyone comments on Karma Dawn’s name, I am able to tell a story about Dawn, and she lives on.

Puppyhood

Puppyhood is a glorious time. It is taxing and tiring, and teaching is tough. But coming home to a puppy, one who loves you, and waits for you, and looks forward to your embrace is not to be taken lightly. I will forever remember turning into our driveway, seeing George on our front porch, sitting with Karma on his lap. He’d have opened the gate for me to drive in. They’d be waiting patiently till I stopped the car, even though she’d probably heard the car long before I’d pulled in. George would say “There’s Lynn! Go get Lynn!” and she’d hop off his lap, tear down the two steps, and run as fast as she could over the slate path walkway, skid around the front of my car, just in time for me to have opened the car door, and hurdled up and into my lap, paws on either shoulder, little tongue out and panting. Lynn’s home!

I had read up on all sorts of puppy stuff prior to her coming home–raw food, clicker-training, vaccinations, etc. and all those became part of our lives together. Her very first meal with us was a chicken neck (as you can tell, I decided on raw) which in retrospect was probably not the best way to start her off. But that’s what she got. I must say, to hear a puppy that small crunch so loudly on real bones can be unnerving. In that moment I realized that Karma was a bitch. With teeth.

She took to raw food like the carnivore she was meant to be. Shortly after we’d brought her home, George took her out for a walk. She was still such a tiny thing–not more than seven or eight pounds. They meandered through the trails in the woods that populated the area in which we lived. (We were in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, after all.) She followed along, not always beside him, but where she could keep up with him and keep him in sight. ….until suddenly, he lost her. A little bit of panic, then something moved beside the path. It was a deer carcass in the snow, one that a coyote had mauled and feasted on. The movement came from within. And then who bounces out but Karma, bloody and proud of herself for having had the picnic of her little life. George’s first thought: “OH DAMN. I better get her cleaned up before Lynn sees her!”

Training

She would always be motivated by food. That did make it easier to train her. I started clicker-training her from her first full day with us, using soft baby food as an incentive, then graduating to small (3 calorie) Charlee Bear treats. And she was quick! I will never forget the the absolute moment when I saw in her eyes that she had put her learning and training all together and she suddenly understood “Down.” You could tell she knew with certainty that if she flopped down, she would get a cookie. From that point on, she would throw herself down at either the hand signal or the word “down” as quickly as she could, sometimes from half a foot in the air if she needed to stop whatever it was she was doing so the “down” could be accomplished. Cookie time! She learned “come” and “sit” and “roll over” in quick succession. Her vocabulary grew. As did her penchant for cookies.

One time, Valeria & I were laying on the floor chatting, Karma beside us, hanging out. Out of the corner of our eyes, we saw Karma. She was rolling over. And rolling over. And rolling over. Then she’d sit and eye us. “Where’s my cookie? Haven’t you been watching??” And then she’d roll over again. Yup. I caved in. I gave her a cookie (even though I hadn’t asked her to roll over).

I taught her to wave. She’d sit up on her haunches and pump her paws vigorously in reaction to a wave of my hand. That same motion flowed into scratching my back, if I sat down at her level with my back to her, and motioned to my back and said “Scratch”. (Boy, that felt good when she did that!) It also morphed into “High Five”–either paw, please. She learned to spin, to jump, and to keep her raw food “on the mat”.

Jumping wasn’t one of her favorite things to do. I started with a little hula hoop on the ground. She would step through at the command, and she’d get the cookie on the other side. Gradually, I started inching it up. She was jumping through. Yay! Then I got it to about a foot high off the ground. She looked at it, looked at me, looked at the cookie I had in my hand….. then took her paw, put it on the hula hoop and pushed it back to the ground, stepped through, and sat down, smug and waiting. “Where’s my cookie?” Boy, she loved doing tricks for cookies.

We took her to a Big Green Eggfest, where the Big Green Egg afficionados gather to show off their prowess in barbecue. We were in line to pick up a plate of food, when I heard tittering behind me. I turned around. There was Karma, waving furiously at people, then sitting and staring at them with her big seal pup eyes. “Where’s my cookie?” I gave the people a cookie so they would reward her, then showed them a few other tricks of hers. I also gave some cookies to some kids who wanted to try “making the doggie do stuff.” She went off with them, to do her tricks and get her cookies. A little while later, I heard her barking–which she very rarely did. I tracked her down. The kids had run out of their allotment of cookies and she was scolding them, refusing to do any more tricks till she got her treat. I had to rescue the kids from her reprimand, and let them know that this dog didn’t work for free. She was a performer wanting her due. She padded away happily, having made her point and scored more cookies.

When she discovered they gave out treats at the Pet Store, she was sly. They gave her a cookie, she dropped it on the floor. “Oh she doesn’t like that one; I’ll give her a different one.” She dropped that one as well. They tried another. Also dropped. When they finally stopped giving her different ones, she would lean over and eat all the ones she had dropped on the floor. Her record? Seven cookies.

Her training was an ongoing thing. She learned so many tricks and so many things! I bought her a gumball/treat machine and taught her how to use it. She would slap at the lever until she got her cookies, but only if I gave her permission: “Give yourself a cookie” or “Hit it”. When she was young, she was persistent at getting her cookies. As she got older, and the machine got older, it didn’t work as well and she’d get less. She’d implore for more with “that look” but the only people who were conned into “more” were new visitors to the household. We discovered that on the Adventure Trips we took with our traveling group of friends. Our group used to gather around and watch her whenever there was a newbie on one of our trips, her manipulation already infamous with us. She’d mock hit that lever, then look up at the newbie, as if she couldn’t get it to work and give “that look”. They’d comply, and when a human “hit it” she would get even more cookies than if she had hit it. Little bugger….

I even took her to an agility class when she was a little older. Most of the other dogs in class were puppies, with shorter attention spans. She did everything correctly as an adult, and nearly perfectly with just a few lessons. Of course, she was a LOT slower at doing them. Agility classes usually had the dogs running hell bent for leather through the obstacle course, since you had to navigate them against a clock. Karma didn’t care. She just liked to please us and go through each phase at her speed. (A fat man could beat her through the course!) She did them all happily anyway.

We let her do her easy lope romping after other animals. She’d chase squirrels and rabbits or deer when we gave her permission, knowing there was no chance she’d ever be able to catch them, despite her dogged determination. Those short little legs with that rugged barrel body just wasn’t up to it. I taught her how to chase deer out of yard to save my flowers and shrubbery. She was up to that. And brave enough.

When she was still tiny, George had her out on one of their walks. She was sniffing around down in a depression. He could see beyond her horizon, and spotted three deer, all young bucks, grazing on the grass above her. When her scruffy head peeked above the edge, she finally noticed them. The closest buck’s antlers went down; her chin went up. Suddenly, she leaped and nipped his nose. George laughed heartily when all three deer went skipping off, Karma giving chase like the Great White Hunter she probably thought she was.

Another time on one of their walks, he discovered she was just like a “little person”. They were walking on the uneven sidewalks of our town, and she tripped over a protrusion of concrete. And just like a person would, Karma turned around and glared at what she had tripped over. And then, still glaring, she barked at it, then continued on with her walk with George. Okay. She was not just like a little person. She was a verbal one, too.

Years later, when we took her to New Mexico with us on a cross country trek, we introduced her to buffalo and wild horses and the prairie dogs. Oh, the prairie dogs. How she was fascinated by them. They’d snap up and down, in and out of their homes like a carnival shooting game. From the car, nose pressed to the glass, she’d be talking to them, or us, whinging and yipping, and keening at them. Such a verbal little doggie. We knew we weren’t supposed to, but at one prairie dog village, we let her out to scout and frolic and play whack-a-mole with them, never winning, but having such a grand ole time. She slept very well that night.

We actually took Karma everywhere once we discovered she was going to be too large to fly anywhere, having surpassed the 20 pound weight limit even before she reached one year old. We started driving everywhere instead of flying, and that enabled us to see so much more of this country because of it. (Thank you, Karma!)

One of the first trips we took her on was to Maine. She was only eight months old at the time. The Appalachian Trail was near our cabin and the folks who were vacationing with us loved hiking, so a-hiking we did go. Also with us were TaiChi (and his roommate, Dino). Both Karma and TaiChi were full of puppy energy and ran everywhere on the trail. Valeria, TaiChi’s owner, and another forded the trail. George & I wandered along in our lackadaisical way, a few hundred steps behind. Of course, TaiChi stayed with Valeria, but Karma, because she had to be at the front with the leaders, would stick with Valeria & TaiChi & Dino….. for awhile. She would then dash back to find George & me. Once she’d find us, she would jog along beside us for a bit. A minute or two later, we’d watch her accelerate and she’d go catch up to the front runners once more. She spent the whole hike like that, scurrying between Valeria’s group and us. We’d be hiking alone, listening to the birds and peering through the woods to find forest animals, and then we’d hear her tearing back, then see her, little tongue dangling from that smile, happy to see we were still bringing up the rear. Although our trek through the AT was a ten mile one, we’re sure hers was at least twenty!

Another thing we discovered on this expedition was her sense of direction. We had had to tie a ribbon at our turn back to the cabin. It was kind of hidden along the marked trail and really easy to miss. All the dogs were ahead of the group, gamboling along and jumping over rocks and limbs on our way back. Karma was the only canine to make the turn at the ribbon. The other two kept going. Karma halted, confused. Where was everyone going? She cut over back to the main passage–because of course, she was not going to be left behind–but it was a glimpse at Karma’s keen sense of direction. She never got lost during her lifetime (unlike me) and for her entire life, she would be able to guide us back to wherever we needed to return. Sometimes, she’d circumvent the long way, and take us through the woods on a shortcut, but she could always “take me home, girl.”

Her ability to do this puzzled me, and (as is my wont) I did a bit of research. I discovered that dogs with this good sense of direction would defecate with their body aligned on a north-south axis. I also discovered that foxes used a magnetic sense in successful hunting, which meant it wasn’t unusual in the animal world. So, for a few weeks, I would follow her with my phone compass out, and check the direction of her body axis when she “did her business”. Yup. She took her dumps with her body aligned on the north-south axis pretty much a high percentage of time. To this day, Karma still gives me direction in my life, and brings me home when I’ve lost my way.

Another example of her sense of direction was when we took her to the Chattanooga Aquarium. She was able to look at the critters, because so many of the glass enclosures coursed all the way down to her level. She would watch quietly, but totally enchanted with all of them. Nothing would match her captivation, though, of the penguins of the aquarium. She was so engrossed with them, that I taught her the word “penguin” while she followed the penguins as they darted and swam around in front of her. She claimed a corner of the viewing area, and wouldn’t leave until I had to drag her away. About a half an hour and a floor or two of exhibits later, I noticed the time. I told the group of friends we were with “Hey, it’s feeding time.  You wanna go see the penguins get fed?”  Karma heard the word “penguins”, and took off back toward them, pulling me there on her leash excitedly, around corners and other exhibits to the exact same corner she had occupied earlier.

She just liked other creatures, be they buffalo or penguins or prairie dogs. She was kind to other dogs, patient with the meek, assertive with the bullies, disdainful of the mindless. She came to be known as the therapy dog. At the dog park where we now live, she stayed with the newbies until they were more confident with their surroundings. The skittish were less skittish; the brazen became less brazen under her watchful eye. She made me proud.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you dogs can’t distinguish color. Karma would prove them all wrong. Actually, science has proven that all dogs distinguish color, just differently than we humans do. They see with dichromatic vision, meaning they are sensitive only to two colors: blue and yellow. All other colors, like red, are seen in varying shades and tints of black, grey, and white.

I took Karma for her daily walk once, down to the corner of the intersection of the main street and our street, where there was a small park. We were sitting together on a park bench, watching the traffic cruise by, every once in awhile, Karma calling out to dogs in cars as they drove by. At one point, she started whimpering and calling, her little body trembling in anticipation. She was staring down the street at a car. It was a car that was a twin of the car I was presently driving, a red Mini, stopped at the red light. I realized she recognized it as mine, and that she probably thought George was driving it, and wanted to go with him. I gave her a snuggle, and told her “He’ll be back.” She settled down, but watched it intently as it turned the corner and faded from view.

Another time, George was walking her back to his truck in a parking lot. She disappeared from view, so he backtracked until he found her. She was sitting aside the passenger side of another truck, waiting for him. The truck was the exact shade of blue that George’s truck was.

That was her modus operandi whenever we readied for a road trip, or readied to return from one. She plopped herself down on one side of the vehicle we were using, right by its door. This would happen whether at a hotel, a cabin, or home. “You’re not leaving without me!” Later in her life, when she realized she would not always be going with us, she would stand at the end of the hall, peeking out expectantly at us loading the vehicle or putting on our coats. She would wait with that question in her eyes until we responded with either a “C’mon, Karma” or a “We’ll be back, Karma”. If it was the first, she’d explode down the hall and out to the car. “Oboy! Road trip!” If it was the second, she’d turn and enter the TV room, hop up onto the sofa and settle in to nap and wait. “Oboy! Nap time!” She was such a happy little dog.

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