Kodiak was our 140 pound Malamute. We had her for 15 wonderful years. As a new puppy to our household, she weighed 22 pounds, so we knew she was going to be large. Her personality was just as large. She was a character, always letting that personality show in heartwarming ways.

We used to laugh as we watched her pull our nieces around their back field on a sled for an hour. She loved “working.” And the neighborhood kids knew her so well, they would knock on our door and ask, “Can Kodiak come out and play?” They wanted sled rides, too.

Once, while George was fly fishing on the Delaware River he spotted her floating downriver in the fast-moving current. (She went everywhere with him and last he’d seen her, she was lounging on the riverbank.) He threw his flyrod down in a safe place, and hightailed it after her, worried that she’d be carried so far downstream that he wouldn’t be able to rescue her. Splashing through the water in his waders, watching her float further and further away, he started to worry….. and then, stupefied, he stopped and watched as she suddenly took a right turn to swim back onto the bank, charged back up the riverside upstream, only to plunge into the current again. She wasn’t distressed. She was water surfing.

We found out she loved beer only because she hung out on the back porch during a party. That was where the keg was. She lapped up the overflow of beer all night. The next morning, she didn’t want to move from the dining room where she fell asleep. (She had a hangover!) From that point on, when George took her fishing, he had to warn any other fishermen not to put their beer on the ground, otherwise, she’d surreptitiously tip the cans over so she could have the beer. We met a lot of new people through her interactions with strangers.

One day, I’m out in the yard, playing with my flowers, and a guy walks by. He sees Kodiak in our yard, and exclaims, “Is that your dog?” I’m hesitant, but she is in our yard after all, so lying would be indiscreet.

“Yeah….” I say, “Why?”

He laughs. “That dog takes a short cut through my house.”

I discover he lives around the corner from us, a short jaunt for a Malamute.

He goes on to tell me how he was sitting in his living room, eating a hamburger, when “that dog” noses open his screen door, ignores him and his hamburger, pads determinedly through his house, and then pushes open the opposite door without so much as a thank you!

Ah, Kodiak, how I miss you!

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