Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Maya con Dios


On May 23, 2013, Maya White Hauenstein passed away.  She was 14 years old.

A picture of Maya on a California beach captures it.  She stands stocky with her chest out, proud and defiant, uninterested in the camera.  Her ears and tail are at attention, eyes fixed somewhere far down the beach, ready to chase whatever it is that needs chasing.  A thin leash extends limply in the air behind her, mocking any idea that this dog could be restrained.  The churning ocean in the background seems held back by the force of her personality.


So did Maya dominate our lives for over a decade.  She was born on May 22, 1999 on the plains of Colorado to a grand champion Samoyed named Vegas and a skittish kennel dog who apparently had a tail worth breeding for.  When Kristy picked out “Red Dog,” the runt of the litter, it was partly due to the adorable face that would coax thousands of treats from people’s meals during her lifetime, but mostly due to the fact that she walked alone on the perimeter of the play area, perhaps looking for her Daddy but certainly wanting nothing of the kids and parents picking out a family dog.  These two feisty and independent girls were made for each other.  For nearly fourteen years they would be inseparable.

In Colorado, Maya and Kristy climbed mountains, hiked through deep snow, ran on trails where rattlesnakes sunned themselves.  Independent Maya always ran ahead, but she would stop and look back just often enough to be sure Kristy followed.  It defined Maya.  She refused taming but loved Kristy with passion.  The passion she felt for “her people” radiated from big brown eyes and a mischievous smile.  Her people loved her back, maybe even more so for the flaws that passion created.


Maya never cared much for other dogs.  Her best canine friend in life was a pit bull named Minnie whom she never saw after her second birthday.  She loved Chewbacca, the patriarch of the Samoyeds in Kristy’s family home, but even he she rarely saw after moving to California in 2001.  She tolerated her aunt Samara.  Eventually she got along with Jack.  Other dogs she didn’t trust.  She ate ravenously to finish before another dog stole her meal.  Dogs who approached to greet her were met with a sideways glare, then a snap if they didn’t get the picture quickly enough.  When put in the same house as another dog, Maya would unleash a relentless display of alpha dog maneuvers until an accompanying human would get embarrassed or fed up and remedy the situation by removing one of the dogs.  Perhaps Maya never thought she was a dog.  Perhaps she was just Kristy’s best friend.

So she didn’t take kindly to Kristy leaving her to go about other activities in her life.  They call it “separation anxiety,” but Maya was never so much anxious as she was simply pissed off.  The howling and barking were one thing, the defecation quite another.  Before we figured out how she preferred to be babysat, Maya terrorized friends and family and anyone else who tried helping us.  On one occasion she thoroughly soiled my boss’s house.  When we locked her in Unk’s kitchen while we attended church, we came home to find her somehow standing on the kitchen table, staring out the window at us.  Once, while Charity cleaned poop from the corner of her bedroom, Maya jumped onto her bed and peed on her pillow.  On vacation in Mexico, I received an email from Charity with the subject line, “Puke, poop, pee.”  The body of the email simply read, “It sucks to be me.”



But when she was with Kristy she was completely in tune with her.  When Kristy was happy, Maya was happy.  When Kristy was sad, Maya clung to her to cheer her up.  When Kristy was exasperated, Maya took action.  Once in the middle of the night Kristy let Maya and Samara out to relieve themselves, but Samara wouldn’t come back to the house.  After a few minutes of rising frustration from Kristy, Maya marched out into the snow, grabbed Samara by the collar, and dragged all sixty pounds of her up the steps, across the deck, and into the house.

When I met Maya she stayed in the back of the SUV, measuring me.  But the first time I kissed Kristy in front of her, Maya pushed her face in between us and began licking both our faces.  From that day on she was my dog, too.

She was as in tune with me as she was Kristy.  At times when I would raise my voice, Maya would begin punching my shin with her front paw.  Once she had my attention she would back up, wag her tail furiously, and look up at me with that Samoyed smile until I started laughing.  One time as I sat at the computer screen I raised my voice over some dumb Al Davis move I was reading about (keep in mind the Raiders went to the Super Bowl during Maya’s lifetime), and three quick punches hit the back of my head.  I turned around to see Maya’s smiling face inches from mine as she stood leaning over the back of the couch to reach me, tail wagging at full speed.


Her enthusiasm was infectious.  The happiest I ever saw Maya was in the Sierras in the snow.  During a drive we stopped for some reason and let her out in a small field.  For a long minute she completely lost it, leaping this way and that, scooping snow in her mouth, enticing all of us to play.  It was as if pure joy had manifested from the white snow.  She was built for snow.  Sierras snow, Rockies snow, even Wisconsin snow.  She saw a lot of snow and she saw a lot of states, racking up more frequent flier miles than many people and wearing out three family vehicles criss-crossing the country.  Maya was happy when she was with us.


Her favorite place was the beach.  Crissy Field, in particular, but she loved Fort Funston, Muir Beach, Monterey, Half Moon Bay, Shell Beach – any beach, really.  The wind and the cold water energized her, and she would run up and down the beach expending that energy, always distracted by something that caught her eye.  A small dog to intimidate, a rotting seal to investigate, picnickers to charm out of whatever food they had on hand.  Maya was an intensely curious dog, a trait we always expected to get her into trouble.


In fact Maya had several cat-like traits beyond curiosity.  She was agile, pacing the 2-inch wide back of the couch or gliding under the coffee table at full speed in pursuit of another dog.  She did not “smell like a dog,” an important trait to my mother.  And she most certainly had nine lives.

How she survived her car-chasing phase we really can’t say.  Once I ran up The Embarcadero against traffic waving my arms furiously as Maya chased the Muni train and threatened to dart across the street at any moment.  Another time I made a fine tackle of a wild eyed Maya against a fence in Kingsburg.  And a terrifying sprint through a snowy field where we were stranded near Mammoth only ended when a truck rolled out of view on the lonely highway and Maya forgot what she was chasing just long enough for me to catch her.  I hate to imagine what Angie never told us happened during their off-leash adventures.

Her mistrust in dogs proved self-fulfilling when a neighbor’s ill-trained pit bull decided to make it his mission to eradicate her.  After months of banging against the garage door, he finally escaped and made a direct line for Maya.  Fur flew, but Maya miraculously avoided damage, likely because of the thickness of that fur.  But another night several months later the fur would not stop the pit bull – nor would the fireplace poker I sunk 2 inches into his back.  Once we made it inside we took inventory.  She was bleeding from where the pit bull locked his jaw on her hip, and she would spend that night in emergency surgery.  But she stared into my eyes and licked my face as I looked her over, hoping to cheer me up as she always did.

Maya’s medical history was nearly as long as her travel log.  Flea allergies, eye injuries, infections.  Recurring e-coli infections had damaged the majority of her kidneys by age seven.  None of it really slowed her down.  She lived boldly, that passion always driving her.

Nowhere was that drive more on display than her walks.  Like any dog, she loved her walks most of all.  A walk with Maya happened at full blast, the pace fast, the leash never slack.  Most walks became a battle of logistics, the walker trying to select a route to encounter the fewest dogs possible, Maya looking for any opportunity to take a longer route and extend the walk.  When she saw another dog she would bark and try to sprint in its direction, hopping on her back legs against the pull of the leash as the walker wrestled with her and hurried on out of view of the offending dog.  We tried training, treats, gentle leaders, and harnesses, stopping just short of dog hypnosis.  Only one thing ever slowed her down.  Age.

For a while it was a relief.  While we could no longer count on being pulled up hills, wrangling her became easier.  Eventually she could be held close and she wouldn’t even bark at other dogs.  As time went by we began daring to take her outside without a leash.  In her final months she never wore a leash at all.

Hip dysplasia and neuropathy had taken their toll.  This supremely agile dog who would never be tamed now often fell while pooping or went 24 hours without peeing because she couldn’t squat.  When she had to go outside I would carry her to a relatively flat patch of grass in the neighborhood where she could walk around without rolling down a hill.  She ate ravenously again, only now she wasn’t racing competing dogs, just the precious seconds before her hips gave out and she fell to the floor, unable to reach her bowl.

Her spirit never faded.  She clung to Kristy and me, reading our roller-coaster emotions, licking our faces, staring at us knowingly with those deep brown eyes.  On her final day she encountered a three-legged Chihuahua at the park and chased it, barking hoarsely and stumbling sideways all the way.  We laughed that a phrase we’d said many times had come true.  She was indeed chasing little dogs until the day she died.  When she passed away it was on a hill in San Francisco, in the sun, and she was perfect.


During Maya’s final weeks, time outside was spent patiently waiting for her to relieve herself.  We had given up walks long ago, the hips unable to make it.  Now it was all about carrying her to the right patch of grass, steadying her hips, and getting her walking so she could find a suitable spot.  Each effort could take 30 minutes, and happened at all times of the day and night.  One day after 20 minutes of trying to find a comfortable spot to pee, Maya turned and began walking away from the grass.  As she walked awkwardly to the street I followed at a distance, curious to see what she would do.  Maya turned and began walking up the steep hill we had walked so many times before.  I expected her to crash to the cement but she didn’t, and though her walk looked painful, she kept on climbing.  I stood and watched her go about 50 feet up the hill when she stopped, turned to the side, and looked back at me as if to say, “Follow me.”

4 comments:

  1. I'm so sorry for your loss. She sounds like she was a crazy awesome dog.

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  2. Little Fluffy, Puffy. She touched all of us. Miss you Maya! xoxo

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  3. Lovely! I know you and Kristy are heartbroken. Kristy always loved Maya so. Please send her my sympathies. It is so hard to loose those 4 legged family members.

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  4. Can’t believe it’s been 10 years! Reading this made me smile and tear up a bit but mostly remember Maya fondly💕

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