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.”
