Alaska News

In Haines, it's raining dogs – lots of dogs

HAINES -- We never had those dog days of summer, although every day is a dog day in a town with 1,897 dogs and 2,400 people.

But we had plenty of duck days, breaking the summer rainfall record. While out walking with my retriever Pearl, I saw Paul Swift, who measures precipitation for the National Weather Service down in Juneau with his wife, Annie, and their old heeler Sissy. He said we had 16.87 inches in June, July and August. The wettest summer prior to this one was a half-century ago.

Paul and I are glass-half-full people, so I asked if this much rain is good for anything except slugs in the kale and he said, "The vegetation really took off."

The brush adjacent to the Chilkat River tidal flats we walk along is lush. It obscures adjacent Mud Bay Road, providing plenty of cover for the bears.

Paul and Annie strap bear spray holsters across their chests. Mine stays in my raincoat pocket. Every morning I spy fresh bear tracks where the beach meets our backyard path, and I whistle as I walk down it. But so far, the bears have been polite and the people and dogs well-behaved. After the first exciting visits to area gardens, everyone picked all the cherries, apples and raspberries, pulled carrots and made sure the electric fences were on around chicken coops. The dogs help deter bears from exploring our yard too, I hope. Especially Phoebe's high-pitched yap. The grumpy 16-year-old terrier mix is good for that, anyway.

Shy Pearl stays close to the porch when she woofs bear warnings. Mike and Ray, the big Newf-Malamutes next door, don't say much but appear impressive enough to keep bears back.

The folks at Haines' Convention and Visitors Bureau advertise that 1,897-dog population figure. But who counts them? The Haines Animal Rescue Kennel issues mandatory licenses. I called their new manager, Nicole, who is also new to town, and she told me they have tagged 700 dogs this year, but they believe there are up to 1,700. It seemed about right. There are dogs everywhere. The mayor sometimes even has her rambunctious young golden retriever, Cooper, in her office. There's a Norwich terrier under the radio station manager's desk. Dogs have been reading buddies for children at the library and have lived at Haines Assisted Living. One dog attends our church more faithfully than I do.

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I looked at a note I saved from Hospice of Haines seeking volunteers to do chores for a fading client, including "bury a dog that passed away."

Melina's 18-year-old dog, Fro, who looked like a black golden retriever, passed away just before her August wedding. Melina and husband-to-be Tim were with him, as were Melina's long-ago beau who shared Fro's custody, and his family, in the yard of the handmade home Melina and Tim built, and where their marriage would take place. The spruce trees were trimmed with bunting and the waterproof tarps stretched overhead.

Fro was Melina's companion from her late teens to her 30s. He was there for years before and after she lost her mother to cancer. In a bittersweet and almost predictable passage, Fro gave up Melina's care privately, two days before she walked down the swamp boardwalk through all that blessed rain and all of us, with no hat even, wet face shining, in that vintage cocktail dress and fox stole.

That fine old dog knew in his bones that everything will be all right for her now that she's home with Tim in their cozy cabin listening to the rain on the tin roof.

How lucky it is to measure life in dog years.

When the new kennel manager called and said a neighbor had given me as a reference in a Lab-mix adoption (unaware that the neighbor was my daughter), I looked at her house on the other side of our shared garden and knew with clarity that is rare for me that if I said yes, nothing will be the same again for at least 10 years. Maybe 18.

There will be puppy stains on my carpet, another wet dog on the sofa. What if he's too much with the babies when her husband is away fishing and ends up here for an extended stay, as Phoebe has? She came home with another daughter so long ago that she has closed the circle, peeing on the floor again.

Do you think one secret to a happy life is rolling the dice and betting you'll enjoy the passing of the time and celebrate whatever comes? Weddings and funerals, rain and sunshine, bears in the brush and the last of the summer's salmon flashing their way up the river?

I do. Which is why there are now 1,898 dogs in Haines. And with this weather, it's a good thing my daughter's puppy is at least half water dog.

Haines author Heather Lende's third book, "Find the Good," will be published in the spring of 2015. Until then, check her blog or Facebook page.

Heather Lende

Heather Lende is the author of "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News From Small-Town Alaska." To contact Heather or read her new blog, The News From Small-Town Alaska, visit www.heatherlende.com.

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