The White Dog's Story Is a Circle Now

I have found his people.

Last February, out of the blue, a large white dog showed up at our farm. It was a male Great Pyrenees, and he was wearing a thick red collar, the kind a man would be more likely to buy.

“This is some man’s dog,” I said to my husband, Raven.

Raven had been looking at photos posted by rescue shelters because he wanted a new dog. We had just buried an ancient Pyrenees named Cypress and were about to bury an ancient Anatolian Shepherd named Sequoia.

The Pyrenees who showed up was frightfully thin, his long hair full of burrs. Raven thought he was lost or abandoned. We decided the dog was heaven-sent.

I wrote about this in a Substack post, Raven Manifested a Dog.

The Pattern Begins

The dog stayed.

But sometimes I would see a faraway look come into his eyes. He would look away to the west, as if he were wondering about someone.

“I think this dog has another family,” I would say to Raven, who had begun calling around the neighborhood and posting notices on local “lost dog” sites. Nobody was responding.

After a few weeks, the dog disappeared. I walked around for a few days feeling as if someone had punched me in the gut.

Two months later the dog came back, just showed up covered with burrs right at feeding time. Raven wrote our telephone number in permanent ink on his collar, in case he was a wanderer.

Soon enough he was gone again. A few days later he returned. Our number had been marked out, and a new number was written on the dog’s collar. So he did have another family. Or was this a person who had found our dog and wanted to claim him?

Either way, we didn’t call the number.

But we did a reverse search and found that the number belonged to a home five miles away.

The Saga of the White Dog

Four months after we first laid eyes on him, I wrote about our still-nameless dog in another Substack post, The Saga of the White Dog.

The movement that I described, of him coming to us then leaving, returning then leaving again, continued. During that time our grown son, Silas, visited from Massachusetts. For fun one afternoon Silas tried to guess the dog’s name.

“Rover!” Silas said. The dog stared blankly at Silas.

“Fido!” Nothing.

“Waldo!” Nothing.

This game continued, except that out of nowhere Silas said “Tank!” The dog’s entire body began to shake.

“His name is Tank,” Silas said.

“Tank? That’s an awful name.”

“Frank!” Silas said. “Hank!” “Prank!” The dog walked away.

“I’m calling him Big Boy,” I said, “until we find out his story.”

The Longest Stay is Two Months

As the months passed, he would stay longer and longer periods with us. In fact, when we left for Europe, he had been at the farm without pause for two months.

A week later, the farmsitter reported, he vanished.

My First Visit to the Address

When I got back from Europe, I wanted desperately to know what had happened to the white dog, if he had survived his peregrinations. So one day I drove to the address associated with the phone number on the dog’s collar. No one was home. From inside the house I heard giant barking—could it be him? Interestingly, inside the screened porch was a Pyrenees puppy, a miniature version of the white dog.

The doorbell was the kind that asks you to record a message, and I did. I asked the residents to phone me, and I left my number.

No one called.

More weeks passed and still the white dog did not return.

I Couldn’t Bear His Absence Any Longer

Last week I drove to the house of the white dog and pulled into the yard. A slim, strong man wearing glasses came from the back yard.

“Hello,” I called. The man was late 60s, I guessed, with clear eyes. I introduced myself and kept talking. “When your white dog disappears,” I said, “we’re the people he comes to.”

The man looked at me without judgement.

“You do have a white Pyrenees, don’t you?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” the man nodded. “There he is.”

And then I saw the white dog, emerging from a dog house. He was penned in a large grassy area surrounded by chicken wire. Writing this, I get tears. I fell in love with that dog.

“I have him penned because of hunting season,” the man said, almost apologetically. “I don’t like to keep a dog penned up.”

The man told me his name was Sharpe, and he had been to my house with his cousin Charles, a good friend of ours who died a few years ago. That gave us some common ground. His cousin had been our good friend.

“If you ever want to get rid of your dog, Mr. Sharpe,” I said. “I’d buy him from you.”

“I don’t have any desire to sell him,” Mr. Sharpe said.

“I understand,” I said. “He’s a wonderful dog. I wouldn’t sell him if I were you.”

A Horizontal Sunlight

Nobody said anything for a minute. The day was cool, with the sun striking horizontally across the far pastures the way it does in November. I decided to be honest. “But when you let him out, you know where he’s going, don’t you?” I said.

“I do,” Mr. Sharpe said.

I blazed on. “He’s coming to my house,” I said. “I think he got confused. I think he’s not sure who his people are anymore.”

“He likes to wander,” the man said.

“At first we thought he didn’t have a family,” I said, “and we wanted him to be part of ours. But then after a while he just didn’t want to leave.”

“I understand,” Mr. Sharpe said. He truly was being wonderful. He could have been very angry at me, because I had practically stolen his dog. And now I was trying to buy the dog. “You want to say hello?” he asked me.

“I’d love to,” I said. “Thank you.”

Mr. Sharpe and I crossed his yard to the pen and passed inside. At first the white dog looked at me strangely—the context was all wrong.

His Name

“Hey, Big Boy,” I said.

The dog began to leap into the air. He leapt up in front of me, and when he leapt, his head came to my head. He wanted to land with his paws on my chest, and I let him, but he was large and heavy. I pushed him away, and he leapt again, over and over, leaping with all four paws off the ground into the air in front of me, twisting and throwing his body about, again and again. He wanted to throw his body into mine. I was pretty sure he was going to ruin my clothes.

There were times in the past when I would sit on the ground and pull him into my lap, like a child, and now I wanted to do that.

Mr. Sharpe hollered at the dog. “Tank,” he said. “Stop that.”

“What did you call him?” I asked.

“Tank,” he said.

“Tank’s his name?"

“That’s his name."

Mr. Sharpe had to reprimand Tank a lot before he would stop jumping. “I can tell he knows you,” Mr. Sharpe said. “I’ve never seen him do that before.”

What I Wanted

I knelt down and petted the big dog and talked to him. There wasn’t anything else I could do. If I’m honest, I wanted to walk him over to the car and open the door. Instead I told him how nice it was to see him. I was thinking of the evenings he jumped up on our sofa and sat beside me, and I was thinking of nights he easily leapt up onto our bed, hoping to sleep with us. I didn’t say any of this to his owner, who really was a very kind man.

Before I left, I typed Mr. Sharpe’s number into my phone, and he put my number in his. We took some photos. I told him I’d call him if Tank showed up at my house, once hunting season was over, so that he wouldn’t be worried about him.

“If it’s okay with you, we can share him,” I said. I was begging, if I’m honest.

“We can share him,” Mr. Sharpe said.

This story is very emotional and powerful for me. One reason is that I live a rural life, and a rural life is often one of solitude. When the big dog came walking up the driveway I wasn’t so lonely. Another reason is that our last child left the house early, almost the minute she turned 18, and that blew a big hole in my heart. Another is that the dog chose us—I had been chosen. Another is that I can get very attached to animals.

I Have Some News

A month ago Raven got a puppy. He’s large and he’s white, not a Pyrenees but a shepherd, and he’s really intelligent and also kind, which I find to be the best combination in the world.

I’m excited about the thought of hunting season being over and getting to introduce the big white dog to the little white dog.

Oh, and I decided that the big dog’s name is not Tank. His name came to me one morning while making coffee. Traveler. I’m going to call him Traveler.

The puppy still has no name but we’re figuring it out.

(I am not going to post a picture today, since this is already a long story. Soon I’ll tell you all about the new puppy and share photos of him with you.)

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Not long after the white dog first arrived, we wanted badly for him to belong to us.