The Ebony Dog: A Love Story

Today is the 5th anniversary of losing my Ebony Dog. Missing him, I sorted through my blog posts about him. They tell the story pretty well.🐾

If you only read one, I suggest this one:

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2021/06/the-electing-love-of-god-and-ebony-dog.html

In rough chronological order, here are all:

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2016/07/june-2016-eight-years-ago-today-ebony.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2017/10/sermon-on-sofa-from-archives.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/05/long-and-short-of-it-ebonys-corner.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/04/eucharisteo-and-what-cat-left.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2013/02/ugos-and-broken-cisterns.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2012/04/what-love.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/12/dirty-truth.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2018/06/i-wait-for-you-from-archives-ebonys.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2017/10/velcro-dog.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2018/06/12-things-you-may-not-know-about-ebony.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2021/06/the-electing-love-of-god-and-ebony-dog.html

The Electing Love of God and the Ebony Dog

 In memory of the late, great Ebony Dog (2006?-June 1, 2018)

My handsome date for the royal wedding broadcast, May 2018

Dogs pick their people, or so they say.

Once upon a time,

A black super-dachshund named Rex,

Left at a shelter so long the volunteers feared it was permanent,

Chose me to be his Person.

Before I had done anything for him, good or bad,

Before I changed his name to Ebony,

With the inscrutability of grace,

He picked me.

 

To the Ebony Dog,

I was never too much,

Even when I was.

He drew all the closer to my tears,

Kissing them away from my face.

He wagged his tail with my laughter.

He nestled against my leg or belly

In my hours upon hours of physical therapy exercises.

He never bored of my company,

Not even with months on the sofa

And years mostly in the house.

He made the love and companionship of God

Tangible to me in the funerals,

The heartbreak,

The five surgeries in five years,

The anxieties,

The upheavals

Of his decade as the canine of the couch.

He loved the people I loved,

But only because I loved them.

His favorite place to be was at my side.

No matter what.

 

To the Ebony Dog,

I was never too little,

Even when I was.

He consented to Amore walking him without me,

But he sulked all the way to the turn toward home

And strained at the leash the rest of the way.

Even in those final days

When he collapsed in the living room

Before my shocked and stricken eyes,

And I couldn’t lift him off the floor where he'd fallen,

Into the car, to drive him to the vet,

As I rocked myself and wept,

Waiting for help to come to help us both,

He tried to wag his tail when I reached down to stroke his ears

Or tried without success to find the place of pain.

I couldn’t help my most constant companion,

My de facto emotional support dog,

In his time of greatest need,

But there he was, telling me

It would be all right.

 

That last morning in the vet’s office,

My weakened, struggling dog,

Who would normally be trembling with anxiety

And hiding under a chair,

Resisted us, tried to jump off the table

And get away from the hands trying to help him,

To ease his suffering.

I told my mother afterward,

And her response was instant:

“He didn’t want to leave you.”

“You think he knew that was what was happening?”

“Yes. He was a very perceptive dog.

He never did like being separated from you.”

 

His constant, lavish, undeserved, undeterred affection,

With the inscrutability of grace,

Chose me

To be his Person.

It was one of the greatest earthly gifts

I’ve known in seven weeks of years of life.

In his love I read a parable of

The unconditional, electing love of God.

To Him I am never too much

(Because He is always bigger),

Never too little

(Because He is always enough),

Always accepted and acceptable in the Beloved,

Chosen and blameless in His eyes.

His affection is constant, unfailing,

Not bound by dog years or pages on a calendar,

Not excluded by quarantine or locked doors.

Though the Ebony Dog has left me,

The God he pointed to never will.

He stopped at nothing to be with me—

Becoming human flesh,

Giving His only Son,

Showing me my sin and His salvation,

Birthing faith in my heart—

To unite me to Himself forever.

Who, indeed, shall separate me from Him?

The Changing of the Guard Dog: Introducing Moose Tracks

As regular readers know, the late great Ebony Dog passed away June 1 after a brief illness. We initially thought we would take several months just to grieve and recover from the intensity and trauma of his final week. We reconsidered the timing, in part because this time we knew we needed a dog who would be great with the youngest nephews, who live close enough to see us frequently now. They would have more opportunities to get acquainted with Ebony's successor if we adopted before they went back to school, so we started looking in earnest and going to adoption events.

After one failed foster trial that clarified our non-negotiables, we found a dachshund-terrier mix on Petfinder with a happy face that looked a little like Eb’s. In fact, the facial resemblance is strong enough that Google photo assistant mixes them up on a regular basis. Appearance and appetite are where the resemblance ends, however!

He came to us as Diesel, but now he answers (when he feels like it) to the name of Moose Tracks, like the ice cream. His foster family was amazing and loved him dearly but couldn't adopt him permanently. We have stayed in touch with them, and his foster mom remains his biggest fan.

Moose Tracks (AKA Moosey, Moose, Moose Munch, Special Agent Shredder) is smart, social, silly, sassy, stubborn, and as devoted to Amore as Ebony was to me. He is so smart and curious that he gets bored and invents his own activities if we don’t provide enough stimulation. He is so social that Amore takes him to the dog park on weekends whenever the weather permits, and we are planning doggie daycare days into the routine because he needs and loves them. Ebony was a shy, calm, introverted dog, so there has definitely been a learning curve (which we’re still traveling) as we discover the rhythms and routines that work best for all of us.

Moose Tracks loves walks, training, sunbathing, meeting new people, and barking at the neighbors across the street when they come and go. He has 2 speeds: all out and crashed out. At the moment, he is crashed out, allowing me to put together this many-times-delayed post. (He is not a fan of the glowing screen thingies that pull his humans' attention away from him. Priorities, people!!)

He loves to eat almost anything: mulch, cookies, bully sticks, peanut butter inside a bone, “crunchy water” (ice), sticks, wood shavings, throw rugs, old pillows, stuffed animals, carrots,... He doesn’t like plain lettuce, but that may be the only thing he won’t eat. In fact, he has inspired the Moose Tracks Diet:

if it fits in my mouth, it’s food. If it does not fit in my mouth but I can break it into pieces that fit in my mouth, it’s food. If Mommy says, “No, no, Moose Tracks!! Leave it! Leave it!" It’s definitely food and probably really yummy.

He also has his own tongue twister: How much mulch would a Moose Tracks munch if a Moose Tracks could munch mulch? (The answer is “all of it.”)

Moose Tracks also adores his stuffed animals, but love hurts. I have a toy hospital with a revolving door. He tears one up, I sew it back together, he tears it up again, I repair it again, and so forth until there's not enough left to repair. I wouldn't bother, but he's just too cute when he plays with them, especially when he has a case of the zoomies and sprints around the house squeaking one in his mouth.

Moose has learned quite a few commands in our training sessions: sit, down, stay, come, place, leave it, heel, crate, paw, spin around, roll over, play dead, peekaboo, and drop it. We are working on find it, bring it, floor (when he climbs on something he shouldn't) and head down. He learns very quickly with the proper motivation (food). Heel and leave it are Mr. Curiosity's biggest challenges. Also, he is part billy goat and able to climb on anything he wants. We are still working on those boundaries.

As you can see, Moose tolerates the camera well, and the camera loves him. Today he has been in our family for 6 months. He adds a lot of laughter, makes our Fitbits happy, and challenges our creativity and training skills. We love him a lot! If you come to see us, expect kisses and a welcome waggin'.

Now that we're more settled into our new routine, I will endeavor to post here more consistently in 2019, but I make not promises. Also, I do micro-blog pretty regularly on Instagram: @crumbsfromhistable. Moose has his own feed for the dog people among you: @moosetracksmoore. (Do take what he says with a grain of salt. He is not always the most reliable narrator.)

One Year at Wingshadow

This post was intended for May, our anniversary month in the new-to-us house, but Ebony's illness and death altered the trajectory of the end of May and much of June. Since then, I have received and had to decline a bucket-list opportunity that required travel too strenuous for me, celebrated Father's Day with a family movie, held down the fort without Special Agent Hoover's help so Amore could move his mother to north Texas, started chiropractic treatment, hosted a foster dog for 5 exhausting days, and tried another foster dog for a week who turned out to be a keeper (but still exhausting...ha ha). We wrapped up the summer with a week of Minion Camp and a big family celebration of 2 milestones that occurred within days of each other.

(Another milestone, the eighth anniversary of this blog, passed unnoticed in that blur, save in my heart and mind. Happy belated birthday, Crumbles!)

The chiropractic treatment, with a specific practitioner at the prescription of my physical medicine/pain doctor, seems to be helping, although I'm sore for a day or so after each one still.

But I digress. The first week of May marked one year in residence at the house in my parents' neighborhood. After months of deliberation, we named it Wingshadow. The trees overarching two sides of the house remind me of the shadow of God's wing over us, protecting us. Several verses from the Psalms refer to this:

Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings,
from the wicked who do me violence,
my deadly enemies who surround me (Psalm 17:8-9).

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings (Psalm 36:7). 

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
till the storms of destruction pass by (Psalm 57:1).

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me (Psalm 63:8).

In the wilderness, whether minding his sheep or fleeing from Saul, David, the shepherd-king, had perhaps observed mother birds sheltering their young under a wing in stormy weather and taken similar refuge in Yahweh when he so frequently needed protection.

On a similar note, David wrote, "He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler" (Psalm 91:4). The version of this Psalm in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer reads, "He shall defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers."

Little did we know when we moved how much we would need that truth in the forefront of our minds. It has been another hard year in a series of hard years... almost a decade of them now. We lost Cindy, Ebony, and Amore’s favorite job he’d ever had (when his employer was acquired). We’ve had health setbacks, home maintenance surprises, and family crises of varying degrees. The Moore family home no longer has any Moores living there.

Yet we are no less sheltered beneath the shadow of God’s wing. No hard or happy thing can touch us unless He permits it, and He only appoints what is for our good and His glory. So it is for you, dear Crumble, if you are His child. Courage, dear heart!

Here are the first 16 months at Wingshadow in photos (minus the gazillion photos of the young nephews here, which I omit out of respect for their privacy, but which do very much exist... should their grown-up selves ever come across this post and take offense).