It seems so long ago…atop the mountain, at Button Top with my wife, Susan, and two growing children, Nick and Gwen…Christmas approaching, the kids yearning for another dog. Truth to tell, so was I.

While I was away on a business trip, my wife had been forced to bury our friend, “Irving,” an exhausted, cast-off collie who had, one winter evening,  limped into our family circle out of a blizzard roaring through the surrounding woodland. The bedraggled Collie entertained us through that next summer with numerous porcupine chases, all ending painfully for Irving – though happily enough for “Dr. John,” our local veterinarian over in the town of Meshoppen. Irving’s porcupine adventures came to an end one sultry summer day, in the shade of my wife’s car where the old fellow breathed his last. My wife, along with a visiting woman poet and the children, solemnly laid Irving to rest in the clearing behind the cabin.

Although we had an adopted cat, Misty, the kids were after me for a replacement dog. The weekly Tunkhannock NEW AGE contained a sales advertisement for some recently weaned puppies; a brief discussion, and I herded the kids into the car. We were on our way to purchase a registered Malemute pup.

We returned with a frisky, grayish ball of fur. Misty the cat wasted no time in attacking a usurper to her throne. Several wacks with a folded NEW AGE made it clear to Misty that her violent behavior was not to be tolerated. An uneasy peace reigned thereafter. It soon became clear – even to Misty – that our little fur ball, was gaining stature and muscle at an alarming rate. By fall we had on our hands a nearly full-sized Malemute with a voracious appetite. Puppy play a thing of the past, our dog had his own idea of a romp – something like that of a professional tackle in a lineup against a midget football team.

The problem of a suitable name for the dog was solved one day in July when a couple from Anchorage, Alaska arrived unannounced looking for my wife. (It developed that the female half of this duo was an old Sweetbriar schoolmate  – not really a close friend of my wife, but close enough to settle in for a week’s freeloading.) Her boyfriend leafed through a  set of world maps and dabbed a finger on the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska. “There!…” he exclaimed. “Right there. Chukchi’s his name.” And, by golly, our dog wagged his tail: it was his name.

Unlike Irving, who was somewhat standoffish toward the children, Chukchi adored them. He nuzzled into their midst, attempting to take part in their activities.  When his play grew too rough, I would grasp him by the jaws, look into his eyes and offer a gentle lecture. I say “gentle,” because in those stolid blue-green eyes there was more than a touch of wolf – wild eyes that suggested, without notice, you might be dragged bodily through Arctic drifts and plunked, kicking and screaming, into a frigid sea.

After performing, in our driveway, a full dress T’ai chi dance – which, atop the cabin roof repairing a leak, local carpenter Don Miller and helper observed with slack-jawed wonder – our Alaskan visitors departed with a word of warning. Heads bobbing, they asserted: “Oh yeah! Secure that Chukchi to a big old tree with the heaviest, meanest chain you can find! And never let him find out how strong he is – or he’ll snap it! ”

“Well, how does one solve that?” we asked. “Simple,” they answered, “You tie an old inner-tube between the end of the chain and the tree, and when he leaps, the inner tube gives – not the chain!” I suppose it made sense, if you’d hung around Alaskan sled dogs too long. We didn’t take them seriously. Besides, it wasn’t a soothing image to carry around…

Chukchi was getting too big and rambunctious for us to any longer consider him a house pet. He was happier, we found, outdoors. We had acres of wild mountain woodland where we felt he might get lost; we needed a coop. Frank Ketchum, our nearest neighbor several miles down the red shale road,  had an extra dog coop which he set up for us near the back door. It came with a chain that allowed Chukchi to climb up on the cobblestone stoop for meals and water. That chain gave our Malemute pal just enough room to patrol the back yard and our back door. Door-to-door salesmen, Mormon proselytizers, and Seventh Day Adventists grew scarce.

Wild game – turkeys, coons, bear, and deer – also disappeared.  Chukchi padded quietly to within six feet of any visitors, fixed those icy, blue-green eyes on them and watched them wilt back into their vehicles. He never attacked; Chukchi studied…and studied…and studied…and scared the bejaysus out of his subjects.

Occasionally we let him loose, but he got to running through the woods for hours at a time. He always came back, but still we worried. Whenever the kids and I went for a walk, not wishing to encourage his wanderings, we left  him at home hooked on his chain. Until we returned, Chukchi squatted by his coop, snoot pointed heavenward, issuing soulful howls that traveled miles through the timber.

Snow time was prime time for Chukchi. Totally at ease in the most brutal winter weather, he would leap and cavort in the white stuff, carrying on at the township plowmen when they roared down our drive to use our turning circle. On subzero nights, there was Chukchi, behind his cloth-draped doorway, nose over the sill, the rest of him buried deep and warm in the straw bedding of his coop.

At times he seemed off his feed, the wife ascribing this to canine melancholy. Every now and then, while I was away at my daytime job, Susan took pity on Chukchi. Chained as he was, the limpid pools of his eyes stared her down in a bid for freedom; once freed,  he raced away through the woods. Gone for hours, he would return exhausted. One spring day, the purpose of his woodland excursions became quite clear. Not far from the cabin, we caught Chukchi digging up the severed head of a deer. We tried telling ourselves it had been cast off during deer season by some careless hunter, but when we caught him exhuming legs, rib cages, and other deer fragments from multiple hiding spots, it became clear Chukchi himself was the hunter – and a mighty effective one at that. Our gentle pal had been running down deer!

All too much for my wife…she wanted to get rid of the dog. I must say, I wasn’t feel overly happy about the situation. We settled on  stringing up a long cable between two towering oak trees and hooking Chukchi’s chain to a pulley that slid along the cable. Try as he might, Chukchi couldn’t free himself; the long, drooping cable had enough give in it to act like the inner tube that had been suggested to us.

Years later, I would hear my daughter note that her mother and father were, individually, two wonderful people – created under God never to live together. After the divorce, my wife loaded Chukchi into her car and carried him off to the animal shelter in Montrose. I later found out he was adopted by another backwoods family. How he fared, I never learned. I fear not well…

This Christmas, I think of Chukchi and those years at Button Top. In their thirties now, my children are married, successful and, I believe, happy. I take great pleasure in visiting them. But only memories are left of Chukchi – our strange, our mystical…our wonderful Christmas dog.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Animal Lovers, Family Forum, Truckers' interests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.