- Borzoi of Blyss Kennels w/Lorene Connolly
Today is a gorgeous winter day. A friend is stopping by later to help me walk the three remaining borzoi. We will take them on a long and vigorous hike in Watchung Reservations. My walks alone with them are much more limited. Since Paris was returned on Christmas Eve, a 7 year old male, I now have three. Mikhailya weighs 75 lbs; but the two males weigh 90, so it is a lot of dog for me to walk at once.
It is so hard to keep up with chores in the house and errands. There used to be two people doing things that now have to be done by me, just one. I feel I never have any real down time, except for when I crawl into bed at night and steal a few minutes to read. That, and listing to the celebrity tabloid news show on HLN help me to fall asleep.
This coming Friday, February 3, 2012, I am having the urn containing Bob’s ashes placed into a niche in a St. Teresa’s Mausoleum in Summit, at a cemetery near our home. I bought a beautiful urn for his ashes. It is made of metal, like a sculpture in the shape of a tear drop. I purchased a second urn for myself when I purchased his. There is enough room in the niche for a second tear drop urn, and that is where my ashes will go. The two urns are a matching set, with one being made of dark metal, one being with a silver finish. I love the setting, nestled between the second and third ridges of the Watchung Mountains, and this really is where I have lived my entire life, almost every day of my life.
I never got to get away for long or live anywhere else so I may as well be put to rest there. It’s funny how regardless of the intensity of our wishes for a certain kind of life and the strength of our efforts to make it so, we can still fail so miserably and fall so short of the mark, and repeatedly, no less, as I have.
I am at a very low point today, for many, many reasons, many not even having to do with grief about Bob, but because I have this grief about Bob, everything else seems unendurable. I am seething in a slow, burning emotional and psychological pain. Moreover, I know this event will be a day of a great demarcation: I feel many Dwyers will leave my life on Friday, and rightly so, for they must move on with their lives. For them, Bob is from the past, and it is best to be forward looking, for all of us.
This is my typical, new normal day here in the Watchung Mountains, on the cusp of February 2012. Everything else concerns dogs, my borzoi. I am immersed in their never ending life events where there is never a dull moment. They keep me sane and grounded and I love them so much. They are so much more reliable and true in love than humans. Humans will reproach you for the fault that you love them too much or not enough, then reject you and walk away in a rage. You can never love your dog too much, can you? Your dog would never leave your side for a perceived shortcoming of your character, would he? Such cruel betrayals only rest in human hearts. Yet I was never meant to own them alone and on a fixed income no less. However, capricious destiny stepped in and played its hand. Now they are my sole responsibility. I can’t let them down.
There is: Casanova, who came first; we purchased him from Joseph Lara, of Lara’s Kennels in 2003.
Mikhailya, purchased from Karen Staudt-Cartabona of Majenkir Borzoi in 2004. She came second, followed by
Paris, who was supposed to be our great Special like his sire but grew up short with crooked legs and a bad bite. He has beautiful breed type characteristics however including a perfect temperament, tail carriage, and prey drive, traits being lost in the breed in borzoi with high national rankings. He is a son of the great Raynbo Special, ”Credo”.
Opal at Raynbo. Our lives were transformed one day when we encountered her by accident with her litter-mates while visiting the Zuckers at their home in December 2004. I followed her to the grave when she died prematurely in July 2006.
Four years later, in December 2008, Blyss Kennels was blessed with the birth of Mikahily’s litter of three male puppies by CH Majenkir Regal by Design.
“Tresor” was the beautiful male puppy we had the joy to keep for three years until he was placed in a loving home after Bob’s death.
Sometimes looking back I wonder at all that Bob and I accompished together with these dogs. We incurred enormous expenses on them, spending madly on their equipment, their special van, their veterinary expenses, the show entries, the hotel rooms, gasoline, and so on. I will most likely look back on those of the most memorabe years of my life, although I was too stressed at the time to be happy. I was going through a horrible illness that became impossible to ignore until Opal died in 2006, forcing me to face up to it.
The story segued two and-a-half years later, in October 2010,when Bob was suddenly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died five months later. The cruelest of ironies was that by then I was feeling more well and strong than I had in over 10 years. I had begun to feel optimistic for the future and our capacity to be happy in it. Even more bizarre, three weeks prior to being diagnosed, on October 10, 2010, Bob was handling Tresor in an Open Dog class at the Morris & Essex Show in Franklin, NJ. It was a job beautifully done, with Tresor and him never looking so good together in the ring. Together, they were both the paradigm of vigor, health, youth and masculine beauty. Destiny had other plans for them.
That is how I came to remain behind at Blyss Kennels with the four borzoi. Mikhailya took this event in the worse way, the dog who loved only him. She despised me and was not shy about letting me know it. It would be many months before she would openly challenge me for my alpha position, and we had it out for the top slot, which fortunately was a battle I won. It took her still another month or two before she openly demonstrated affection for me. Now, she acts like a normal, loving borzoi, she has given me her heart. Still, my heart breaks for her, knowing what she has lost and the huge price she paid. I wish for her sake this never had happened. I would have changed the position of the sun, the moon and the stars to make it otherwise for her; if I could have changed places with Bob I would have then, that is how much I questioned the value of my own life. I wrote the poem for Mikhailya which is posted on the Blyss Blog and was printed in Bob’s Memorial Service’s Order of Service, “Your Hounds will Always Love You”. Those words, like Opal’s Prayer, simply poured out of me, effortlessly.
This is life here at the opening of 2012 at Blyss Kennels. I know henceforth I must look ahead and forever put these matters of the past behind me.
The White Hound.
Tho’ you are gone Your Hounds will always love you.
Your image is burned into their hearts
They wait every day for you to return to them
Again and take them running in the forest
Just beyond our house at dawn. Instead,
their wait is futile for you will never return
Again, and they are left with only me.
The white Hound understands this by now.
In fanciful flight she searches far and wide for you
Among the hidden paths along the trails
That crisscross the mountains,
encircling them,winding up and down
The ravines and precipices throughout the woods:
Her world. Into water, she runs gaily with her puppy
In search of traces of you left behind on happy days.
Her rest is haunted. You are still together in her dreams.
Lorene Connolly April 2011
