Dogs ride off into the sunset

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/02/2017 (3397 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On the weekend, my longtime pal and newsroom next-door neighbour Doug Speirs went to see A Dog’s Purpose, that wagging tale of a fantasy flick about a dog that dies and keeps on being reincarnated.

But by Monday morning, when I saw him at work, Doug was facing reality. It was that dilemma that the pet lovers among us dread more than our own deaths. At age 13, Zoe, the darling “wiener” dog, is in failing health, and the Speirs family had made an appointment at their vet to determine if, well, you know, how long she has.

Coincidentally, earlier that morning, I had already decided to share a couple of stories about dogs that were inspired by readers who reached out to me; one email arrived just as 2016 was ending, the other just after 2017 had begun. Both involved remembrances of dogs you may have seen, or read about.

Starting with a dog named DOOG.

He was that classic, famously flamboyant example of man’s-best-friend, who was known to Free Press readers and others as that dog-about-town who road in the sidecar of his master Rowan Horrick’s Ural motorcycle. DOOG wore the ride-along appropriate eye goggles, of course, as if he was doing a send-up of Snoopy, the First World War flying ace.

Rowan and DOOG lived together in Osborne Village, where they were neighbourhood icons, but they rode through the Exchange and Assiniboine Park, and everywhere in between. And over time the inseperable pair became known as regulars at Tim Hortons on Main Street and the Toad In The Hole Pub & Eatery, where for a time Rowan worked security and customers couldn’t help but slip Doog food.

But they not only rode everywhere in the city, they rode year round, at any hour of the day or night.

Wherever Rowan and DOOG rode, whether it was all the way to Minneapolis, on local charity rides, or just around the corner to the Osborne Village Starbucks, they made strangers smile. People who saw them passing would take photos of the two stylish easy riders because they really were a picture of joy, to be shared and seen, over and over.

What most people they met didn’t know, though, is why Rowan rode, and why DOOG was always by his side.

Rowan was coping with post-traumatic stress disorder.

And the rides, sometimes in the middle of the night, would help distance him from thoughts of his service as a Canadian soldier in Bosnia.

That’s why he rode and that’s why he needed DOOG, the dog he found as a pup at the city pound. DOOG was his therapy companion. But it wasn’t until six years ago, when his mother, Marcelle Horrick, contacted Veterans Affairs, when Rowan began getting the help and the benefits he needed. That’s when he could manage to purchase the motorcycle that would offer him another kind of therapy; the freedom of the road and the companionship of the deep human friendships he made along the way.

Then, on April 15, 2014, when Rowan was just 40, the ride ended.

Rowan was alone when his mother discovered his body in the Waterfront Drive studio Rowan had rented to do the large paintings on canvas he had turned to as another way of coping. DOOG had been left behind at the house Rowan shared with his brother Brandon. And for the more than two-and-a-half years his mother, father and brother were left to care for DOOG. Until last Dec. 29, the veterinarian came by the home to send him on his final ride. DOOG was 15.

His mother sent me an email that same day with the request.

“Would you consider doing a final farewell to this special dog?”

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The other email arrived early in January.

“I am hoping you will take five minutes to meet with me,” Susan Katanna wrote. “I don’t have a story for you… but this could be considered a follow-up to a story.”

We agreed to meet at the Starbucks on Corydon where a copy of a column I’d written on the passing of our dog Tate last year was unfolded on the table where Susan was seated. It was only when I sat down, and she reached for something else she had brought, that I made the connection.

It was a rock.

And on the rock she had painted a startlingly life-like image of a smiling Tate, just as he had appeared in a photo that accompanied the column. Susan, as I learned, has turned a hobby into an online presence — Rock Solid Pet Memories — and her talent into a gift for others. Her gift of Tate’s smiling face made me smile, and my wife, Athina, weep. It now sits in our home, smiling back at us on the floor where he once slept.

Rock on Tate. Ride on DOOG.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca