My Lovely Motaki, You Will Be Missed

by Christina Rea
(WV)

Hi, This is Motaki. She is 11 years old in this photo camping in New Hampshire. She died on March 23, 2012 at the age of 13 ½ years.

She was still very alert but her spine and legs had stopped working so we had to put her down. She was scared and shaking and I almost backed out of it but my husband reinforced that it was not fair to her. She camped with us her whole life.

I brought her home at 9 weeks of age and she traveled from West Virginia to California and from Maine to Florida. Camping this year will not be the same without her. She was the sweetest dog to ever set foot on this earth. I only heard her growl twice in her life and both times she was protecting me.

Motaki is an Indian name and means “shadow”. I named her this because she was very dark black when she was little but she followed me everywhere I went until she could no longer get up and then I would help her get to her feet so she could follow me. She lived up to her name in more ways than one.

I wish she had been ready to leave but she wanted, I believe, to stay with me which made it even harder to let her go. I feel guilty and wish she were still here with me. I wonder a lot if I let her go too soon. I try to think about all the fun times we had and how beautiful she was and how her poor body had aged so much in the last year of her life but guilt is a hard thing to get past.

When she was young she and our other German Shepherd, Alex, who was 6 years her senior would play pull with a squeaky hot dog. They would drag each other across the floor because neither one would let go. They finally managed to rip the hot dog to pieces and even then still wanted to play with it. I finally threw the thing away because I was afraid they would choke on it.

As a puppy she would chew on my shoe laces and only my shoe laces. She never chewed on the shoes or anything else. I could leave food on the edge of the table or counters and leave the garbage out and she would never touch it. She was such a good girl.

I would go down to the basement to work and many times I wanted both dogs to stay upstairs because I didn’t want them to get dirty in the unfinished basement but within minutes they would both come running down the steps to where I was. I couldn’t figure out how they were getting past the basement door.

You did not have to turn the door knob because it was broke but you had to pull the door open and it just didn’t make sense. The older dog was always the first one down so I thought she was hitting the door until it bounced open and then come down.

My husband one day was asleep in the recliner in the living room when I went downstairs. He said he woke up to see Motaki stand up on her back legs and put her front paws over the door knob of the basement door and walk backwards to pull the door open at which point Alex ran down the steps first. Case was solved.

What a smart girl she was indeed. She was so agile and could jump higher than any dog I have ever seen. Those wonderful back legs of hers finally gave out. I loved her and still do with all my heart and miss her terribly. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥