On the Trail
By Gloria Glasser
A Four-Legged Kind of Faith

It was always hard to shop for humans at the holidays––but never for Zoe the Dog.

Though she probably went through several dozen Frisbees and tennis balls in her lifetime, she never tired of receiving a new one.

At Christmas 1998, Zoe’s incredible high-energy life was winding down. Fourteen years of hiking, running, swimming, jumping, climbing and other adventures had left her severely arthritic.

Then she had a stroke-like episode followed by occasional recurring seizures and was never the same.

My friend and I took her to Carpenteria with us to spend the holidays at the beach, which she loved, but her illness only allowed her to have a few cogent moments. One of which was, not surprisingly, when we sat with her atop a sunny ocean bluff on a balmy Christmas day and presented her with a pink Frisbee. She immediately snatched it up and shook, chewed and tossed it about.

Later she suffered one of her periodic and mysterious collapses while frolicking with the Frisbee on the beach, which caused her to become distant and unresponsive to us. We carried her back to my truck, where she slept with her chin on the pink Frisbee all the way home.

When Zoe left me two months later, she took with her much of the joy life had held for me. Bereft of a hiking companion, I stayed close to home.

But at every sound I’d turn and look, expecting her to be there. I’d lost human relatives and friends in the past and managed to cope, but I couldn’t get past the loss of a lop-eared gold dog whose zest for life and courage in the face of adversity both inspired and humbled me.

I’ve never been a person of faith. My father was an agnostic and passed his skepticism on to me. But my pain was so deep, it forced me to acknowledge that faith was anything one believed in that brought comfort––and so in this case I manifested the belief that there was some God in need of the world’s most enthusiastic Frisbee-playing dog to teach Him the nuances of the Frisbee toss and behind-the-back catch.

The night Zoe left me, I conjured up the vision of an angel with cumbersome wings squeezed into the tiny cubicle at the emergency vet’s office, waiting in gilt-edged robes with a collar and leash and slightly mystified expression.

"The Big Boss sent me. Wants to learn something called ‘Frisbee,’" the angel could be overheard murmuring.

When Zoe’s spirit left the examining room table, she was whole and well, her exuberant self once more, a blur of gold yanking the startled messenger on a wild ride through the cosmos.

I missed her nonetheless.

One chilly afternoon I forced myself to revisit a nearby canyon where Zoe enjoyed chasing rabbits.

Even at age 12 she’d run like a gazelle straight up a steep hillside then come hurtling down moments later, her mouth shaped into the canine version of a grin. I always believed if she was capable of speech, her motto would have been "Life’s a blast! Isn’t this such fun?" I looked around and waited. My eyes scanned the hillside. I waited for Zoe to reappear. Her presence was so strong in that place.

Though she was buried beneath an almond tree in a friend’s orchard miles away, I expected her to materialize, to come back to me. When she didn’t, I finally realized she was gone forever.

It was the loneliest moment of my life.

I realized something else, though it took some time to understand. The next day I found myself at the Camarillo Animal Shelter 20 minutes before closing time.

It wasn’t my first time there.

I’d been regularly haunting shelters and pet adoption sites for months looking for that special spark that had instantly drawn me to Zoe, who had been given to me as a sick, homeless puppy but one with enormous spirit and verve despite her hard luck.

A worker told me that any cage marked with an "A" meant that its occupant was available for adoption that day. Dogs at that shelter can only be viewed from a distance, and if they’ve gone to the interior portion of their runs, you’re left staring at an empty cage.

On my third go-round of looking at dogs whose plight moved me but none of whom I felt any "connection" with, I passed just such a cage, hung with an "A" but empty, and so started towards my truck.

Suddenly a gold flash exploded into the outdoor run, prancing on hind legs like a whirling dervish, pinning me with a look at once sly and jubilant. It was some type of hound dog mix puppy, exactly the same shade of gold as Zoe.

Her behavior fairly crowed, "Me! Me! Choose me! Yo, little human, listen up, over here!"

"You I have to see," I said aloud, transfixed by her energy. And within 15 minutes, after signing some papers and paying some money, I understood what had been communicated to me in the canyon the day before.

Somewhere in the middle of a celestial Frisbee game, a lithe gold dog glanced earthward and saw one small lonely human waiting, and so bent the ear of the Big Boss, and together they orchestrated the convergence of two lost souls in Camarillo.