Updated on January 24, 2003

The Greatest Dog in the World

Right from the start, Jasper let it be known that he wasn't going to just sit back and be ordered around. It wasn't that he was intent on misbehaving - quite the opposite - but he wanted to make it quite clear that he was going to have input on how things were done. We were returning from the Mom & Pop pet shop where $50 had gotten me an adorable bundle of fur. I had come prepared with a large cardboard box in which to keep the 8-week-old husky-shepherd puppy for the hour-plus drive through the back roads of Maine. At approximately 2 feet wide, 2 1/2 feet long, and 2 1/2 feet high, the box would surely contain the little guy until we got home, I reasoned. He was a surprise birthday gift for my girlfriend, Shari, so I had to go it alone.

The box held the as-yet-unnamed dog for about 60 seconds. With a judicious amount of pluck, coupled with a bit of whimpering and scratching, the puppy managed to scale the corrugated walls and proceed to do his best to interfere with my driving. With one arm, I picked him up and placed him back in the box which was sitting on the passenger's seat. For the now-experienced box climber, it was even easier getting out the second time. And the third. And the fourth. Finally, I pulled over and placed him in the back of the vehicle, where I had the seats down. Hopefully this spaciousness would satisfy his urge to roam, I thought. The new scenery did occupy him for a few minutes, but soon his attentions once again turned to the front of the car. I struggled to concentrate on my driving while keeping one eye on the wandering pup. When he finally tackled the maze of blankets and folded seats to make his way up front again, he wiggled his way into my lap and promptly settled down, where he happily remained for the rest of the trip. "I'll make things easy for you," he seemed to be saying, "as long as you let me be where I want to be."

Needless to say my girlfriend was surprised by the new addition to the household - even more so, I think, than she was by my marriage proposal on the same day. A very busy day was followed by a very sleepless night. At the time, our house had many more rooms than we had furniture, so the puppy was afforded a spacious 20 foot by 20 foot room all his own. When you're a lonely puppy away from your litter mates for the first time, however, space is probably the least thing you are interested in. "Let him cry until he falls asleep," the puppy book warned, reasoning that to give in to his cries would only encourage him to cry in the future. After about two hours of incessant crying, it became apparent that the authors of the puppy book hadn't given much thought to the sanity of the pet owners. We groggily scrambled downstairs to the puppy's room and removed the safety gate from the doorway. The puppy stopped crying, gingerly ran across the hallway into the living room, and laid down on the floor next to the couch. Not another cry was heard from him that night or any other night. Once again, Jasper was letting it be known that he would be reasonable, as long as we let him have a say.

Naming a pet is probably more difficult than naming a baby - it seems you have so many more options to chose from. My first inclination was to name him "Dexter" after the town in which he was born. But he just didn't look like a "Dexter." We tried coming up with a Native American name, but nothing we could think of seemed to fit either. Finally, we settled on "Jasper" in honor of a unique beach in Downeast Maine that we were both fond of. The more we used the name, the more it grew on us, and we became quite proud that we had managed to come up with a distinctive, unique name for our "baby." Or so I thought - several months later when a little girl asked me the name of my dog and I said "Jasper," she sheepishly replied, "That's my brother's name." And, indeed, it turns out that Jasper is a somewhat common name for males in these parts.

As Jasper grew, it became apparent that there was something other than just husky and German Shepherd in his genes. A lot of collie attributes began to show through, and his size, a stocky 105 or so pounds, suggested that the husky may in fact have been malamute, or some other large breed. More than a few people even suggested that he was part Saint Bernard. Whatever the combination, it proved to produce an incredibly handsome dog with delightfully expressive ears and eyes that looked to be surrounded by eye shadow. As I was walking him one day, a stranger approached and asked if she could have a puppy if I ever bred him. Being a conscientious dog owner, I got him fixed, but I often wonder whether I should have given him the opportunity to pass on his genes.

Early on, Jasper developed several passions that he would carry with him throughout his life. One was a love of water. Being within walking distance of the ocean, I'm sure, had something to do with this. His webbed paws also served him well as paddles in his marathon swimming quests both in the ocean and in nearby lakes and ponds. And, of course, there was no "out of season" as far as swimming went - he was just as comfortable and content jumping into the ocean in January as he was in July. This nearly got him into trouble one day as he waded out into Searsport harbor and stepped up onto a large block of ice. The weight of him jumping on the iceberg caused it to drift away from shore, and soon Jasper found himself a stowaway, drifting farther and farther from land and unsure as to whether it was safe to jump off the ice and swim back. I pleaded with him to jump, but he remained unsure. Soon, panic set in for both of us and I was contemplating how the icy water would feel as I swam out to rescue him. Fortunately, before I had to make the plunge, Jasper reasoned that swimming for shore was a better alternative than drifting off to sea, and he dived off the ice flow and swam back to me. I made sure he kept off icebergs after that.

Another of Jasper's passions was sticks. Well, actually, the term "stick" is a bit of a misnomer - Jasper liked to fetch logs and trees, the bigger the better. He could carry chunks of wood in his mouth that I had trouble picking up in my arms. He delighted in venturing into the woods, latching on to the biggest fallen "stick" he could find, and tugging and dragging it until he got it out into the open. On more than one occasion, he managed to haul out branches that were well over 12 feet long. He was a one-dog lumbering operation.

It wasn't long after we got him home that Jasper let it be known that he was an outside dog. When he was inside, he wanted to be out. When he was outside, he wanted to stay out. I found some plans for a dog house, decided it was too small, and built it 50 percent larger than the plans called for. It turned out to be way too large, even for a 100 pound dog. But after stuffing it with straw it proved to be plenty comfortable and Jasper called it home for the first six years of his life. It was only on the very coldest winter nights that we insisted that he come inside.

As an exuberant youth, Jasper made sure we, and he, got plenty of exercise. Back then, walks were even more cause for celebration than food to him, and I went on no less than four walks a day, every day, for about the first five years of his life. The walks always began with a sprint of about 1/3 mile - until we turned the corner on our block and got to the "interesting smells" part of the journey. To his credit, Jasper was smart enough to decline going jogging with me. He tried it once and realized that jogging was all that was involved - there was no sniffing trees, tugging sticks out of the bushes, or exploring.

Hiking was a different matter, though. Hiking was the ultimate walk - up, down, over, and through the woods - with an unlimited supply of sticks. There was almost nothing Jasper couldn't tackle. One memorable hike was up the Precipice trail at Acadia National Park. This trail is a particularly steep and challenging hike that includes sections in which iron bars have been placed in the granite to assist hikers in getting up the steepest sections. Jasper managed to work his way up about 2/3 of the trail, including sections with rungs, before we met an insurmountable obstacle - an iron ladder that spanned about 10 feet high. He fussed and fretted and tried to climb the rungs, but we couldn't find a solution to get him past the spot. Perhaps a bit selfishly, I had him wait at that point while I summited the trail and then returned.

But it wasn't all fun and games for Jasper - there was work to be done too. I didn't like leaving Jasper home alone for any length of time if I could help it, so whenever possible I brought him to work with me. This practice had an auspicious beginning. A client of mine had a two-year-old Airedale and when I got Jasper, he insisted that I bring him along when getting together for our next meeting. I was happy to oblige, and Jasper and the Airedale got along just fine. At some point during the encounter, however, Jasper must have felt a little bit threatened or challenged by the Airedale. As I leaned against a desk talking to the client, Jasper gingerly walked over to me and proceeded to lift his leg and "mark" his "territory" by wetting my leg. Fortunately, the client found this as funny as I did.

Although Jasper developed into what I would call the "perfect" dog, he was not without his quirks. When he was about five years old, he developed a habit of menacingly growling at certain people. He never bit anyone, but the growling was enough to keep people wondering if or when he might decide to chomp. Curiously, he didn't do this with everyone and there didn't seem to be a pattern as to who he would do it to or under what circumstances. Sometimes he would growl at ardent dog lovers, while at the same time he would take a liking to those who would rather have nothing to do with him. We would try to convince those on the receiving end of growls not to take it personally, but it wasn't always easy.

The most memorable growling event occurred while I was helping some friends launch a sailboat in Searport harbor. After getting the boat in the water, we had to get it out to it's mooring. Some of us were on the boat, and some of us were in a canoe which was used to tow the boat out to the mooring. All the while we were on the water, Jasper was in it, swimming from vessel to vessel to make sure he didn't miss any of the excitement. When he swam, Jasper often breathed heavily and made high-pitched sounds like he was gasping for air. Rich, who was in the canoe, became concerned that Jasper was too far from land to make it back and might be in jeopardy of drowning. He maneuvered the canoe over to Jasper, leaned over, and extended his arm to offer assistance to the poor dog. Jasper promptly switched from gasping for air to growling loudly. This resulted in a flurry of expletives from Rich and a promise never to offer the dog assistance again.

When Jasper was six years old, we sold the Searsport house and rented a place in the country as a temporary place to live until we built a new house. I thought Jasper would be delighted with the almost limitless expanse of woods and land to run around on. And while he certainly appeared to appreciate the freedom (we no longer had to keep him on a run when he was outside), I think he also missed the hustle and bustle of "city life." In Searsport, we lived on Route 1, so there was an almost constant flow of traffic, as well as the occasional pedestrian to bark at. In Jackson, about the only the only thing he had to look forward to was the daily arrival of the mail lady.

Our time in Jackson also marked the departure of one half of the only family unit Jasper had ever known, as Shari and I got divorced. It was not easy conveying this concept to a dog. He was used to Shari getting home from work at roughly the same time every evening, and when that didn't happen, he became very anxious. Eventually, he resigned himself to the fact that she wasn't coming back. Since Shari could not find an apartment that accepted dogs, I (cheerfully) maintained the responsibility of raising Jasper. The breakup between Shari and I was amicable, and for many years he made periodic day trips to visit her.

Jackson proved to be a bit too remote for both me and Jasper, so when the lease was up, we relocated to an apartment near the waterfront in Belfast. The apartment was small and on the second floor, so Jasper didn't spend a whole lot of time inside. Instead, he was quite satisfied to plant himself in the gravel driveway and once again watch the flow of vehicles and people coming and going. This, coupled with the bonus of having the ocean a few steps away, made for a happy dog.

By this time, Jasper had slowed down considerably. He had been born with hip dysplasia which got progressively worse as he got older, and arthritis also joined in to make his life a bit uncomfortable. Although he was no longer interested in long hikes up mountains, he still looked forward to his daily walks. Occasionally, circumstances dictated that he partake on these walks by himself. Jasper was extremely frightened of thunder and fireworks. One night, while I was watching fireworks from the nearby park, I realized that I had forgotten to put Jasper inside the apartment. When I returned, he was nowhere to be found. I went walking around the neighborhood calling his name, but to no avail. All I could hope for was for him to return on his own during the night. I was more than a little bit concerned when I awoke in the morning and he still wasn't around. I called the animal shelter. I called the police. I drove through the neighborhood. Someone had seen him downtown, hiding in a shop doorway - but he was long gone from there. Finally, at about 10:30, I got a call from the animal control officer. They had Jasper! Not only that, but they delivered him right to my apartment. He was awfully happy to see me, but he wasn't letting on as to the extent of his adventures the previous night.

A similar event occurred when we were visiting my sister's family in Ohio. A violent thunder storm ripped through the region and Jasper was nowhere to be found the next morning. I was supposed to be heading back to Maine that day, so I was suitably panicked. I quickly made posters and placed them on telephone poles throughout town. I called the police and animal shelters. We drove all over the area. Finally, that afternoon, we got a call - Jasper had been found sitting on the porch of an apartment building about a mile from my sister's house. Again, he was happy to see me, but he wasn't talking.

A big part of getting on with my life after the divorce was building a house on land I had bought in Northport, about five miles south of Belfast. As the house was being built, I would visit the site daily, always with Jasper in tow. Jasper, apparently, was just as excited about the new house as I was - as soon as I turned onto the road that headed down to the house, Jasper would stick his head out the window and start barking. This would continue for the half mile down the road and into the driveway. The carpenters would laugh and comment that they always knew when I was coming because they could Jasper barking five minutes ahead of time.

At this time in my life, I had managed to transition my working relationships so that I was working out of my house most of the time. For the one or two days that I did have to go into an office, Jasper would always accompany me. He became a mascot of sorts and my co-workers were not shy about telling me that they didn't care if I came to work, but that I'd better not forget to bring Jasper. Jasper loved these trips not only because it meant he didn't have to stay home alone, but also because his big brown eyes and gentle vocal reminders ensured that he'd get plenty of treats from "his people." Linda was his "go to" person in Westbrook, and when I moved on from that job, he befriended Leona, the receptionist for the company I did work for in Bangor. They always made sure they had a box of dog biscuits at the ready for when Jasper arrived.

Divorce led to dating, and eventually dating led to marriage once again. Jasper was not a dog who immediately took to people - he was very cautious in whom he would call a friend. When Denise first met him, he more or less tolerated her, but that was all. Over time, when he realized that she was here to stay, and that she was, indeed, a nice person and she would feed him, he let her into his "inner circle." Soon, he was eagerly awaiting her arrival home from work each night.

Being a pet owner is a bittersweet experience. On one hand, you get to benefit from the companionship and unquestioned loyalty and love that the pet provides on a daily basis. But on the other hand, you have to bear witness to an accelerated lifetime, with all it's highlights and lowlights, and accept the fact that your beloved pet will be born, grow up, and grow old while you, comparatively, age only a little. It seems highly unfair, and gives us a hauntingly frightening glimpse into to what the future holds as we age. Towards the end, Jasper's hips deteriorated precipitously. After a while, none of the wonder drugs that had served him so well for the past several years seemed to be making any difference. The daily walks grew shorter, until they couldn't even be called walks anymore. And still, Jasper persevered - his mind was as sharp as ever, and his appetite stayed strong, even if the rest of his body didn't want to cooperate. Then, on Tuesday morning, January 21, I was awoken by cries of pain. There would be no eating or drinking this day, and the big brown eyes that were so effective in melting hearts throughout his lifetime drooped sadly as he looked at me. They seemed to say that his body had finally won the battle - and that he had no choice but to give in. As we stroked his head in the vet's office as his last breath left him, we sadly accepted the fact that a big part of our world was now melting into memories.

When you talk to people whom have made dogs a part of their family, it's not uncommon to hear them say that their dog is "the best dog in the world." And this is as it should be, for each dog provides his or her owner with immeasurable joy. Please be advised, however, that from now on, you'll have to settle for your dog being "the second best dog in the world." We miss you, Jasper.

Jasper 1990-2003