Free to a Good Home

Free to a good home. The cynic in me believes that nothing is free but I’m enough of a romantic to believe at times that everything is free. Maggie was named because of Margaret Thatcher. We already had a dog named Thatcher and Janet couldn’t resist naming the six-month-old, sixty-five pound ‘Free to a good home’ female puppy of indeterminate breeding, Margaret. We called her Maggie and sometimes Margaret S. Dog. She would respond to any of these names if she considered it to be in her best interest and respond to none of them if not. I don’t remember exactly when Maggie joined us. It was probably the year of a presidential primary – it always is. Here in New Hampshire, the ‘Live Free or Die’ state with our ‘First-In-The-Nation’ primary, we’re pandered to most years by a host of hopefuls; all determined to be the leader of the free world. There’s that word ‘free’ again. If the candidates aren’t here, they’re either just arriving or just departing; it’s kind of like a cold - you’re either getting it, have it, or are recovering and the symptoms can be equally as noxious. Maggie kept us in a similar realm of anticipation, waiting for the next over-sized mud caked, foot to fall; where and when…. It was always where and when. She came, was here and hasn’t completely left, although it’s been a number of years since I found her one morning, next to her water bowl, lying lifeless on the kitchen floor.
Maggie’s heritage was maybe Collie and Great Pyrenees, we were never sure. Janet selected her by chance from the remnants of a litter of out-sized puppies. The transaction was overseen by the owner’s kids who knew nothing of the dog’s lineage. They told my wife that they wanted to keep the puppies but their parents felt otherwise, so she assured them that we would provide a good home. I said that Janet selected the dog by chance but she picks out her animals using her own granite rule. She makes a statement to the assembled animals (pigs, sheep, kittens and in this case dogs) “Blink your eyes if you want to go home with me”. Or “Rub your nose on the fence if you want to go home with me.” Or maybe ‘stick out your tongue, ‘lick my hand’, ‘eat a blade of grass’ or whatever, but the operative phrase is of course, “if you want to go home with me.” I don’t know what she said to the litter of puppies but whatever it was, Maggie did it.
Maggie had the pastel honey and white color and soft face of a Collie, and the massive body and huge feet of a Pyrenees, and in time we started to believe that her intelligence bordered on human – a pretty bright human at that. While with us she performed sleight of hand (paw), feats of strength, comedy, tragedy, larceny, murder, and yes, on a couple of occasions – magic. She had traits of Tony Soprano, Houdini, Lazarus and Gandhi. She could be as gentle as a flower petal and as savage as a wolverine. She could rescue a chicken from a fox in the morning and in her enthusiasm dispatch the same chicken in the afternoon. She could disappear like Bernie Sanders does from the political scene and reappear days later like, well, Bernie Sanders reappearing on the political scene. One of my keenest memories of Maggie was of her lying in front of the old, polished, Glenwood wood burning range in our kitchen with our two-year-old grandson, Cameron, stretched on her back as though she was a rug. They were both nearly
asleep. Children were as safe with her as with their own parents and certainly safer than with their often-haphazard, grandfather.