A Remembrance of My Favorite Crag Dog

We sat on a ledge 300 feet above the valley floor. It was late summer, and the grass and leaves flitted around us in drafts of hot, humid air. The ground fell off below my feet into a gaping rictus, tree branches jutting out one after the other in a downward current before reaching into the black asphalt highway at the base. A thin river gushed on the other side of the road, frothing white and bubbly. Above us, the rock was red and crumpled. It folded upwards in a series of horizontal bands. Everything seemed to be colliding into itself, a steady melt. Odell and I rested in the burgeoning shade. 

A static line old and frayed billowed out in the air around us, a giant parenthesis tucking us in and extracting us from the outside world. She panted, and I breathed deeply.

At 23-years-old, I had won multiple lead climbing National Championships. I had placed as high as seventh as several Lead World Cup competitions. But in my last year on the international World Cup circuit, I started having panic attacks in the gym. I’d feel them coming on, these rising tidal waves. Suddenly, the air from the room would rush out. My heart would be pounding, hands trembling, senses rushing. Desperate and catastrophic and totally at a loss for words, I’d sit on the floor with my eyes closed. Fellow climbers tried to console me and soon enough, I’d feel far away from myself.

Odell was my grounding. She was a purebred miniature Australian shepherd, a handsome little creature, with patches of fur as bright as tangerines, darkening to shades of clay and current into outlines of thick white. Her eyes were giant wet orbs that held worlds inside them like snow globes. She liked to sit with her head propped on pillows or rocks. She hated being cold. She loved peanut butter. She hated to be alone. 

On the edge of the cliff, Odell yawned slowly, her pink tongue curling at the tip, and then closed her eyes. I leaned in toward the wall and fished my hand into a crack to grab my stashed rope. Using it as a pillow, I took in the sky, blank like a page. We were at Redstein, Colorado, a small crag 30 minutes outside of our home in Carbondale. To reach the cliff, we’d hiked 30 minutes straight uphill. There was no service, no people, and no other dogs—only the sound of expansion fills the silence. It was one of the few local places I could reliably take Odell where I knew she’d be calm, where there wouldn’t be reason for agitation or aggression.

I could feel memories quaking in the back of my consciousness like loose threads ready to catch. I thought about my regrets regarding my professional climbing career. My anxiety, the eating disorder, the life I could have had—had been so close to having—if only I had been a little stronger, a little better. I could feel the weight of my mistakes, but, there in the silence, I also could feel the future and all of its possibilities. 

I read once that we are who we are because of who we were, and I was deciding that wasn’t going to be true; that my vision of the future was going to hold equal sway. Odell and I sat on the ledge, and in that liminal space I traced my fingers through the ringlets encircling her neck and back, plucking out plant debris, picking through all our tangles. 

***

Before Odell, climbing was the thing that gave me peace; it helped me know my own power, my ability to center and breath through chaos. But after seven years of international competition, the sport lost its touch, or I lost my touch with it. It was at that flimsy time in my life that I got Odell. Lacking all the usual things like steady income and direction, I was having trouble rebalancing, reloving. So I bought her for $1,200 and decided my competitive climbing career was over.

As a puppy, Odell could fit inside my jacket. She went with me everywhere. She was this perfect, warm creature. She loved being in my arms. 

One time, in the middle of the night, I awoke to her low baritone growls. We were in the back of my Tacoma, buried beneath layers of blanket and entombed in a wide topper. Outside, a fog leaked from the surrounding trees like spilt milk. It must have been 2 a.m. I peered out the windows but saw nothing. Odell was wide-eyed, alert, the fur on the back of her neck brisling. I waited in silence for a thing from the woods to emerge, but it never did. Eventually, I fell back asleep, but Odell remained vigilant.

Odell was smart and as deeply protective of me as I was of her. I kept her on a short leash at the crag lest she’d try to defend me from other dogs, because she was like that: loud, sometimes menacing, despite her size. When we’d go on runs, she could pull twice her body weight, her sleek fur pushed back in her own detonation. She’d try to take down semis, barking and snarling as they bumped by the bike path in Carbondale. We’d always pass a statue of a horse, twisted from copper metal shrapnel into a neverending gallop. Verdigris snow sloughed off its mane and speckled the surrounding grass. Odell, salivating at the mouth, claws digging in the dirt, loved to rush at that horse.

Because my impulsivities rarely worked out, I registered for one more international competition—the PanAmerican Championships. While Odell stayed with my parents, the other U.S. competitors and I walked the streets of Ecuador, air thin and mist thick.We found our way to Parque Seminario, a small green patch downtown and surrounded by old palm trees. The ornamental and gothic Metropolitan Cathedral of Guayaquil, its once white spires yellowed with time, guarded the far end of the park. Its seriousness stood in contrast to the inhabitants of the park: green iguanas, fattened and still. The other competitors and I circled the lawn, tossing strips of lettuce at flicking red tongues. Their eyeballs swiveled in their heads.

It’s funny how when we seek the truth, we say that we seek getting to the bottom of it all. But truth is transient and panoptic. It has levity. That’s why good jokes are always “so true.” The truth leaves us dissatisfied; we think it will ground us while we change ourselves, while things change around us. 

In that moment I just knew: I was done competing for good, and my feeling of non-attachment and groundlessness was how I knew it was the truth. I would stop making myself do the things I didn’t want to do. I would stop crying in the car on my way to the gym. I would stop staring at myself in the mirror and questioning why I couldn’t just enjoy competitions anymore; why I couldn’t find my flow. Instead of competition climbing, with all of its plastic, I would climb outside. Odell and I would blend into the dirt: fattened and still beneath a cathedral of rock aged in time.

Sometimes, if we’re discerning, we can recognize what’s coming—a premonition from the forces that be.

***

Anxiety is suffocating. It’s atomic, destructive, and a building block for every thought, every action. It is invisible but binding. Slowly, I began to recognize that Odell’s overprotectiveness of me was a form of anxiety, so I wrote an essay about brokenness. Do you remember learning about the earliest pieces of literature? They centered around gods and kings who were broken, too, because not even the highest beings had the prerogative of wholesomeness. I think that everything and everyone is on the verge, by varying degrees, of devastation. But those cracks in our scaffolding are blank spaces on a page. I’d like to think that they can invite hope and possibility.

Odell was a perfect, warm creature. But, in addition to her anxiousness, she wet herself in her sleep. At first, I thought it was a puppy thing. Then I blamed myself. I took her out more, I gave her less water before bed. But the problem persisted. The vet said she was incontinent, that it just happens with the breed sometimes, or maybe it was due to a botched spay. She was prescribed estrogenic medication to control her bladder: two small white pills, one brown. 

On each bottle, a listed side effect was anxiety. In the end, I think the pills made everything worse.

Once, I let Odell off leash at a large bouldering area in the desert. The sandstone rock was warm and amber red in the sun’s faltering halo. There weren’t many people out, the road was far away, it was quiet. I pulled onto the rock and Odell explored the area. Her perimeter widened, and I kept calling her back. One time, after I got off the boulder, she didn’t come back, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. Blood pounded in my ears, a metallic gallop, and I yelled and fought back tears as I called her name and began to sprint around and around the boulder and finally down the trail. Eventually, I found her in the parking lot—she had followed another dog and its family to their car. Once she saw me she ran to my feet, trembling in excitement, and peed herself. 

Odell was a good dog. She really did her best, but she could let emotions and distractions get the best of her.

In the early 1300s, the word fault meant physical deformities. Only later in the same millennium was the modern sense of morality implied to the same word. But Odell’s faults—accidental and genetic—were not her fault. She was innocent like a child. It was through that realization of Odell’s faults that I learned to be kinder to myself. Less worried about getting it all right.

Twelve months after I stopped competing, I went through a period where I tried as hard as I could outside, but I still wasn’t climbing routes nearly as hard as I once had. I was failing to live up to my own expectations for myself. I felt trapped in a self-created construct.

Odell loved sticks. I’d throw one for her, but she almost never returned it. Instead, she liked to parade it around like it was a hard-won trophy. She’d toss it in the air and catch it again. She danced in tight semicircles with it. She’d strip it of its bark until it was white and bare and in pieces. Her simple joy was my reminder to not overthink things—to rethink my construct. 

***

Odell was three and it was one of the first warm spring days in Carbondale. I ran her to the dog park, which was muddy and saturated from the melted snow. She was so happy to get out, to feel the coming warmth. I let her skid out around me, flinging debris at the fence, coating her fur and delighting herself in the mess. But when another dog, a small lab, showed up, she grew protective of the ball I’d been tossing. Characteristically, she growled at the lab. But when the other dog didn’t back off, she lunged, a rage erupting into claws and teeth. We never went back to that dog park after that. 

She was innocent like a child. But she also wasn’t, and perhaps I should have seen the signs earlier. Perhaps I should have recognized her pulling on the leash, or the way she, as a puppy, growled at my old family dog. She’d lunge at strangers if they approached me too quickly. She, like me, had her flaws.

Over the years of owning Odell, I thought a lot about animal husbandry. Dogs were bred for safety, for accomplishing tasks necessary for survival, primarily hunting. As humans implemented the most primitive methodology of genetic modification, dogs de-evolved. Dogs are weaker and dumber and less resilient than their ancestors. They no longer serve us for survival but for comfort. For mental health, which is itself a worsening side effect of our self-directed evolution. 

As my personal traumas left my mind, as my anxieties dissipated with more time outside, Odell’s worsened. She grew more anxious, and had more bursts of violence. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of that was also a product of humanity’s Darwin-interrupted game. 

But there were moments of light, too, especially when we were out climbing. I imagined that Odell’s favorite crag was the Cathedral, near Saint George, since we camped far from the road and she could be safely off-leash much of the time. As we’d approach the cliff, she’d run far ahead, bounding between thick yucca and mint-green sage. Every so often I’d call to her, and because I had peanut butter treats in my pocket, she’d come crashing back to me, bits of gravel sliding downhill as she went. It was on our last trip to the area that I sent my hardest project to date. For the first time in years, I felt strong and capable. Odell recognized my happiness, and she waggled her whole body; she smiled with her whole being. 

Odell was a good dog. She really did her best, but she could let emotions and distractions get the best of her.

***

Odell was three and a half years old when the medication stopped working. The vet said that it was due to anxiety and common with the breed. In the house, I put her in diapers, which often leaked. I took Odell on multiple walks everyday, and I bathed her once a week. I whispered into her ear that things would get better for her—that I’d fix her the way she had fixed me. I made plans to move within the year to a place with a fenced yard, and I fattened her with treats. I trusted the blank spaces and held hope for the future. 

Those days, when I walked her, people would say things like, “Your dog has lots of… energy,” or “She’s a feisty one, isn’t she?” I knew what they meant. Her temperament had worsened, still. I couldn’t trust her to not snap at other dogs, to not bark or be aggressive. Desperate, I bought a shock collar and I trained her not to bark, to heel when we walked, to come back to me when she was off leash. Soon, people remarked about how well-behaved she was. People thought she was as perfect as I still saw her, as I knew she could be. In many ways I was able to grant her more freedom with the newfound discipline.

I tried to make her safe and nonthreatening to those around us. She needed to de-evolve. 

I began to realize Odell required too much attention for me to leave her at a friend’s house. So when Christmas came, I canceled my flight and we drove 12 hours from Denver to Dallas to see my parents. I had gotten Odell after having moved back into their house for a while, and she knew and loved my parents, so I thought the trip would be good for her, that the excitement of everything may squash out some of the bad. She had so much fun running circles around the yard, playing with my niece and nephew. Then she bit my parent’s dog and she snapped at my mom, nearly getting her finger. 

I took Odell to the vet and the vet prescribed her a tranquilizer: one small blue pill. Devastated, I cried in the car. I thought about the life she’d lived and what she had to look forward to. I wanted her future to be better; the possible good had to hold equal sway in the direction of her life.

***

Sometimes, if we’re discerning, we can recognize what’s coming—a premonition from the forces that be. But more often, we don’t anticipate any of it. And because matter is never created nor destroyed but simply transferred from one thing to the next, a loss of one thing always results in an equal break within the other.

Odell was four when she left me. I don’t remember exactly what the vet said that day. Odell’s unraveling came to its natural conclusion—the weight of which pinned me by my throat, and I grieved her without breathing.

The pills, the vets, the breed, evolution, self-created constructs, her, and me. The question of ownership, which is another word for fault.

Eventually, I decided the reason for her early departure didn’t matter. She was gone, and she had been my best friend.

***

Examining the timeline of the domestication of dogs, one can conclude that dogs simply evolved to meet advancing standards of human utility—to be better hunting partners, to keep humans warm, to be pack animals, to perform tasks too dangerous for humans, to be tested on, to clean our scraps, to make us feel better about ourselves.

One can also conclude that dogs have served as important cultural figures. Ancient Egyptians thought dogs to be companions to the gods. Sumerians believed canine saliva to have medicinal properties. For the Mayans and the Greeks, dogs were guides for diseased souls.

Odell knew when I was sad. She’d press against my legs, let me pick her up and hold her. She’d close her eyes and let me soak in her warmth.

Odell loved to watch me climb. Her massive, curious eyes would follow me up the rock. She’d sit there quietly, anxiously awaiting my return. 

Odell trusted me more than she trusted herself. She was too scared to make jumps between talus or to scale slabs. She’d stop on the trail and use her whole body to ask: Will you carry me?

Odell would get cold if we stayed out too late. I’d give her my jacket—wrap her up in it until she fell asleep.

I trusted Odell more than I trusted myself. She loved me and believed in me even when I didn’t. I’d try to see myself through her eyes.

***

Odell was four, almost five, and I smelled twice, long after she was gone. Climbing had become hard all over again, but she was there with me as I cried on the couch. She was with me at the gym, as I tried not to panic.

Many years later, I imagine I’ll return to that red and raw cliffside. The lapis sky—the same color as her eyes—will stand still and the moment will feel indefinite and granular. It will be summer—hot—but silky streams of wind will brush against the trees and my hair and cheeks. I’ll think about who I was and who I want to be. I’ll think about empty, blank spaces. The frayed parentheses will waive above, closing in the rock and the ledge and the silent memories. On the outside of it, I’ll still miss her dearly.

I will not, I imagine, bring myself to finish the hike up to the cliff. Instead I’ll crouch down. I’ll remember the night before she passed, when I took her to the park and threw a large ball with dollops of frayed neon green. The grass was soft, thick and fresh, stitched together like a never ending novel. She bounded through it, racing after the ball, waggling her whole body with excitement. She was flawed, yes, but it was there, the pure joy—the verge of everything good.

I’ll bury my fingers in the dirt, searching for my grounding.