Millie, my seven-year-old golden retriever woke me up at exactly 5:59 a.m on Dec 11. She isn’t much of a morning girl, that’s for sure.
In fact she rarely stirs until I’ve had my coffee, checked the news, weather and sports, maybe sent a text or two. Then, as soon as I put my shoes on, she gets up, yawns and stretches luxuriously in preparation on her walk.
But that morning she was just standing there a few inches from my face staring at me. “What?” I groaned, trying to steal an extra minute of sleep. My alarm went off at 6:00. I looked at my phone there. There was a text.
But before I could read it the phone rang. It was Amy–the text was from her too. Amy owns Winky, Millie’s best and oldest friend, her dog mentor. Winky was dying.
How did Millie know? How do animals know these things?
Winky had been fighting cancer. I’d walked Millie over to a park a few weeks earlier to meet up with Winky. I had a feeling it would be their last time together. I wondered if Millie knew too.
There was something about the way the two dogs said goodbye that day. Not the usual jostling and barking. It was very sedate, low key.
Millie curled up on her bed soon as she got home instead of strategizing how to get her dinner earlier. My wife, Julee, said, “She knows she’ll never see Winky again.”
Winky had taken Millie under her wing as a 10-week-old puppy. Showed her how to walk confidently on busy noisy city streets (Millie was scared to even leave the front of our building). Taught her proper behavior at the dog run. Even did a video tour together of the Guideposts offices for our site.
They formed a deep, incredible bond and even though Millie hadn’t seen much of her best friend lately due to Winky’s declining health, all I had to do was say the word Winky and she would jump up, tail wagging, and head for the door.
A while back Rick Hamlin did a piece for Mysterious Ways magazine on the Cambridge biologist, Rubert Sheldrake.
Sheldrake spent years studying and trying to explain what he calls “distant feelings” in animals and their ability to conceive things and events that they have no foreknowledge of or, presumably, a concept of.
Time and again through the most rigorous scientific methods Sheldrake identified in both animals and humans phenomena that were simply inexplicable.
I went over to stay with Amy and Winky until the vet came…and to say my last goodbye to a beautiful dog. Julee stayed close to Millie who wasn’t herself. She told her Winky was going to heaven, and she would see her again.
I’m one of those people who believe that. I can’t imagine God contriving such a cruel heaven where we wouldn’t be with all the creatures we loved.
Amy apologized for ruining my birthday. Did I mention it was my birthday? No, it wasn’t ruined. Not even close. Despite the sadness the day was a gift, the gift of seeing the wonders of God’s ways that are not so much hidden from us but unperceived.
The next day I drove up to the mountains with Millie. The whole way I thought about the times Winky came with us (Julee and I would sometimes kidnap her for a weekend). How Millie taught her about the woods and the trails. How Winky survived a 150-foot plunge off a cliff nearly unscathed. A miracle.
At dusk Millie always goes out in the yard and barks. Soon the dogs on the other hills join in, the distant sounds echoing in the gloaming. Sometimes the coyotes join in. But Millie always starts.
Tonight she is standing in the snow on the highest point of our land, barking to the sky. I think she is barking to heaven.
