I woke up this morning at 4 a.m. to a strange bark and when I got up and looked out the window, I saw his large ghostly white shape sitting between the stand pipes of the septic field, just sitting there tall and looking at the house as if he’d made it halfway down to check the pen where his old friend Sean the pig used to live, but decided to give up on his way down, instead turning around to sit a spell and see if the boss was up.

He’s my first LGD (Livestock Guardian Dog), and he came to our farm in a way that could’ve only been orchestrated from Heaven, and he is soft and sweet like a favorite childhood stuffie, and trembly and handsome and noble like Oz’s Cowardly Lion, and he loves Mom like I birthed him myself, and he is gentle enough to take to the nursing home after getting his Canine Good Citizen certification with the rest of Mom’s 4-H kids’ dogs, and all the while barking like a locomotive train at any sign or scent of danger to our farm in the middle of the night.

I called to him through the screen and the tall white shape just sat there, still and alert, watching the house. There was such a stillness and quiet, I wondered if the dark of the morning had my eyes tricking me and that maybe I was just seeing an extra tall standpipe I’d never noticed before, or one of my daughter’s devil geese.

I put my glasses on, and sure enough, it was my good old boy, sitting there with his noble body facing the house, staring straight at the bedroom window side of the house, on alert and just watching.

I plodded to the back door to let him in, looking down through the cracks of the back porch, still thinking I’d been mistaken and that he would come scooting out of his cool hidey hole under the steps.

I heard the Great Horned Owl hooting from his tree when I opened the door…that shyster that Levi named Owen way back last spring -hey, where have you been, old owl? We haven’t heard hide nor hair from you all summer long…and I called out to Woodrow, -maybe that really wasn’t him in the bedroom window?- and I still expected he’d come wiggling out of his favorite hiding spot there under the porch and bound up the steps as always, happy to get back to his favorite place, on the cool floor right next to Mom’s side of the bed.

He wasn’t under the porch, so that was definitely him staring at our windows, and after a couple calls, he came sauntering around the side of the house, and his normal leap was instead a quiet and determined trek up the steps, and he followed me across the house back to our room, leaving me to wonder what it was on the barnyard that had him staring so serenely at the windows through which his favorite people slumbered.

Last week it was just a pesky grass seed lodged in his throat when I took him in because of some discomfort in his breathing -it happens often this time of year I learned- but he’s been quietly telling us since then that there is something inside of him that just isn’t right.

He’s been staring at me all week, and instead of his normal big white head-flop into our laps, he’s taken to quietly standing beside me, looking intently into my eyes when I ask if he’s okay…

And why is it that the older we get, the more we live on the brink of just a breath away from saying goodbye?

Our precious vet team welcomed him in this morning, assuring me they’d squeeze him in between appointments to do some investigating into my concerns that “something is just off.”

After dropping him off, I hadn’t made it fifteen minutes up the road before Woodrow’s sweet doctor called and said she is not sure how he is still standing or still breathing.

The mass on his lungs has taken up three-quarters of his chest capacity, so big in fact, that his actual lungs were barely visible on the x-ray, and his heart was nowhere to be seen.

Euthanasia was the most likely and immediate treatment plan, and I took a few minutes to get my air, make the needed calls, and head back to pick him up.

How do we say goodbye to our best friend?

How do we let go a creature who is so part of our team…so part of our farm…so part of our family…so part of our hearts?

I drove back to the vet’s office and they all came to mind….Bo the police puppy…Annie, all shot up in the woods and carrying the world’s most-loved litter of pups…our other Beau, the big one, standing on his strong little legs for his girl every single day of his colic and not laying his sweet little big noble body down until it was time for him to leave this earth….Daisy, all swollen and sore and peacefully slipping away when we loaded her up and told her she was going home…Charlotte, surprising us with an unknown ailment that put her down in the mud so quickly we had barely enough time to haul her up and bring her to warmth before she left us…Todd and Opie, precious friends of our family who’d suffered all the loss all at one time…all the little critters my children have loved and that my husband has mercifully sent into eternity…

And now my Woodrow.

My big boy, my sweet boy, the one we brought home to guard the farm, but the one who instead decided he’d guard me.

My white floof of a giant who was destined to be penned next to the livestock while we took the hands-off approach so many LGD owners swear by before I found the folks who know the real way, the best way…the sister-family who taught me how to show him the love of a family and that in doing so, he would come to protect those who loved him and all that is precious to them.

How many will we say goodbye to over the course of a lifetime?

How is a dog so stoic and strong that a basketball grows in his chest and he never once whimpers?

How is it fair that their lives are so much shorter than ours that we know them for a fraction of our lifespan, just enough time to fall in love and develop a friendship like no other, and just in time to see the life of love slip from their brave and knowing eyes?

I brought him home today, and after his x-ray, our loving vet let him wander the office, gentlemanly and quiet, only showing signs of stress when my truck pulled back into the parking lot to retrieve him and he put his head through the screen on their window trying to get to me.

She saw his stoicism, and maybe she just saw my love for him, but it was more than likely her love for all creatures great and small that prompted her to recommend we just let him fight.

Because don’t all of God’s creatures deserve that?

“Let’s throw everything at him and pray I’m wrong.”

That’s what she said and isn’t that what we do?

I tell my kids that every single time…so many times when you’re a farmer and a lover of animals…

“We’ll do every single thing we can to give them a chance to fight for life.”

And then when the fight is done, they’ll let us know.

So I gathered up the meds she prescribed, and when a dog is of a size that they need to call one of his scripts into the local pharmacy, did you know that you can get your animal’s prescription right there at the little counter where you pick up your thyroid medication each month?

And a farmer will do what a farmer does, and if it takes too long to get the medication, she’ll just pull some of those meds from the family medicine cabinet.

Now both of the sweet old men I live with take the same medication, one just a bit more than the other, and my Reluctant Farmer doesn’t mind sharing his until the pharmacy can fill the script for Woodrow Rankin, K-9.

It was two years to the day those same two old men lounged, one sick on the brink of death, waiting for test results to tell us what was taking the life out of him, the other, a constant presence by his side, comforting…being comforted from the confusion of seeing his boss man down.

Two old fragile vessels, not china cups or a delicate piece like the Bible speaks of when we read “weaker vessel”, but tough old oaken whiskey barrels, bound by steel and strength and years of care and stoicism and oil, and all the years of love and care and time and the best of a family’s flavor.

So many times he’s walked by our side, or walked in front of us to protect us from what his thousands of years of guardian instincts tell him is a danger to his people: the screaming sow he stood in front of while my wee babe Levi walked by her pen…the cat today with paralyzed back legs that scooted herself across the floor to come say hi just to hiss at him when he got in the way of me petting her…the raven he’s growled at as she flew too closely to the geese who hate him…the countless black bear, moose, and coyote he’s prevented from coming onto our property by laying down a scent perimeter around the precious five acres that he has claimed as his people’s…

So many times.

He’s loved us, and in doing so, he’s protected us.

I didn’t know before I had an LGD what it meant to own an LGD.

I didn’t know that in letting him in to love US, that he would BECOME us.

I didn’t know that when he became us, he would become my best friend.

I’ve never talked to a dog like I’ve talked to a full grown adult.

My kids tease him about being a baby, about being a coward.

“He’s Mom’s favorite”, they joke.

“He’s such a baby”, they tease when he flops his head down on Dad’s knee, craving for the head rubs we all endlessly give him.

“He’s a chicken”, they say when he shies from the coyote standing in the yard after he’s alerted us to it and the gun comes out.

“He’s a scaredy cat”, they say when he cowers from the ceiling fan sixteen feet up as he scurries across the living room.

And the thing is, he is a baby.

He is a chicken.

He is a scaredy cat.

And while ALL of my babies are my favorite, he very well could be my favorite dog.

Because he loves us just as fiercely as I love him.

He might be my cowardly lion, but we don’t have predators on our farm.

Since Woodrow came to us that spring day four years ago, we haven’t lost an animal to predation, and while his favorite hidey hole is under the porch or in my cool closet, we don’t suffer from the threat of bears, or moose, or coyote, or eagles, or paralyzed cats or anything else that would harm his boss or the things that are important to her, whether it be animal or land or child or husband.

Today I visited a pot shop for the first time in my life, and I’ve added CBD to the regime of medication his precious and matchless medical team have given him.

We’ll put on hands on his body every moment we get and we’ll pray to the Father who gave him to us that the medication and the herbs will work to give us more time with the majestic creature He’s blessed us with.

We are thankful.

We love him so. I think as much as he loves us, although he loves us so strong, as only a good dog can.

We will try to show him we love him the same, and we’ll do it for as long as we have him.

As I took the morning to process what my Woodrow’s diagnosis means for him, for our family, I am mourning the fact that his 11-14 year expected lifespan has been cut dramatically short.

I am processing the loss of the people -and the animals- we’ve lost since bringing him onto our farm.

The loss my friends have suffered…jobs, animals, homes, family…

We get older and we’re not ready, and today I’m just not ready.

I’m thankful for the gift of life…the gift of love…

but I’m just not ready to let him go.

I’m not ready.

For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine. Psalm 50:10-11