Blog: My Little Dog, Honey

When I turned 30, it was time to get my life together. I put away my vagabond circus past and lived with a girlfriend for the first time.  I was trying to put down roots, be a family man, and a provider.  The next thing on my list after the girl was my health. 

I had been a pack a day smoker for over a decade and it was time to get my butt, to put that butt, out.  Cigarettes were ubiquitous in my life.  I had one before and after everything. And probably two.  I quit with the help of a hypnotist and it worked.  Now I had the girl, my health, not quite the job yet, but as many hippies do, I thought it was time to get a dog.  I never had a dog growing so I don’t know where that idea came from.  I guess getting a dog to me was part of creating a family.

I found her online. Her name was Honey.  The runt of the litter at 13 and a half pounds, with her honey-brown head, interested in all things food, and moving quickly. The people at the rescue say she picked me.  I’m a sucker for that. You want me?  You got me.  December 1st, 2013. You got me, puppy.

We lived on the coast in Humboldt County, California where it is desolate in the winter. It's like a time before people or at least a time without people.  It was a college town where people would always talk about home as in somewhere else.  There's a transient weed population there and most temporary citizens were well on the way to the warms of Costa Rica or Thailand post-harvest.  

It would rain a lot at this time of year, the power would get knocked out as even redwoods and cypress trees eventually fell to the storm.  Honey, and I would brave the weather and the misty isolation.  I had no choice.  I had a dog to take care of now, and I was determined to do right by her. 

Just a few weeks later my now EX-girlfriend went home to visit her family. It was two days before Christmas and Honey and I were looking for somewhere to live. The plan was to meet with my friend, Danielle, who had a dog and a room for rent. This could be great. 

Danielle was a hippie too. She named her dog, Franklin, a 90 pound mastiff, after the Grateful Dead song Franklin's Tower.  One of my all-time favorite Grateful Dead lyrics comes from that song and it goes: If you get confused listen to the music play. I think that it's quite appropriate to this evening's theme “Lost and Found.”  My takeaway from that lyric is that being found is somehow inherently built into being lost. 

Danielle lived on the Samoa peninsula, in Humboldt Bay, a former logging community surrounding a decommissioned lumber mill.  The houses were made of old growth redwood, craftsman style with very few upgrades over the years.  A nice moldy house to call home you could say.  I had partied at Danielle's house before, walked through the dunes to watch the sunrise on the beach and hiked the woods looking for mushrooms, on mushrooms, both. 

It was time to introduce the dogs.  As a novice dog owner I didn't know that I did this all wrong.  The dogs met face to face.  Wrong.  Leashes extended and tightened.  Wrong.  Things I know now not to do.  From there it's a blur. There was a commotion, snarling, and my fear instinct went crazy. 

I reached in the middle of the whirling dervish of dogs only to come out bleeding from my own little dog, Honey's, razor sharp puppy teeth.  A word to the wise: don't put your hands into two dogs' mouths.  

I went to grab Franklin, because in my eyes, it had to be the bigger dog's fault, but Franklin didn't do anything.  I grabbed him by the collar and dropped Honey's leash along the way.  After my fear and adrenaline calmed, just a few seconds later, I looked around holding someone else's dog to see the neighbor, Danielle, but not honey.  She disappeared just like that. 

I screamed at Danielle.  It wasn't her fault.  She told me I could take it out on Franklin but I couldn't do that.  It wasn't his fault either.  Nothing had happened except I let go of Honey's leash.  My fault.  

I looked high and low.  I looked under houses, in dumpsters, front yards, backyards.  Anywhere that looked like a dog would go, I looked.  All the while yelling out HONEY in between fits of tears.  I rode around on a bike, like a kid in an 80’s movie. I had a flashlight and a backpack full of supplies.  Probably supplies like kibble, rope, and weed.  You know, the essentials. 

I called the only other people I knew still in town.  John and Cassie were #van-lifing before it was a thing.  They helped me look for Honey that evening.  At one point I broke down and asked them for a cigarette.  It had been six weeks without one but the girl broke up with me, and now the love of my life, Honey, had just disappeared so I figured I deserved a smoke.  Both of them would smoke a pack of Marlboro Reds a day.  Reds wouldn’t have been my first choice at 30, but it was my first cigarette at 16, and boy howdy I could have sucked down that cowboy killer in just a couple pulls.  One of my only wishes to this day is to somehow know when the world's going to end so I can have one more goddamn cigarette. That's how intense it is for me.  

But they didn't have A CIGARETTE!  They didn't have ONE CIGARETTE between the TWO OF THEM??!!  I can't believe it to this day.  They may have been lying.  Lying because they were broke that day.  Lying because they only had a couple left between the two of them, or lying because they knew how hard it was to quit.  These people had heart.  

Around midnight I crashed on Danielle's couch.  Did I sleep?  Did honey and I meet in dreamland?  I wonder what she was doing.  I mean, this could be what dogs actually dream about.  She had vast expanses to explore, dunes to run up and down, ocean things to smell, she could howl at the moon, be a wild animal.  

The next morning, I was rallying the troops for another search party when I got a call.  It was Danielle's neighbor, who witnessed the commotion the day before and happened to be a search and rescue ranger.  While having coffee on his porch earlier in the morning, he said he heard a slight whimper across the vast expanse of the deserted lumber mill.  He hopped the fence, traversed the alien landscape, passed an abandoned warehouse, where honey had no doubt run like a wild beast the day before to the waterfront and some disintegrated pylons of an abandoned pier. 

And there she was.  Her leash was wrapped around some of the pylons and she was partially submerged in the bay, crying.  He said she was trepidatious at first but some well-placed kibble convinced her to let him help.  Always food motivated, my dog is.  He said on the phone, I've got Honey, she's fine, come get her when you're ready.  

Ready?!  Oh, my god!  Relief?!  Holy crap, this was intense.  All told, she was gone for about 18 hours.  

When I got there she was in the kitchen.  There was a toddler running around and Honey was scarfing kibble.  The little toddler, the puppy, and that rare beautiful sunny morning on the coast in Humboldt County in December made for a pretty unbelievable scene.  Honey and I went home and spent the next couple days on the couch.

I'm really glad I was tested that day.  Honey means a lot to me and we were lucky to be reunited.  I know not all losses are rewarded with being found.  If I didn’t find her this would have been a really sad story to share about the puppy I only had for a few weeks.  I wouldn’t do that to you.  I'm glad I was tested regarding smoking also, and I'm really glad John and Cassie “didn't” have that cigarette.  I've never asked for another one.  It's been over eight years without a cigarette and with my Honey, and I'm so grateful.