Suzie was a three year old wolf/husky mix. She had been a sled dog in Alaska before she became part of our family. She was not just a dog but became my best friend.
It was 1989 and we were living up in the mountains of Northern California. Living in the mountains with four young children and a drug addicted husband, life during that time was stressful, to say the least.
We were living in a family built cabin miles from anyone. The cabin was down in a canyon with only one road in. We had no electricity, no running water (unless you count the creek), and no indoor plumbing. We had an outhouse, something everyone should experience at least once in their life. NOT!
Anyway, we ended up with Suzie through a friend who had been looking for a wolf mix female to breed with their malamute. She had been talking to a woman who had been caring for her brothers sled dogs, she could no longer afford to care for them so she was giving them to whoever showed up to get one.
I went with her not really intending to come home with one, let alone two. But once we arrived I instantly fell in love with Suzie. There was just something about the look in her eyes. She was beautiful.
Mostly black, with a little white around her face, dark brown eyes and the definite look of a wolf. I ended up taking her and another dog, Buddy home. Buddy was your typical looking black and white husky with blue eyes. He was cool but not to smart. I figured if I was going to be taking Suzie home I should bring her a playmate to help ease the transition of a new home.
The first thing the owner told us was to keep the dogs tied up for at least three weeks, because if we didn’t they would take off and try to find their way back to their “home”. She said it would take that long for them to get use to us and feel secure. Also huskies are known for running off. They love to run, and since these guys were former sled dogs that instinct was even more dominant.
My husband at the time, being the tweeker he was (my term for meth users) decided he knew better than the woman who owned Suzie. The first thing he did was untie her. Before I could stop her Suzie was gone. “What the hell did you untie her for?” I asked.
He took off running trying to catch her, which of course was not going to happen. She stopped a couple of times and looked back, but once she saw him she bolted out of sight.
I was so angry and upset. I figured that was it we would never see her again. “God only knows where she will end up.” I said to myself. I also began asking the Lord to somehow bring her back. I was worried about what would happen to her out in the mountains alone.
The kids and I began putting food up on a trail behind the cabin. We would get a glimpse of her occasionally so I figured if she got hungry enough she would come closer. Plus we had Buddy who was still there.
She began to show up every day on the hill to eat. She would take off as soon as she spotted anyone watching her though. Slowly she began to feel more and more comfortable with her surroundings.
Little by little I began moving her bowl closer and closer to the cabin. The first time I brought it a little too close; she simply picked up the bowl and took it to a distance she felt comfortable with. Finally I got a big heavy pan to put her food in and she could no longer carry it away.
She very rarely barked. This is common, especially with wolves. And she was very elusive when she wanted to be. She would come out of no where and just watch us. At night time you would not even see her, and when you did it would just be her eyes glowing in the dark.
It took months for her to stay close to the cabin all the time, instead of her usual hanging several hundred feet away. Jason, who was 12 at the time, use to try to sneak up on her so he could pet her. Not an easy task. Eventually he started using food to tempt her closer. He would hold chicken or something just as tantalizing out and stand completely still. It took about a month or so but one day she actually ran up to him, snatched the chicken out of his hand and took off.
Jason came running into the cabin yelling all excited, “She took it mom, she actually took the food out of my hand, and I even got to touch her before she ran off.” From then on she became a part of the family, well at least as mush as we could expect considering she was for all intents and purposes wild. She’d been running “free” for several months now.
She did not care much for men. I often though a man must have at some point in her life abused her. Maybe that was one thing she sensed in me, we were kind of the same. I often wondered if that common thread was the thing that tied us together. I had begun to think of her as my soul mate so to speak.
It took a year to get her to take food from our hands, the first several months she would snatch and run, but eventually she would carefully take it and even got to the point she would allow the kids and I to give her a quick pat on the head before she would bolt.
When my husband would get high or start yelling and threatening me I would go sit outside on a big boulder away from the cabin, Suzie would come out of nowhere and sit next to me. I would talk to her and I’d swear she understood me. Even though nothing had actually happened to cause me to believe it, I knew if anyone tried to harm me or the kids, Suzie would have attacked.
For the next three years she became my blessing from the Lord. I truly believe He sent her to use (the kids and me) for protection and companionship.
We always knew if there was any kind of threat close to the cabin. It was interesting because Suzie had what I came to call her circles of protective concern.
I first noticed it when a cousin of my husbands would show up. He was also a tweeker, and Suzie did NOT like this guy. She began circling the cabin. It was summer so the front and back doors were open. She would walk past the front door, look in at this guy, continue walking around, stop at the back door, look in at the guy and continued this little routine for close to 10 minutes until I guess she felt it was ok.
She had three circles. One directly around the cabin, one several feet away from the cabin and one about 70 feet outside the second, which included the creek. If anything she considered a threat came within the first one around the cabin she would kill it.
One morning I stepped outside to have some coffee and she kept circling the cabin. I was sitting on the steps, she would stop, look at me, begin walking away and then stop at a stump that was a few feet away, then walk around the cabin. She did this twice, finally I said, “Ok what are you doing Suzie, is there something you are trying to tell me?” She stopped at the stump and looked at me then looked down. I walked over and lying on the stump was a dead opossum. It was very big and quite dead!.
She had killed it and wanted to let me know she had protected us from what she considered a threat. A couple of days later she did the same thing, only this time I knew what she was doing, and sure enough next to that stump was a smaller but just as dead Opossum. From that day on I never really worried about any of the critters which could potentially come out of woods and harm the kids or myself.
