Running with Viktor and Kelsy

In the memory palace.

Running with Viktor and Kelsy

Today I went for a walk/run with Viktor.  This was the first time we have ever gone running together, other than chasing rabbits while on leash.  Viktor died yesterday.  During the seven years that he was with us, we always went on very, very, very slow walks.  Sometimes these walks were just slow, but usually they were ultra-slow, like slow-walking was a sport and Viktor was the master.  If I ever tried to hurry Viktor along, that would just make him go slower.  If he even felt tension on the leash, he took it as an insult, and he would punish me by taking even longer to move.

I know Viktor was capable of moving fast and covering a lot of ground because that’s how I met him, when he escaped an adoption event in Everett and ran wild for 5 weeks, ending up in Seattle, 20 miles away.  Although he covered 20 miles as the crow flies, undoubtedly he traveled hundreds of miles in those five weeks, looping around blocks and backtracking, avoiding people who tried to catch him.  On the day that I and other volunteers caught him, October 1st, 2015, I witnessed his pattern of evasion. Someone would see him alone on the street, they would move toward him to try to help, and he would scamper into someone’s yard, run behind their house, and come out on the other side.  Viktor had learned that most people wouldn’t chase him if he ran around the back side of a random house.  He let me approach because I knew calming signals.  I tricked him into thinking I had no interest in trying to catch him, and then I led him into a humane trap with a trail of bits of hot, roasted chicken.

Today I went for a slow run with Kelsy and Viktor.  I often run with Kelsy.  Although she died 6 years ago, I have never gone a single day without thinking of her.  She is often right beside me, like augmented reality.  As I type this, with Mu and Sky and Fozzie nearby on the bed, and Tino on the floor near my feet, Kelsy is there in the middle of them, mostly snoozing, occasionally glancing at me.  When I go for a run and it would be inconvenient to have one of my living dogs with me, because they would stop and smell things or lunge at approaching dogs, I like to run with my memories of Kelsy.  She stays close and I don’t need a leash.  If she barks at people, they don’t hear her.

This morning we started by running through my memory palace, which is a system of loci.  It is a nearby park that I call Kelsy’s Forest.  My locations, stations that work as pigeon holes where you can systematically store facts you want to recall, are trees or plants in the park near the trail.  Standing by each location is one of my pets.  The spruce tree at the beginning of the trail has Chena standing patiently beside it.  She was the dog I grew up with.  As I ran along the trail, with my memory-Kelsy and also Viktor running with me, ears bobbing,  I ran past all the locations and the wonderful animals who have shared my life so far.  Chena, Gizmo, Heidi, Tanzy, Duck, Charlie, Smookler, Norbert, Porter, Max, Boots, Jinx, Wolfgang, Tess, Bear, Kelsy by her dogwood tree, Olive, Mu, Fozzie, Sky, Viktor by his yew tree, and Tino and Raphael, the two cedar trees at the end of the trail.  At the bottom, I started my stopwatch so I could time myself running and walking up the hill from Raphael to Chena.  I knew it would be a slow time, but I just wanted to use it as a benchmark, a starting point as I get in shape.  I touched the two cedars, Raph & T, then ran to the yew and touched the needles gently, thinking of Viktor and seeing him sitting there, patiently waiting.  The running Viktor and the waiting Viktor ignored each other, each knowing that the other was just the figment of my silly imagination. I just waved to Sky’s hemlock tree because it’s off the trail and I didn’t want to disturb the vegetation.  Then I touched Fozzie’s cedar, Mu’s grand fir, and Olive’s salal.  Passing Kelsy’s dogwood, I just waved because she is off the trail about 30 feet.  Then I touched Bear’s Madrona, Tess’s huckleberry, Wolfgang’s ocean spray, and the cedar for Max, Boots, and Jinx, the three tuxedo cats.  Porter’s Douglasfir was just out of reach, so I touched the ground nearby, then Norbert’s ferns, Smookler’s maple, Charlie’s oak, Duck’s willow, Tanzy’s alder, Heidi’s fir, and Gizmo’s Oregon grape.  Chena ‘s spruce tree is just a sapling, not yet close enough to the trail to touch.  7:41.  Quite slow, but it is a benchmark for my journey as I try to get back in shape.

As I continued to run and walk up the hill, with Kelsy and Viktor along, I tried to think of what Viktor’s role will be in Kelsy’s Forest.  In life, he slowed me down.  I would often work on cases while walking with him, but sometimes I would just follow his lead and look out at the world, noticing things.  As Viktor slowly surveyed his little world, I would appreciate the clouds, or listen to the birds.  Because of Viktor’s slow walks, I have gotten much better at identifying birds.  That can be Viktor’s new role as he accompanies me on runs and walks.  He can slow me down and make me notice things.  We came around the corner and there was a most unusual tree.  It was a Douglasfir with a huge lower limb curving out before shooting up.  It was growing in the habit of a cedar tree, which is known for having large lateral branches. Douglasfir trees grow straight like telephone poles, with skinny branches radiating like spokes from a bicycle wheel hub.  I have never seen a Douglasfir with such a pronounced, thick branch low on the trunk.  In fact, I had never seen this tree even though I had walked or driven by it thousands of times in my life.  Viktor gave me the gift of noticing a magnificent tree that had escaped my attention for decades.

As we ran up to another local park, I used the metaverse in my mind, my own virtual reality, to erase all of the cars and houses, and I saw only trees and clouds.  Viktor would run ahead of me sometimes and even disappear.  Then he would pop out of the bushes and observe me critically, as if I was doing something wrong.  He always thought I did something wrong.  We got to the small park, which used to be the elementary school that I attended a long time ago.  The school is gone now, but a giant sugar maple remains.  It shades an entire corner of the park.  I like to think that my grandmother walked under that tree when she went to the same school in 1915.  My mother and my brothers went to school here, too, before the building was torn down.  Now it is a quarter-mile walking track.  I started the stopwatch app on my phone, to time myself for a mile.  I remembered when I could run a five-minute mile.  I am out of shape, so I was shooting for a fifteen-minute mile.  I could probably run/walk faster but I wanted to keep my heart rate from getting too high.  I ended up doing 14 minutes.  It would be a benchmark, a starting point, as I get in shape, again.  After my four laps, I walked a giant V for Viktor, crossing the field.  I took a screenshot of the GPS track of the V, and I showed it to Viktor.  He was unimpressed.  He said it was crooked.

As I walked and ran home, I thought more about Viktor’s role in his afterlife, in my memory palace, in Kelsy’s Forest.  Viktor’s absence gives me probably an extra hour in my day, and I plan to use it for getting in shape.  I only got to have Viktor for seven years before cancer took him.  He was probably 12 years old, although that was just an estimate, and he could have been older.  If things go according to the actuarial tables, Viktor will live longer in my memory palace than he spent with me, walking slow walks year after year, always getting slower.  Although I am sad about Viktor dying, the thing I’m most sad about is that I’m not more sad about his death.  I feel like I let him down in life. I gave him a good life, but I failed to give him the best life. We didn’t have a bond like I have with the other dogs.  It was always like he was a guest, or a prisoner.  I’m sure he would rather have lived his life on the streets of Seattle, getting food from strangers and sleeping in swales, escaping Good Samaritans and dashing in front of cars.  Of course, he wouldn’t have lived long like that.  Although he let me pet him, he never seemed like he especially liked being petted. He never requested petting.  Sometimes, Tino will wedge his giant snout between me and my phone and insist that I pay attention to him and pet him.  Viktor never really sought my affection, but tolerated it.  If one of my other dogs had died yesterday, I would be torn apart.  I would have buried a part of myself in the ground next to Kelsy.  Part of the reason I have a memory palace, whose function for most people is to help them remember things in a systematic way, is because losing Kelsy was a loss that was orders of magnitude greater than anything I’d felt before. Kelsy was my working partner and my constant companion.  So, when she died, I could never let her leave me.  She has been beside me every day since then.  Viktor was a great dog.  He was sweet in his own grumpy way.  I loved him, but I didn’t have the same bond as I have with my other dogs.  I let him down by not building a stronger bond.

I wanted to have some little adventure with Viktor, and I made several attempts to get him to walk down the trail to the beach.  I thought if we went a little farther each day, eventually we could make it all the way to the beach, and then he could sit there and look out at the world, and see something different every day as the tides changed.  It would be our adventure and maybe it would help us forge a stronger bond. We only ever made it half way there.  It seemed like I was annoying him, so I gave up on that idea.  We just stuck to our routine of going two blocks up the hill or two blocks down the street and around the corner, less if it was raining hard.  I always felt like I let him down in life.  Although Sky tried to play with him, he would never join in.  The closest he ever came to playing with one of the dogs was when he and Tino started digging holes together.  Viktor would start a hole, and Tino would help him, often spraying dirt all over him.  Then Viktor would sit down in the hole and chew on a stick as Tino chewed on a stick nearby.  Viktor didn’t sleep in my bed like the other dogs, and he didn’t go on adventures like the other dogs.  I feel like I should have tried harder, but he never really let me build a strong bond with him.  And then we ran out of time when his cancer appeared so suddenly and advanced so quickly.  Viktor will live more years in my memory palace than the years we spent walking slowly together.  In Kelsy’s Forest, he will have more adventures and excitement than he had in life.  He may not know or care, but I will always think of him and remember his cranky sweetness.  Viktor will continue to shape my life by forcing me to slow down and notice things, listen to birds, look at clouds, and get to know trees.

I have to get in shape.  I know people my age who have died or have had serious health setbacks.  I don’t really mind dying, because then I would get to be with Kelsy, but I can’t afford to die because I need to take care of my dogs.  I need to survive as long as I can because my mind is the memory palace where Kelsy and Viktor live.  When my father was my age, he suffered a stroke, which led to other health problems, and he spent the last 20 years of his life wrestling with his broken brain, unable to process the complex thoughts he used to.  I don’t want to die because I need to take care of my dogs, but even worse than dying would be suffering a debilitating injury or illness that would stop me from caring for my dogs or cloud my mind and erase my memory palace.  I am the memory palace where my dogs live.  Ten years from now, it is very likely that I will have lost almost all of my wonderful dogs, my children.  Ten years from now, maybe only Raphael will still be with us.  My dogs will live longer in my mind than they did on Earth.  I will remember them because I can’t forget them, but also I will remember them because they are fantastic beasts, full of love and wonder, and every dog and cat deserves to live a long time in the mind of their family.  I need to get in shape and stay in shape so I can take care of my dogs now and in their afterlife in Kelsy’s Forest.  I will miss Viktor and our slow walks.  I will still spend that time with him, walking and running, getting in shape so that he can live a long time, running around my brain and ignoring me when I tell him that I love him. He will still slow me down and make me see the beauty in the world.