Piper's Eulogy
Dorene Olson, BA, CPDT, APDT #967, NADOI #1001C
TARA Training and Behavior, LLC
WyndSong Border Collies and Canada Goose Management
My journey towards Piper actually began the night after Easter, 1998. While driving home from work at Tri-City Animal and Bird Clinic, at 11:30 PM, I swerved to save what I thought was a pigeon from an alley cat. The cat and I raced each other down the alley, and I won, and captured not a pigeon, but a tiny, yellow baby duck with ridiculous orange feet and a beak to match.
Knowing absolutely nothing about baby ducklings, early the next morning I contacted a volunteer of the Pekin Duck Fund, a local domestic waterfowl rescue group, and rather than taking the infant off my hands, she coached me through its care and husbandry. The rescue group was full due to the crisis of baby Easter ducklings that deluge them every year. So I fostered the little tyke, and for six months took him everywhere with me, including taking him to work every day. Our clients became used to the tiny yellow infant following me around on pattering webbed feet. He did not remain tiny for long, however, quickly growing into an impressive 11 lbs of snowy white feathers. I decided that we were too bonded for me to give him up, adopted a companion for him, and joined our Waterfowl rescue group with a vengeance.
So it was understandable, one day several years later, when a client of ours rushed in to the clinic clutching a newspaper and breathlessly demanded to see me instantly. What are you going to do about the geese?! she cried, and shoved a newspaper in my face. I had not realized that the Missouri Department of Conservation was planning to perform lethal roundups on several area flocks of Giant Canada geese. I had never much paid attention to these majestic birds, but I read with horror of the plans to separate infants from parents, dump the infants in a new location, and ship the parents 11 hours up to MN, where they would be slaughtered. This bird is a species which bonds for life, shares equally in the care and raising of their young, lives in extended family units, and shows mutual cooperation from everything from flying to sentry duties. I was appalled, and promised to see what I could do.
Several weeks later a group of us had contacted the founders of Geese Peace of Washington, DC. They had faced this problem in their community and sought ways to find and maintain a balance between local communities and the native waterfowl by controlling them with humane methods. One of these methods employs the used of trained Border Collies, and being the only experienced dog handler in our midst, and desperate for a means of saving the geese from slaughter, it fell to me to become the dog handler. Another of our members took out a loan for me to purchase Piper and he was delivered to me in St. Louis.
Piper arrived late, having had a supposed infected lymph node. He appeared dull, detached, and automatic. I have to admit that the last thing that I needed or wanted was another dog or another job - I had just begun my own company two months earlier. I had planned for 3 years to replace my beloved Irish Wolfhound, Tara, and did not intend on sharing my life with a Border Collie, although I had always liked the breed. Piper and I began our first job together at the University of MO, St. Louis.
That first job of ours started our working career together, and Piper quickly became the darling of the campus and an indispensable partner and friend of mine. He assisted me not only with the Canada geese, but also with rescuing domestic waterfowl, and was featured in 5 newspaper articles and on a local cable show. His personality blossomed, and he loved to play games with me and on me. He learned some tricks, and delighted in teasing the other pets in the house. One of our favorite tricks was when I would lean over and ask him: Hoooowwwwwwws my breath? and he would fall to the ground and cover his nose with his paws. We nicknamed him the Farm Dog, as he had to learn every civilized house manner in the book, including toileting skills. I had to work through several severe behavior problems with him, ranging from aggression towards me around sheep to sound sensitivity issues and a severe thunderstorm phobia. When he got his health back and I put him on a quality diet, his coat grew in beautifully. I had him neutered and his teeth cleaned and he began to have some energy. He was my constant shadow and followed me everywhere. The one exception was his chosen sleeping area: in my office. Seems that even in sleep, a Border Collie has got to be near the place of work.
We took agility classes together, and I taught him to track and to prepare for an obedience title, as well as the Canine Good Citizen and Temperament Test Certificates. A few weeks before he died, Poppy and Tess, his two dog sisters, and he and I attended a working dog training seminar in Columbus, Ohio, where I reveled in my three wonderful dogs and their companionship. I enrolled in a number of herding seminars and entered him in our first trial together: we were going to earn a Duck Title and pursue our sheep titles as well. I figured that no one in the world deserved a Duck Title more than Piper and I.
But sadly, Piper died one day before our Duck Title.
I had had him a little over six months when I saw him go down in the rear while working a site where we planned on donating our geese services. Dr. Mary Jean Gorses office at Veterinary Specialty Services got me in immediately with Dr. Anderson, who agreed to do a special procedure on Pie Dog. He called me with grim news. He had found a bony mass, and it looked very frightening, and he had taken a biopsy and closed Pipers leg up until the results came back.
The diagnosis on Pipers knee had come in, and it was terrible: osteochondrosarcoma. Bone AND cartilage cancer, each with a terminal prognosis of 6 -18 months. But Dr. Anderson felt that with an amputation of his rear leg, since the cancer had not yet spread to Pipers lungs or internal organs, we might have a good chance of beating it.
Piper was back on the job three days after surgery. I would carry him to a blanket by the geese and set him down, wearing his identifying red life jacket. I trained my old, retired Lurcher, Tess, to do his land and swimming work. Together, we made an awesome team, and our work continued successfully beyond words. Piper picked up four more contracts, and I began to seriously look for a young or rescued Border Collie to help him out, as it seemed like more work than the three of us could maintain on our own. I had picked a young, 7 month old pup in Virginia, named Freck(les), but the worst happened too quickly.
I did not like the way that Piper was moving, and took him in to Tri-City Animal and Bird Clinic on a whim and x-rayed him. I wanted to take the x-rays with us to a homeopathic vet for chiropractic, acupuncture and massage. But we discovered, to my shock and horror, that the cancer was back, this time in his only remaining back leg, and spread all through his lungs and most likely the rest of his body. He had days to weeks at most. Dr. Van Horn agreed to be on call for me for any time, day or night, to come to our home and put Piper out of pain when we needed it.
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Piper had gone to work the morning of his x-rays. He worked the next day, too, and I had the wherewithal to let him say goodbye to all our geese and his working friends. The next day he was gone.
Piper died a painless death in my arms with his dad and his two dog sisters near him. He died on our living room floor; Dr. Van Horn took his body with him for cremation. He had just turned four years old. As I write this, I do not yet have his ashes back, and somehow I feel uneasy and restless, like I am waiting for him to come home.
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Our new Border Collie is Anna, Frecks mother. She has bravely, with dignity and style, walked into a grieving household short on welcome and immediately stepped into Pipers role, working his geese with me 12 - 14 hours a day. She has been here for two weeks. She is beginning to get a sense of humor. She now play bows, and wags her stubby little tail constantly - Freck and his littermates pulled all her tail hair out - while we walk together and when I talk to her in the car. Tess and she are a wonderful partnership already. She falls down when you blow on her face - I cannot yet ask her how my breath is. She is slow and steady and constantly by my side, quietly laying a soft paw on my leg to let me know that she is near. She has been embraced and welcomed with love and graciousness by all of Pipers people; it is dear to me.
And ironically, since the first night, she has slept in the office.
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In frequent, quiet moments, when I cannot help the sobbing, cannot make the pain go away, I keep getting that old song in my head:
"…Goodbye my friend, its hard to die, when all the birds are singing in the sky, now that the spring is in the air. Little flowers everywhere, I wish that you could still be there…"
Goodbye, my darling Piper, may you sleep the sleep of Princes' peace until we meet again. I see you everyday in the majestic glory of our geese, with their wide and noble eyes, and seeing hearts, and knowing ways, who take gracefully to the air on wings of silk and power. May you fly with the geese, and wait for me, until I can fly with you, and when I rejoin and be joined by all of those that I have loved and that I have lost before my time.
WyndSongs Pied Piper
12/19/1999 - 03/13/2003
