The final chapter

I haven’t updated this blog in a few months. 2020 has been…something else, to say the least. Unfortunately, in the midst of so much chaos the worst regarding Luke has come to pass. His cancer is back, very aggressively, and tomorrow morning we are sending him on his final journey. This has been so sudden, in the span of 2 weeks he went from his usual self to, frankly, dying.

Instead of lamenting the now inevitable, I’d like to share and remember the life of a truly good shepherd.

To begin at the beginning, Luke came to me as a foster at 2 years old. I was experienced in fostering and I never had any plans of keeping him. In fact for months I was sending him every weekend to adoption events, and every weekend the other volunteers would bring him back to me. None of my other fosters lasted this long without being adopted. No one seemed interested in him. The last weekend he went to an adoption event, when the volunteers came to take him away and he literally screamed bloody murder. He had always seemed so depressed, he had never shown any emotion or personality before. The other volunteers joked ‘uh oh, I think he’s your dog now!’ An hour later I called the head of the rescue and told her not to adopt him out, I was taking him. I filled out the paperwork and he was mine.

I don’t know much about his early life. I was his 4th owner in 2 years. The rescue pulls dogs from high kill shelters in the CA Central Valley. He was adopted out and then returned. Adopted out again to a couple. The man was a veteran with PTSD and started training him as a service dog. Certainly he had the temperament for it. He always remembered that training and whenever we took him out to a pet friendly establishment he would politely lie down under the table as a good service dog should. He was always ‘on duty’ in public. The man’s wife became pregnant and they once again returned him to the rescue, which I never understood as he loved children.

I’ve handled many thousands of dogs through my job, and I rarely come across a German shepherd that I would want to take home and live with. Over popularity and rampant poor breeding leaves many examples of the breed neurotic, unbalanced messes (same can be said of labs and pits, but I digress.) Luke was different.  I called him the bombproof dog, idiot proof dog. No matter who was on the other end of his leash or their experience level, he could handle himself with grace and diplomacy. At work the trainer sometimes used him as a ‘bait dog’ to train leash reactive dogs because he was unflappable and very savvy in dog to dog interactions. He was stoic and tolerant albeit standoffish with strangers, patient and kind with kids, small dogs, and cats, and downright ridiculously silly with those he loved.

We came so close to euthanizing him with his original cancer diagnosis, I’m very grateful we didn’t. Although it’s been a little less than a year, it’s been a good (almost) year. We did 3 trips to Yosemite and he came to work with me every day. I hope he changed some minds about amputation and quality of life during his interactions with the public. Certainly he changed my own mind. His time here may be short, only 7ish years, but his impact will be lifelong. He is just a damn good dog.