The Wind

I came across this poet several week ago on TikTok, of all places, and his reading of the poem above* absolutely gutted me. I didn’t realize at the time how quickly it would resonate with me.

We said goodbye to our wonderful Hank on Friday afternoon. We took him in as a foster dog in 2016 and very quickly came to realize that we were not going to be able to part with him. He was 4 years old and an owner surrender due to a divorce and a cross-country move. I still remember the first adoption event we took him to, trying to find him a new owner. Someone showed up very excited to meet Hank, saying they had come specifically to meet him. Kyle immediately launched into a lengthy list of all the reasons why this man definitely did not want to adopt Hank – his bark is loud. He drools on everything. His farts stink. He hogs the bed. He eats a lot of food. I looked at Kyle a bit confused, thinking “what are you doing?? You’re scaring him away!”

I drove home from the event while Kyle filled out an adoption application from the passenger seat. Nobody was going to take Hank away from us.

The day Hank arrived at our house he met our resident bowling ball, Toad, and they became best friends immediately. Those two goofballs could spend hours competing to see who could snore the loudest, sleep the longest, tug the hardest.

Toad passed away in November of 2018 and Hank was heartbroken. At night he would wake us up with the most mournful howls I had ever heard, clearly dreaming about and missing his brother. A month later, we adopted Enoki thinking that Hank would appreciate a new companion.

Hank was skeptical at first, and Enoki was certainly no replacement for his best friend, but Hank opened up to him eventually and reluctantly showed him the ropes.

I never met a dog who loved basking in the scorching summer sun for hours, and was equally excited to leap around in the snow, eating mouthfuls to his heart’s content.

We then adopted Rolo in 2020 to complete our trio, but Hank never bonded with either of them the way he had with Toad. He loved them, and watched out for them, and cared for them, but it wasn’t the same.

The average lifespan for an English Mastiff is about 7 years, and so every year when he turned 8, then 9, then 10 we braced ourselves for the inevitable and counted our blessings that he was still with us. When we came up with our crazy idea to move to North Carolina, one of the reasons we wanted to move so quickly was to try to give Hank at least a few months to enjoy fresh air and wide open spaces. The universe gave him a full year.

Hank was the sweetest boy. All he wanted in life was to be loved, and I hope we made him feel that every day.

And now that the wind has taken Old Boy from us, I hope he has found happiness, and I hope Toad was waiting to greet him.

*Trev Cimenski’s book of poetry, Orangutan Teeth, is available on the ‘zon and is full of beautiful, melancholy, though-provoking poetry. I bought three copies so that I always have one on hand to give as a gift.