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CHAPTER 1 - REM REM

April 5, 2002.  I was in my bathroom.  It was morning.  The day before I had been released from the hospital for a complicated migraine …at least that is what they thought it was.  My elderly father was downstairs making breakfast. The next thing I remember is my REM REM licking my face, trying to lift me up, and dragging me out of the bathroom.  The whole time howling. Her howl was the sound of a wolf in pain.  A defender wolf crying to summon help, but not leaving my side; until assistance arrived.  I could not move.  I had suffered a stroke.  I would have died that day if she had not saved me. She never once thought of leaving me.
The days following my first stroke Remi proved her loyalty and love to me more than any other human being.  She could feel my pain.  There are medical studies that show that animals can feel people’s pain and anticipate seizures; and I am here to tell you she felt everything that I went through.  I had seizures while I slept when I first came home, I would wake up with her lying across me trying to keep me safe.  Her main goal was making sure I was okay.  She was the perfect therapy dog and she was my life, of course with the help of my other two angels.  But this is Remi’s story.

The day we brought Remi home, my husband called her his dog.  He said, “You have your dog.  She is mine and I’m training her.  She isn’t going to be spoiled, like Georgia”.  Georgia is my other little angel and Sydney too, their stories are for another time.  I didn’t care at that point.  I had my dog and I was afraid that I was going to be allergic to Remi.  You see, Remi had a different smell and coat.  I believe now that maybe she could have been part wolf all though her pedigree was Siberian Husky.  She didn’t smell like Georgia, who is an American Eskimo.  She did not have the same smell as Sydney, a Siberian husky who came to live with us later.  She had this different smell and she was so enormous, so I thought “let my husband have his dog.”  I had Georgia.  Little did I know what she would come to mean to me, what she would teach me about love, how I would fight my husband for her in the divorce, and how she would become my life.

Remi was soon to nicknamed REM REM, among many other names. She was the most beautiful Siberian Husky you would ever see! She was built like a wolf with a shiny, thick dark grey and white coat. When she was a pup, we never thought she would grow into her paws because they were so massive! She had the most stunning blue eyes.  Almost violet; my neighbor described them as Liz Taylor’s eyes.  She said, “You should have named her “Lizzy.” But “Remi” definitely fit her.

My ex-husband always wanted to train her.  And he loved her, yes he did. But she, like me, wanted to be shown love and care.  REM REM did not want to be trained; she did everything at her own pace. Crate training was a disaster. We would put he in the crate at bedtime and she would howl so we let her out. We would put her in the crate during the day while we were at work so that she wouldn’t mess in the house. She would have the whole crate torn apart by the time I would get home and you could hear her wailing outside. We had done the same things that we did to train Georgia that worked with Georgia, but nothing worked. REM REM followed her own drummer. Training, including housebreaking, was something that would prove to be something she would decide would be done on her time. Yes, she finally housebroke herself, but by that time I had learned you should not have rugs in your home if you share your abode with Huskies. Remi was always sneaky about it too, you always had to wear a pair of shoes around the house when she was a pup or you might come up with wet socks as one of my friends found out one morning; but she would just give you this look and you couldn’t help but laugh at her.

Remi always had her little problems but she never would let anyone know and she always got herself into trouble. When she was about three months old she ate a sock and almost died. She kept hiding in the house I kept looking for her and pulling her out of the most inconspicuous places. Places that a dog would go because they think they are going to die, and they want to just go there, cry themselves to sleep and just let it all be over. Oh no, I was not going to let that happen. I would drag her out from underneath the water heater and the vents in the basement. Any place she would hide I would find her. I carried her to the vet, the dead weight that she was. My husband had given up hope. He said “puppies like this are sometimes just born with things wrong with them - just let her go”. I prayed and I knew it wasn’t anything congenital; it wasn’t her intestines all wrapped up like they told us. I was right. It was a sock she had eaten, and a case of hookworm so I nursed her back to health. And from that moment on my husband might have called her his dog, but she and I had a special bond a bond that would never be broken even by death.

My sweet REM REM… The sock was just the first of her ridiculous behaviors that would always end with her at the vet or in some sort of trouble.

REM REM always liked to play and run; one of her favorite things to do was to chase bees and see if she could catch them. They were always too quick for her; but one day she thought she was slick, hiding in the bushes, she darted out like a bullet, catching an unsuspecting bee who was pollinating a nearby rose bush. Poor Remi, she was so happy she had finally captured her prey until I heard a yelp. Her prey had turned the tables on her. It was back to the vet again as poor little REM REM’s snout grew twice the size of her face due to the stinger right in the tip of her nose. Through the years, she continued to chase her bees, but I think she gained a respect for them that day.

Siberian Huskies - you gotta love them! They do not like to be confined at all. Our first house had a three-foot high chain link fence. As soon as Remi started to grow, she realized that it was a mere hop for her to scale it, so up went the chicken wire - about three feet of it all around. Our thinking was, “She won’t try to get out now,” yeah right! I was looking out the kitchen window, and there goes Remi climbing with each of her little toes in each of the chain links up the fence - and over - and down the back street. The problem was that I was now caged in and I couldn’t hop that fence. I had to run around the front, get in the car, and chase her down before she gets hurt. The best thing about Remi at that time was she never went far, and as soon as she heard you call her name, she knew she was in trouble. She wouldn’t come back, but she would sit and cower down wherever she was and wait. The worst thing, however, was that she would be scared. And become dead weight; afraid that her father would punish her and yell at her too much. So you had to practically drag her into the car, like a screaming little child, howling all the way home.

She used to think she was funny; the world’s biggest spoiled lap dog. If it happened to be a beautiful night, she wouldn’t want to come in. She would play dead. Or she would fall asleep outside, and God Forbid you tried to get her up to come in. She would roll on her back or her side, or curl up. You were not getting her to go anywhere unless you carried her. In the end she would win and she would be carried like a big oversized lap dog. Eventually, when she got too big she started to get dragged but she didn’t care. She just didn’t want to put forward the effort of walking so I would pull her (until she got her stretch), which is what I think she wanted anyway. Then she would roll over and mosey on in.

Remi loved sleeping outside. But along with two other dogs, and me still recuperating from my stroke, my father used to forget about her sometimes. He would think she was with me, and I would think all of the girls were downstairs; then I would wake up in the middle of the night hearing her howl. She would make a lamenting cry of death because he left her in the yard. I would slowly make it downstairs and let her in and she would give me a little glare like, “Mommy how could you?” I would hold her and give her a treat because I felt so bad, but then she would kiss me and we would both go up to bed, and back to sleep (after she got done howling at her sisters for not telling me that she was outside) At least I think that was why she was howling at them.

As I said earlier in this story she had her idiosyncrasies.  The biggest, comical, and one of the most endearing of which we found out at one of our barbecues. All day long, our guests were enjoying themselves drinking their beer or their wine and Remi would come up to them to beg (all dogs beg of course) and husky’s; God love them they can be the worst, but Remi - she was begging for people’s drinks. My guests they found this adorable and hilarious. I on the other hand was not so pleased.  After all, it was alcohol.

Later on that night, as I was cleaning up and throwing the dirty paper plates and half filled cups of beer in the trash, I noticed that all the cups that had wine in them were missing. And so was my REM REM. First, I ran in the house. Georgia was inside but no Remi.  Then, I almost had a heart attack. Had someone let her out of the yard? Is my baby lost?

Terrible thoughts went through my mind. Then, from the far corner of the yard by the horseshoe pits I heard, “Buuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp!” The biggest belch I ever heard come out of a dog or a human being. There she was, curled up in the horseshoe pits with every half empty wine glass that she could find. My REM REM was a wino! The next day as she lay there on the couch motionless I was consumed with worry. I ran to her side and she looked up at me with bloodshot eyes, let out another enormous burp, then a little growl, and she pulled the blanket and her paw over her head. As if to say “Get away from me Mommy, I have a hang over.” I think she took after her father that way and had learned to mimic him too.

So, over the years I would try to keep alcohol away from her. She liked beer and wine but her favorite was hot Japanese sake. She was constantly tipping glasses over, licking the contents off the floor, or the table, or the person she decided to spill it on I finally lost the battle with her and gave her a small little glass of her own. She would then sit there happily and join in the conversation, and not bother anyone for another glass. She just wanted to be included in the fun. After all she was just a four-legged furry human. She even slept like a human being. Almost every time I would catch her sleeping on her favorite couch she would be on her back, legs sprawled wide open, arms crossed over, head tilted to the side snoring away. Not exactly the position for a little lady, but then she wasn’t prissy like her older sister Georgia, who Heaven forbid would never be caught sleeping in a position like that. Sneaking up on Remi was a sight. She would roll over ever so quickly, let out a big sneeze and look at you with this indignant glare, “How dare you disturb me, you ignorant people?”

She was a Husky; big in every way, built like a wolf, and never did she bark - but she would talk your ear off. And if she did bark, you knew she meant business, but she never harmed a soul. She would just let you know. My husband learned that toward the end of our marriage. He came home drunk one night and we were having another one of our screaming matches when REM REM got right between us and let out the most ferocious bark I had ever heard. That was the first time she had ever barked and the first time my husband realized Remi was no longer his dog. She did not lunge at him or snarl but she stood her ground and she made it clear that she would not allow anyone to hurt me or speak to me in that manner again.

—Kellianne Peterson