Pick-up Dogs How Two Rescue Dogs Save the West from Being Won
Lu’s Eulogy
Today we said goodbye to Lupe CrazyWolf.
Lu (?- 2017) spent her whole life cheating death–wrestling grizzly bears on Wapaloopsie Mountain, chasing black bears throughout the North Cascades, dancing with rattlesnakes in the Badlands of South Dakota, disappearing with cougars on Gee Point. But it’s cancer that got her.
Years ago, Lu was found abandoned in some fields somewhere outside Eudora, Kansas. And we did everything we could to give her the best life we could. And we did. But it’s never enough. It’s never enough when a creature’s whole purpose in life is to be there for you. Sure, she herded things and was foreman on the back 40. But her full-time job was being the best buddy a girl could be. And Lu was as good as it gets at that.
Lu’s greatest gift to us was teaching us to see beauty in unexpected places…and things…like her, who went overlooked by so many at the animal shelter. Lu was and still is a reminder to get outside, no matter what. To explore the unexplored. To plunge deeper. To not just take the scenic route, but the weird route, or preferably no treaded upon route at all.
I didn’t know it at the time, but rescuing Lu was the best thing I’ve ever done in my entire life and the best thing that ever happened to me.
Watching her run up ridges, seeing her open the car window by herself, and hand feeding her nibbles of salmon in her very last days were all transformative experiences for me. Everything she did, she did balls to the wall, and that’s what I’ll take with me. Never suffering fools lightly, she was about as real as it gets. Our little dire wolf aged like a fine wine–with more character and a softer temperament as time went on. Right until the end.
Lu died on her own terms. She died the way she lived as a fiercely independent rugged individualist on one of her favorite romps out in the countryside.
Lu, with her best friends, on one of her last hikes. Tumor growing, she’s still all smiles doing her favorite activity.
