Monday night, our two dogs were on the deck playing. Hannah pawed the door to come in, and she came running. Freyja did not. I turned the light on to see her laying there, still, not responding to my voice. I ran out into the snow in my bare feet, wearing nothing more than a t-shirt. I knelt by her, and I knew she was in trouble. There was something stuck in her mouth, I thought she might be choking, so I grabbed it. It was cold. It was her tongue. I looked into her eyes and I knew she was already dead. The sound of anguish I made drove Sara to my side. I was horrified. I was perplexed. She was a year and a half, had no health problems, but there she was, just lying there, and she was gone.

We carried her limp body inside, then Sara and I held her. I held her head limp in my arms, and scratched her ears, rubbed her belly. We held her the way she used to lay, on her back with her paws in the air. We must have been there for two or three hours, holding her body as the warmth slowly left it. We couldn’t let her go. I still can’t believe she’s gone.

Let me tell you a little bit about Freyja (pronounced “Fraya” – a Norse goddess) first, and why she was so important to me. Back when Sara was working at Alameda East Veterinary Hospital as a purchasing coordinator, a man brought in an Australian Shepherd husky mix that had been hit by a car. He couldn’t afford the surgery, and the hospital was going to put her down (personally, I think that they should call it killing, because that’s what it is and we shouldn’t make nice terms for these people to be able to sleep better at night). A gentleman who was in there with his much older dog — who was dying from cancer — asked about her. He was in such grief about his best friend that he donated $1000 towards her surgery. With an additional $3000 from the Colorado Helping Hands Foundation, she underwent surgery to fix her broken leg.

Freyja was recovering in the hospital when I first saw her. Sara oftentimes wouold bring in the animals up for adoption and let them play in the back office with her. She called me, excited, three days in a row before I went down to meet her. Even though our wedding was a week or so away, and we were crazy with planning, fittings, and getting everything together, I couldn’t help but take her home that day. She was about three weeks out form her surgery, had a bald leg, but she was gorgeous.

Freyja, we learned by her behavior, had been a homeless dog on the streets. She could and would eat anything, had fairly severe separation anxiety, and needed a lot of love. We gave it to her. I felt so good about adopting her, giving her a good life after all the hardship that she went through. That was a good thing for me to do, especially considering my wartime experiences. I need to do some good in this life, after all that pain and suffering.

Freyja was my therapy dog.

Sure, we had adopted Hannah, a dingo/shepherd mix six or seven months earlier, and she means a great deal to me, but she is very independent, and physiological problems with her vulva made her leak urine unintentionally. It was a bit of a strain, though I love her no less than I loved Freyja.

Freyja taught me a lot about myself. Sara and I lived in a third floor apartment, she worked full time, and I was going to school, collecting GI Bill money, disability, and writing my book. From time to time, all the raw emotions, anger, and intensity of the war would come back to me. Sure, I left Iraq and Afghanistan, but those places never left me. I was prone to fits of rage, extreme sadness, despondency, and various other emotional outbursts. It was taking a toll on our relationship, my sanity, and it would make Hannah piss herself. That only served to upset me more.

Freyja never responded to me with anything but love and submission. When I was full of anger, of rage, she would wag her tail wildly, come up to me, and flop right on her back, begging for me to pet her. She answered my rage with pure love. Other times, when I would break down with extreme sadness, she would cuddle up to me, lick my tears with Hannah, and answer that with pure love. It seemed like love was the only emotion she knew.

Moreso than comforting me, she became my best friend. It’s sometimes hard for me to relate with my long time friends, as they haven’t the depth of experience that I have. That doesn’t invalidate their lives by any means, but they just haven’t been through what I’ve been through, nor undergone the changes that I have. Freyja knew suffering, she knew death, and she knew toughness. We were kindred souls.

Emotions get repressed during wartime. Friends die, and emotion must be repressed for survival’s sake, for the mission’s sake. The Marine Corps has no techniques, tactics, or procedures to deal with these emotions when they arise again. And they will show up again, when you least expect it. A lot of veterans, especially those who are hurt or wounded, are helped with therapy dogs. They are trained to give affection to these warriors.

Freyja wasn’t trained, she innately knew.

I loved her intensely. Her life, her companionship meant more to me than a lot of things in my life. I came back from the war hardened, emotionally wounded, and unable to relate with other people. The fact that I found and opened up to my wife Sara is still astounding to me. I found it much easier to relate to animals.

I loved so many things about Frey. I was slightly annoyed but loved how she would jump on the bed in the mornings, her rough toe pads — hardened on the streets, I imagine — pawing at me to wake me and show her love. The way she would fixate her attention on a tennis ball, ignoring all other dogs at the dog park, so fucking excited to play with me, and she would run so fast, so incredibly fast, after that ball, bring it back to me, and go wild with energy until I would throw it again. The way she would nose under my hand while we were eating, not begging, but eliciting my love for her, just to get a spicy Cheezit, a piece of meat, or asparagus, for some reason. Man, she really loved asparagus. When I would put Hannah and Frey outside, they would tear ass around our land, Freyja chasing after the ball once and then playing keep away from Hannah. When I brought her back inside, especially after I had been at school half the day, she would run up to the door, and be so excited she would spin in a circle to burn off energy.

Freyja certainly didn’t have a lack of energy. She would do what I called the “low-rider”, where she would lower down on all fours after I got her excited, preparing to take off in one direction or another. She would run like that, kinda low to the ground, but faster than Hannah. Well, faster in the snow, at least. Those big Husky paws worked very well in the snow.

Sometimes she would jump and put her front paws on me, and then stretch out like a dog does on the ground with their butt in the air, and she would remain in this position while I hugged her, licking my chin. Freyja would oftentimes have a quizzical look on her face, punctuated by her crystal blue right eye, and her light brown left eye. She would squint her right eye in the sun because of the difference in pigmentation. I would often wonder what she was thinking. She was so smart, so obedient, yet she had a wild streak, just as I do. She would have that look on her face, and we would lock eyes. I still wonder what she was thinking at those times. Other times though, I knew that look was love, trust, and confidence that we were never going to leave her. She relaxed in the comfort that we would always be there for her. I am so very happy that we gave her a good life, short as it may have been. She was barely 1 1/2 years old.

When she was outside, she would run down by a group of Conifer trees, and often lose her ball in the drifts of snow there. Now, that’s where I lost her, forever. Yesterday I used a pickaxe to break through the frozen soil, to break the large rocks, and shoveled the dirt out. I cried the entire time. After a couple of hours when I decided that it was deep enough, Sara and I retrieved Freyja’s body. We had wrapped her in one of our favorite blankets, and she spent the night in the garage on our leather couch.

With tears streaming down my face, uncontrollable sobbing, I gently picked up her lifeless body.

“I’ve got you, Frey Frey Dobson,” I said, using one of my nicknames for her.

Hannah was with us. I wanted her to be there. She sniffed Freyja, and she gently, so, so gently, licked her nose. Hannah’s ears were flat against her head, her tail tucked.

I knelt by the side of her grave, and one more time, one more time, I rubbed Freyja’s belly in her favorite spot. I scratched her ear the way momma did, I rubbed the top of her head, and I kissed her cheek. I kissed the top of her head, her paws, then I buried my face in her belly fur. She was so soft, and she smelled so good. I don’t want to ever forget how she smelled. The look on her face was so peaceful, it was hard to believe she was dead.

We wrapped in her in gold chiffon silk from our wedding. We made a bedding of some more material from our wedding, the week after we brought Frey home. I put her body on top of the bedding as gently as I could. I gathered some material together for a pillow. She faces East, towards Mount Thorodin, towards the sunrise, towards her new life. Beside her we put a bone, a smoked hickory rawhide, and her newest ball, made of rubber and with motion activated lights inside. She absolutely loved that ball. I had Sara remove her dog tag, I wanted it — no, I needed it — and we put a couple of gemstones on her body to pay her way into the next life. I put her paw on top of her bone so she could sense it, wherever she has gone too.

We covered her body with soil, by hand, gently.

“I’ll be careful, Frey. I’ll be real gentle, okay?” I said, choking out the words.

After she was covered with soft dirt, I lost it. I shoveled the rest over the top of her, covering the chiffon, covering the memory of the happy times we had together. It was no more. We gathered stones and encircled her grave, then with smaller stones we arranged them in a sacred spiral. At the center we placed a piece of rose quartz. Very carefully we placed flowers in a concentric pattern in the stones, with a rose and other beautiful flowers at her head.

This morning I took Hannah outside to play, and I brought a tennis ball. Now, Hannah chased after it the way Freyja did. But she didn’t bring it back to me. She went around to the back of the house, crept up to Freyja’s grave, and put it right next to her. She didn’t go back for it. When I came inside, I saw Freyja’s tag sitting there on the table. I lost it. I can’t bear the grief. As I sat in the kitchen, sobbing, yelling, horrified, perplexed…

Hannah was the only one to lick my tears this time.