Ecstacy

When I first got each of the girls, I was dating Mike. He was an integral part of our lives for the first six years of Maia's life, four of Meadow's. Even after the girls and I moved to Idaho, they got to run trails with Mike a couple of times when I visited Seattle. But they hadn't seen him in nearly two years. Since our return to Bellevue, I've been able to run trails with Mike, but the girls are no longer capable of the long runs we do. So I arranged for Mike to stop by the house after one of those runs to say hello to the girls.

I staged it for maximum joy for all. I also grabbed my camera to memorialize the reunion.

In these photos, you see incredibly excited and happy Malamutes dancing around the object of their undying desire: Mike.

They don't forget. No way. No one else gets this sort of welcome.



The spinning and dancing went on for several minutes. I purposefully kept Finn inside so he wouldn't interfere or annoy the girls.

After Mike left, the girls howled. HOWLED! After five minutes they finally stopped. They started again about an hour later, for just a couple of minutes. It was heartbreaking. They had just found him again, and poof - he was gone. Later, while out on a walk, Maia spied someone about Mike's size walking ahead of us, and pulled hard to catch up, thinking - I'm sure - it must be him. I know Maia, and she'll be looking for Mike in every tall slender male for weeks to come.

It's hard, knowing how much they miss him. But I'm sure they'll see more of him now that we're in Bellevue. That bond is simply to special, too strong, to ignore or deny.