Afghan Hound Heaven

Less than a mile away from Ma's Loma Cabin was Shining Mountain Afghans. The next morning, she and Joey drove over to meet Brian and his wife Laura and to see their Afghan Hound family. She had viewed many of the dogs on Brian's Facebook pages and it was exciting to think of them Coming to Life. She had seen the distant red farmhouse in photos but it was really fun to see it come into three dimensional view. With eighty acres of invisible fencing, it was bordered by the river with rolling hills and nature as far as the eye could see. It certainly seemed to be a slice of God's country.

But that was just the beginning. She pulled into the driveway and entered another world. She found herself in Afghan Hound Dog Heaven. 

 

The House and Welcoming Committee

 

Those beautiful girls! 

 Anybody else coming?

 I think these are Punkin, Sunshine, Cat and Immy

Arriving in Loma

They rode into town and checked into a little cabin at Ma's Loma Cafe.  It was small but it was perfect somehow. 

  It was a new freestanding cabin with a big wood pole bed.

This is Joey on the bed with our blankets and pillows. We always traveled with our own blankets and pillows for comfort and as a courtesy to the host.

There were other dogs in the yard outside.

Central Campus which was also home to the Loma Cafe Hounds

This guy was real sweet.

People will drive an hour from the city of Great Falls just to have dinner at Ma's. The breakfasts were great too, the coffee was free and she always took a side order of bacon back to the room for Joey. She learned by doing that for me.

There were lots of places nearby to explore like the sleepy little town, nearby sunlit farmlands, a path along the Marias River and even a yard full of buffalo roaming across the street.

Timing Is Everything

She couldn't go to Montana because she had to finish writing my book. She told herself, "When I'm done with Jack's book, I'll go to Montana and get that girl. I'll go get Miss Green Collar." 

Several weeks passed and the day ultimately arrived when she learned that someone else had bought Dark Green Collar. She was surprised at her strong reaction. She didn't even possess Dark Green Collar and yet she cried as if she had lost her. The power of her emotions surprised her, but I know why she cried like that. She cried because she wasn't finished grieving the loss of me. When someone has an exaggerated emotional reaction to something in the present, it's usually because they haven't resolved something in their past.

Kate simply wasn't ready for another dog. She had to work through her grief... and she needed to finish my book!  Meanwhile Dark Green's two sisters, Red Collar and Blue Collar, were still available as well as an older boy. She mulled this over in the days to come.

Click Here to see more Shining Mountain Afghans

Kate finished the book on May 1st and a week later she was on the road with little Joey, our terrier mix, off to visit Shining Mountain Afghans. It was a 20+ hour road trip each way.

I went right along with them to Montana, but it's funny she didn't seem to be looking for me as much there. She was thinking about Dark Green Collar. She was growing. She was finally moving forward. It was a lot more fun for me to be with her when she was this way.

Here's Joey all packed up aboard the Enterprise Rental Car Starship, Headed for Montana

She was very disappointed to learn that Miss Red Collar and Miss Blue Collar were gone by the time she got there. All of the girls were gone, after ten months of not being claimed.  She was very disappointed.  

"Why. Why did I come all this way?" 

I knew why.  



She didn't know it yet, but God and I, well, we had another plan for her. 

She Had the Place, but the Timing Needed to be Right

While I was working at a plan to bring Kate together with Immy, Kate was completely caught up in her grief. She couldn't look forward, she kept looking back. If she looked beside her she would only see me. Everywhere she looked, she saw me. Every spare thought was me. Every free moment was spent looking for me; longing for me. She was inconsolable. This went on for days, weeks, months. You'll read about it in my book, "Jack McAfghan", how she finally was able to move beyond her grief.

I crossed over the Rainbow Bridge early on August 1st and six months later to the day, on February 1st, she was able to set my ashes free and to bring peace to both of us. April 1st, she finished writing our book.  It took her the next month to get it formatted and to learn Microsoft Word after having used it for 20 years and never knowing what it was capable of.

Somewhere during that time, her heart began to stir and she knew she was ready to love again. But not yet. She wasn't quite there. I had planted the desire for Afghan Hound in her heart, and all of a sudden she was looking at rescue sites.  Then one night she went to the Dogs For Sale sites.  She landed on PuppyFind and fell in love with a 9 month old Afghan Hound named "Dark Green Collar".  I know why she fell in love with her. I think for awhile she was looking for me in another dog and Dark Green Collar had the same color collar I always had but mostly the look in her eyes in the photo was the way I would look at Kate. The eyes are the windows and Dark Green Collar's eyes were the magnet. They were supposed to be. They were supposed to draw Kate to Montana.

Dark Green Collar  Photo Downloaded from PuppyFind.com

She wrote the breeder, Brian Wood of Shining Mountain Afghans, in Loma, Montana. She inquired about Dark Green Collar. Her siblings, Red Collar, Blue Collar and Light Green Collar were available too, but she only had eyes for the Dark Green girl. Brian was patient and helpful and they corresponded over several months. Brian's honesty, forthrightness, knowledge and inherent kindness made it easy for her to trust him but she just couldn't seem to move forward. At one point Brian laughed and said to her "Of course, if you wait long enough, someone else will get her."

Decision Point and Afghan Hounds

New Life Has Arrived

There is life after death, I can tell you this for certain and while she still cherishes the memory of me and continues to shed unexpected tears along the way, she has taken some steps to bring a new kind of love into her life. She will never know how much this particular dog needed her, but I do.

Miss Immy Montana

 One of the tasks I was given when I came across the Rainbow Bridge was to choose a dog so that I could be its Guardian Angel.  It was my mission to bring the two of them together. Somehow. Someway. Someday.  I didn't know how I would do it with Kate in Arizona and Immy in Montana, but I knew that with God's help, it would be done.

One Thing Always Leads to Another

As I made the choice, I looked at the Design of her life. One thing always leads to another and there is a selective process. She grew up with a pair of German Shepherds.

She loved her German Shepherds and she always loved collies. When she grew up and it was time to get her first dog, it was a German Shepherd-Collie mix.

The day came when I was born into a litter of pups that were said to be "Collie-Poos".  She thought it would be nice to have a low shed collie, but she didn't know that I had a significant amount of Afghan Hound in me that would make itself known in due time.

As I got older I really enjoyed playing with the smaller dogs at the dog park. One day she went online, saw a photo of Joey at VJ Ranch Rescue in Arizona and within a few days Joey joined our family. We always joked that he was an Afghan Terrier, he looked so much like me. 

Joey and Me (I'm on the Right ) 

After I crossed the Rainbow Bridge I knew that she would eventually want a bigger dog (but probably  not quite as big as me) and I just knew that she would eventually want an Afghan Hound. It's how everything was panning out. I learned that there are only about 500 Afghan Hounds born in the United States each year. I began searching for the right one. Meanwhile her friend Jane was sending her messages with Afghan Hounds who needed homes. "No," she would say, "I don't think I need a full blooded Afghan Hound." and she would cast them aside. Jane was planting seeds for me; for us. 

New Life

After she lost me she was devastated (you know how it goes when a dog and their person are soulmates). It took the first six months for her to get a grip on herself in her life without me. At exactly the six month mark, she scattered my ashes to the wind. 

"Fly free Little Boy, Fly Free!" she said as they were carried away from her on the breeze. 

 It was sometime in the next week or so that she started looking at rescue sites. She was making a point of not looking for me, but she knew what worked before and she was really trying to re-create that. Of course she kept coming up short. She can't recreate anything. It's time for new lessons. 

One night she extended her search to Puppyfind.com which is a site for breeders to list puppies.  She was half-hearted. She never imagined buying a puppy. She always planned on rescuing one. After all, that's what she'd always done and we all tend to do what we've always done.