Montana

The Escape Artist

Monday, August 24th, I took the day off work.

The kids came by to see Montana, our eldest dog. We took her for a few rides, windows down, because she still liked that. Erin and Fiona took her to Starbucks for a pup cup. On the way back, Montana reached over and helped herself to half of Fiona’s cake pop, and Fiona was happy to share.

That was the day we said goodbye.

She came to us as a foster when Fiona was about eighteen months old. A facility was closing and needed somewhere for her to go instead of being put down. We didn’t pick her, not really. Because we had a toddler in the house, they ran a food aggression test first: a hand pushing her away from her bowl, checking whether she’d react. She didn’t. Not even close.

We brought her home still not sure. Six weeks later we weren’t asking that question anymore. The girls lit up every time she came tapping around the kitchen. Fiona could lay on her, sit on her, do the things you worry about with a strange dog and small kids in the house, and none of it ever went wrong. She won us over, and we decided to keep her for good.

She’d arrived as Marshmello, which never fit a brown dog, so we renamed her. We already had an old cat named Hannah. Somebody landed on Montana and the joke wrote itself: Hannah Montana. Years later, after Hannah passed, we got a kitten. I wanted to name him Leroy Jenkins. I was outvoted, and we landed on Oliver instead, mostly because we were watching Arrow at the time. It took a while before anybody noticed Oliver was also Hannah Montana’s best friend on the actual show.

Oliver and Montana used to nap together in a patch of sunlight through the door, one of her favorite spots in the whole house. When Cayde arrived a few years later as a puppy, she did the same thing for him, except Cayde was headed toward well over a hundred pounds, and Montana topped out somewhere around forty. She let him sit on her anyway. Not lay on her. Sit. A puppy who would eventually far outweigh her, using her as furniture, and she never once told him no.

Montana welcomed and onboarded Oliver and Cayde into the family. No one assigned her that job. She took it herself,and treated people the same way.

She was an escape artist for most of her life, always looking for an excuse to go on an adventure. The low corner of the back fence never stood a chance. One time a neighbor down the street called to come get her. He was outside about to eat lunch when she showed up hungry, and he gave her half his sandwich before he ever picked up the phone. Another time she got out and didn’t come right back, and we spent a good while outside calling her name.

The best part is we didn’t find out what actually happened until the next day, on the school bus, when my oldest daughter’s friend asked her if her dog had gotten out. Their house was mid-renovation, every door propped open, and Montana had let herself in, gone upstairs, and climbed into bed with a man she’d never met. They were walking her back to return her when they heard us outside still calling her name. Montana finished the last stretch on her own. I still don’t know those neighbors’ names.

We put her in a crate once and locked it shut with carabiners. She got out of that too. How she did it stayed a mystery.

In thirteen years, no one called animal control on her, got spooked, or turned her away. People fed her, sheltered her, walked her home, without exception. Whatever she was putting out, they could read it in about four seconds, and every time, they were right.

The last couple of years, a bad knee slowed her down, though she was still jumping onto the bed and the furniture long after that. This past year her back legs started going. Stairs got harder, worse going up than down. The decline wasn’t dramatic. Not a single bad day. A long series of quieter ones, each slightly worse than the last, until a few months ago she stopped eating the way she used to. The vet found a liver problem.

We made the hard decision about a week out that Monday was going to be the day, and we told people. That’s a strange thing to live inside of, getting up every morning already knowing roughly how many were left. I’m not going to pretend that week was easy. Some mornings I genuinely didn’t know how to start it again.

But because people knew, they came. More than we expected. Friends, neighbors, family, showing up that week just to sit with her for a few minutes. I didn’t plan for that going in. That’s the part that’s stayed with me most.

So Monday, we didn’t sit around waiting for the appointment. We took her for those rides. We got her the pup cup. And on the way home she reached over and helped herself to half of Fiona’s cake pop, exactly like she’d done to a stranger’s sandwich years before. Same dog, start to finish.

I don’t know if there’s a clean lesson in any of this. I know the same instinct that got her out of a carabiner-locked crate and into a stranger’s bed is exactly what kept the house full that week. I’m not going to tell you that being good to people protects you, because it didn’t, not from any of it, not from the knees or the liver or Monday. What it got her was people, more of them than any of us expected, right when it counted. Worth remembering, the next time you wonder if it’s worth being that easy to love.

We miss you, sweet girl.

Adventurous spirit. Kind soul.

Uncomplicated systems. Uncommon results.