Freya
Died November 27, 2004
She chose to live with me and to be my companion for the past ten years, and I am grateful for that privilege.
In the beginning, she was shy and cautious. It was hard for me to earn her trust because she had been abused in her childhood. It took her seven years to learn to play, to lie down and allow and enjoy to be cuddled, to expose her belly for a scratch. She also learned smiling. For her, baring teeth was a threatening gesture, but she soon understood that it meant tenderness, treats, walks, and good words from me. We once met, deep in the woods, a hiking couple, and Freya liked the man immediately and ran to him wagging. The man then approached me and said, “What a beautiful smile she has!”
For a while I though that she quite an aggressive dog; however, it then occurred to me that she only threatened other animals when they tried to come near me. She wanted to protect me, and I know she would have given her life for me.
Freya had a good relationship with Tarbaby. When she was still living with my sister, Verena, she would entice Tarby to follow her into the woods. One time, they were gone for 17 hours. In her later years, when her eyesight became weaker, she would follow Tarbaby. That big black dot was easy for her to see.
Every morning, no matter what the weather was like, she would nudge me out of bed and demand her walk. Barking was not her way of communicating, and she only did it a few times, in danger.
When I was in a bad mood, she would leave the room and ignore me, but when I was in despair she would come, put her head on my knees and look into my eyes.
Freya took obedience training and, despite the doubts of the trainer–Freya being seven years old and a Husky!!–she finished best of class. Except at the last class, when the dogs were off-leash and were supposed to run (approximately 50 meters) to their masters, Freya ran straight for the treat box, grabbed a few and then ran to me.
My friend Terry was with us when she died and helped me to lay her to rest in the woods, near the house.