Pedro Lilienfeld

Written in late 2016

It is very hard to write about Freya. She remains too present and alive, even more than 10 weeks after she left us. But, I’ll be valiant and try to reminisce about her, although my eyes still get wet with her remembrance.

Perhaps it is difficult for others to understand the depth of Evelyn’s and my attachment to a “mere” dog. Although Freya was our sixth golden retriever and we loved all of them and grieved on their often premature departure, there was something different in our relationship with her. It was perhaps deeper, more intense, more pervasive. Perhaps our own age played a role in the intensity of that bond and the almost unbearable pain of losing her so suddenly.

Both Evelyn and I had, mostly subconsciously, lived in dread of another unexpected death sentence of our companion after having had that experience with our previous golden, Maya. We tried, and failed, to prevent and preclude that happening or, at least, to postpone it as much as possible. The death sentence was brutal and sudden. A couple hours between first realization and life’s termination. But let me not dwell on the demise but on her uniqueness and the uniqueness of our relationship until that very last moment.

Freya was a special combination of smarts, beauty, perceptiveness, sweetness of character, dependability, responsiveness, and other traits that made her the ideal companion for those ten-and-a-half years that she illuminated our life. It remains a mystery to me how it is possible to have such a close and fulfilling relationship with a member of another species. For those who have not experienced such feelings it must be utterly incomprehensible.

I will endeavor, for our comfort, to relate some if not all Freya’s attributes, idiosyncrasies, and special traits that made her so special to us.

One of her outstanding attributes was uncanny ability to read our body language and any deviations from our normal behavior or daily routine. She knew well in advance when visitors would be expected. Just the preparations for such occasional visits would elicit a significant escalation of her excitement. It elicited an unusual degree of watchfulness, continual observation of any goings on outside our home, frequent barking, and systematic observation of all our preparatory activities. When Freya judged that the moment of arrival of the guests had materialized she would often run to the family room to grab one of her preferred stuffed toy animals with which to greet the visitors. Her degree of excitement when opening the front door depended on her familiarity of the visitors. Some were true favorites and their entry was greeted with her racing up and down and the stairs, sometimes with yelps of pleasure and intense tail wagging.

Perhaps her preferred activity was chasing and catching tennis balls, mostly outdoors, of course. We had a special routine wherein I would throw the ball towards the side of our backyard and she would race after it to retrieve it and returned to me for more. She knew that whenever I would grill food outside our rear door there was a good chance that I would throw the ball in that manner. So, it sufficed that I would go to our little library room where I kept the long matches to ignite the gas grill, around dinner time, to bring on a high level of excitement and readiness in Freya. Her ears went up, her eyes radiated, her tail wagged and she stood at the rear door prepared to dash out for what she knew was a ball “game”.

At night, Freya slept on her own L.L.Bean bed next to ours. Usually, she did not stir in the morning until one of us would get up, mostly Evelyn before me. As soon as she descended to the kitchen Freya would follow her and stand by the rear door. That was the signal she gave to Evelyn that she was ready and waiting for her breakfast of dog food followed, invariably, by a little medicine chew. She then would return to the door indicating her desire to take a pee. Upon her return we would usually got upstairs to take a little postprandial snooze on the family room sofa.

It has been mentioned that dogs do not have facial expressions like human. Wrong, as far as Freya is concerned. She had clear and distinct ways to facially express her feelings. Two off them stand out: She opened her eyes wide and piercingly when a ball playing session impended, and an extraordinary expression went over her face when she wanted to show us her deep happiness at our return home from an absence of more than a couple of hours. Freya would then narrow her eyes, pull back her ears and assume an utterly sweet demeanor – we called it “fachita”, a diminutive of Spanish “facha” (look). It invariably elicited a heartfelt embrace.

Her comprehension vocabulary was extensive. Words, sounds, gestures and signs, and combinations thereof allowed us to communicate with Freya conveying to her our feelings, commands, reactions and intentions. Although she tended to be most cooperative she also expressed her preferences quite unequivocally. For example, when taking a walk in our neighborhood, certain directions were not of her liking and she would simply stop and refuse to continue and tugging on the leash was futile. If we wanted to prevail, we needed to talk to her in a firm but congenial voice.

Several months before her passing Freya demonstrated an incredible instinctive foresight. It was a stormy afternoon and I looked at the radar app on my smart phone. There was an ominous and concentrated thunderstorm cell advancing in the direction of our area. I was hesitant about taking a walk under those conditions but Evelyn insisted that we take a short walk to the field behind our woods and then return. As we frequently did, we walked out into the woods in the back of our house and Freya was off-leash. We had walked only about 50 yards beyond the gate of our fence when Freya stopped looking at us. We continued but she refused to follow us, contrary to all her past behavior under that situation. Normally, she would have run ahead of us. I called her several times but she refused to continue. I began to suspect that Freya knew something that would make it unwise to walk on, and I decided that we should return home. No sooner we had reached our entrance door when a violent thunderstorm came down on us. We thanked our dear dog for her sixth sense. Amazing to say the least.

Freya seemed to enjoy it when we groomed her. She particularly liked to lie on her back on the family room sofa while Evelyn would comb her hairy tummy, even when there were clumps of fur that had to be tamed or even cut. She would lie there patiently with her eyes half closed.

She enjoyed traveling in the rear compartment of our BMW SUV. She always remained totally silent lying comfortably on the soft pad that we installed for her. She was in no hurry to disembark whenever we would would open the hatch.

In general, Freya had full confidence in us. She knew we always were there to protect her and we would never willingly hurt her. As a rule, she would prefer human company to that of other dogs with the exception to a few good canine “friends”. She loved children and would be delighted when they petted her. Children responded and reciprocated with affection.

Note added in 2024

We waited years after the passing of Freya before we came home with our seventh female golden retriever, Gaia. We had tacitly admitted that the pain of losing Freya dissuaded us from owning a dog ever again. In 2021, however, at the peak of the Covid pandemic, we acquired Gaia, a relative of Freya, from a breeder in Connecticut. She is almost a reincarnation of Freya: sweet, engaged, responsive, intelligent and beautiful. She is now my 24/7 companion reading each other’s body language. She ensures that I get my daily walking exercise and thus contributes significantly to my physical wellbeing in addition to the moral support that I rely on in the painful absence of my dear Evelyn.