Southwest Sierra #86 – A Christmas Tail

In the twilight hours of December 30, 2016 I am dreaming. Mom is sitting on our bed wrapping Christmas presents. She is making name tags. On one tag she writes something about being quiet and I know that it is for my husband David. On the next tags she writes: “She ramrods the water district” and I know that it is for me. Then Dad is there too, and I strongly feel the presence of them both. I wake up feeling protected. While eating breakfast I jot down the dream in my journal.

At that time, I was the office manager for the Sixteen to One Mine. On my lunch break that day I logged onto the Rocket Dog Rescue website. We had been searching for over a year, for the right dog and a few nights prior (on Christmas Eve) a friend had mentioned this website. We were looking for a young dog with a decent coat. Short-haired dogs never look happy when it gets cold. All the other sites that I had searched only had short-haired puppies (or there was a reason why they couldn’t be adopted). On the Rocket Dog Rescue site I saw many young huskies, and no other long or medium haired dogs. As I logged off, I said to myself: “I don’t think I want a husky”.

About an hour later I drove to the Alleghany Post Office. As I was parking, a big, bright red truck pulled up from behind the Post Office (Kanaka Creek Road) and parked right in front of me. The red truck contrasted beautifully with Alleghany’s bright white snow. I didn’t recognize the truck, but I did recognize one of the 16 to 1 Miners as he got out. It was Santino. Santino lived in Redding full-time and Alleghany part-time for work. We were both standing on the porch of the museum/post office when he said: “I have something to show you.” I thought that he probably had something for the museum (the miners often found relics to donate). Even though I was thinking this I flippantly asked: “Is it a puppy?” He looked surprised and waved me to follow. He opened the passenger side door and there sitting on the floor was a beautiful black and white HUSKY puppy. Tears started streaming down my cheeks. Only two-months old, she was the runt of a large litter born at his home in Redding. Santino told me that she was the last puppy left, and he had brought her to Alleghany hoping that Mike Miller would take her. He said that he was thinking of “leaving her at a gas station”, when Mike mentioned that David and I might be looking for a dog!

I drove back to the mine office with the puppy. I walked into the Lapidary Room where David was working with the puppy in my arms. When he saw the puppy, an expression of utter surprise came over him. As I explained that she was ours, I saw a few tears of joy on his face too.

Cory Peterman happened to be in Alleghany that day and I invited him to our house for dinner. Evidently the cat thought that the puppy was with him, because after he left, she came running down the stairs and smacked headfirst into the puppy. They literally butted heads. The puppy yelped and ran behind a large clay pot in the bedroom and stayed there for over an hour. Our neurotic, semi-feral cat lived mostly upstairs after that, for about two years.

The next morning, David named the puppy Kava. She responded to her name immediately. We had to make a “town trip” to get puppy chow and a collar for her. It was several weeks before I noticed that I’d had the dream with my parents on the same day that Kava arrived. That is when I realized that she was a Christmas present from them, delivered to the Alleghany Post Office by Special Delivery.