Goodbye, Mocha

Message from Stuart (email milliken@psmail.net) about Mocha. Received by Liz on Oct. 18.

I've got some bad news I want to let you know about. My sweet Mocha died recently. Peggy and I had to take a trip to Hong Kong to renew visas and left Mocha at home in the care of our close friend/housekeeper Ah-Ying. We left shortly after lunch, and that very evening Mocha had an attack of bloat (our best guess) and died. There was nothing anyone could do. We weren't able to return home for two weeks, but got the news by email the day after it happened. This has been a very hard blow to endure. I'm glad you had a chance to meet my Little Girl and that she was able to have so much fun at the park.

For those newcomers not familiar with Mocha's background, she was an unwanted "gift" to us. I had never had a dog and was not at all interested in having one--our educational development work here in rural south China keeps us busy enough without the nuisance of pets.

Mocha was a Kunming Dog. Kuming Dogs are similar in appearance to German Shepherds. The People's Liberation Army developed them as a breed in China beginning in the 1950s, with the goal of produce a highly athletic dog with great stamina and drive suited to patrolling China's vast southern border.

When we went to the US , Mocha learned to love swimming, snow dancing and playing at the dog park. She earned her CGC in short order and began training in wilderness search and rescue.

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Tribute to Mocha

Last year during our sabbatical from our work in China we lived on a dairy farm in rural upstate New York. This farm consisted of two sharply contrasting worlds. One was the factory-like world of milking barns, tractor sheds, propane-fired grain dryers and towering silos. International Harvesters with monster tires shuttled between buildings, hauling bails of hay one way and pulling the Big Smelly Wagon the other way. Welding sparks sprayed from the open door of a garage, pickup trucks came and went, hulking Holsteins trooped in and out of barns. This is the noisy, busy, mucky part of the dairy farm, down along the Slaterville-Harford road.

The other part is far larger, yet hardly visible to anyone down by the road. In fact, it's hardly even accessible. The "back fields" encompass nearly a thousand acres of hay rippling in waves with the breeze, expanses of dark green clover and fat bumblebees, thick fields of corn and densely wooded ravines harboring deer and wild turkeys. On the east side the land merges into a state forest, the boundary being marked only in a few places by the remaining ancient fence posts with their half-hearted strands of barbwire. No roads lead to the back fields; to reach it one must wade across Six Mile Creek, whose ice-cold waters rush along a wide cobblestone bed.

I took Mocha into the back fields perhaps every other day (other days being spent along the nature trails and in the parks around Ithaca). We walked from our tiny rented house onto the road and followed the electrified fence along the heifer pasture until we reached the turn-in for the barns and sheds, with all of their mechanized dangers and organic enticements. I kept Mocha securely on leash and at my side. She would have loved to bolt full-speed down to the creek and across to the boundless hills and fields beyond, but here she still needed to stay near me.

But as soon as we reached the bottom of the wide gravel tractor-way leading into the water crossing, I would ask Mocha to sit and let me unclip her leash. She'd then look up at me with her intense, expectant gaze. And I'd say, "Yes, yes, go on! Run and play!" She'd charge through the creek and bound on up the opposite bank. She then might leap onto one of the great "buffaloes" of hay baled in rolls, or run full-out in wide circles with gleeful abandon, her invisible path marked by the thrashing surface of the tall grass above her head. She loved this freedom, but always stayed within hailing distance and came running instantly when called. It was a perfect place for her; a place where she could be fully Dog without need for me to worry about her safety. We seemed the closest together during these long secluded hikes, even though we weren't physically linked with a leash.

For those newcomers not familiar with Mocha's background, she was an unwanted "gift" to us. I had never had a dog and was not at all interested in having one--our educational development work here in rural south China keeps us busy enough without the nuisance of pets, and besides, dogs are smelly, noisy brutes.

We cooperated in building a house with a local family, our best friends, including Ah-Ying whom I've frequently mentioned. One day we had an attempted burglary, and Ah-Ying's extended family were (correctly) afraid that she would get in trouble if harm came to us in the house. So her brother procured for us a nine-week-old Kunming Dog puppy.

Kunming Dogs are similar in appearance to German Shepherds. The People's Liberation Army developed them as a breed in China beginning in the 1950s, with the goal of produce a highly athletic dog with great stamina and drive suited to patrolling China's vast southern border. KMDs are now used by the police and customs service as well, and they are increasingly employed as factory and farm guard dogs. This was ominously suggestive that a KMD might not necessarily make the best introductory dog for the novice pet owner. It's a tribute to the wonderful help of this list, and especially many private emails from Ginny, plus several good books, that we made it through puppyhood without me losing my mind and with the house losing only small amounts of furniture.

Mocha grew from a wildly ricocheting puppy into a beautiful, athletic and profoundly dignified young dog. Through a gift from Ginny she discovered her passion in life, frisbee, and would have liked to spend as much time in mid air, snatching the spinning disk from the sky, as on the ground. I'd like to think that she had a significant impact on local attitudes toward dogs through her impromptu exhibitions in the parks--both by her displays of skill and by her gentleness with all those who overcame their ingrained fear to approach and pet her. Passersby referred to her as "the Wolf Dog" as they skirted to the other side of the street, but by the end we would run into people every day who knew her by name and who would delight in commanding her to sit and shake hands.

In June 2003 an outbreak of distemper killed several neighbor dogs. Despite having been immunized at our local "veterinary station", Mocha also became ill, to the point that I had to syringe-feed her chicken broth and carry her out to potty. Again, support from the list saved the day. Before she fully recovered, Mocha demonstrated her courage and breeding as a military dog by chasing a burglar at fang point out our living room window in the middle of the night. The police believe that this was the same burglar who a week or so earlier broke into another house, killed the watch dog and knifed the owner. Mocha, who regularly put up with toddlers in the park grabbing her ears and tripping on her tail, nearly took out the window frame to protect us.

A few weeks later we went to the US where Mocha learned to love swimming, snow dancing and playing at the dog park. She earned her CGC in short order and began training in wilderness search and rescue. Search and rescue was sort of a pipe dream, given our work in China, but who knows where it might have led? Mocha showed great aptitude and enjoyed the training; my vague and probably unrealistic idea was to start a volunteer SAR program here.

It seems we've only just returned to China. The sad ending to the story you already know from recent posts. Peggy and I got back from our two-week trip to Hong Kong and Taiwan just this morning, and it was very hard to enter the house with Mocha gone, as I knew it would be. While coming to grips with Mocha's passing, I think back especially on our year in the US. There was a time when I couldn't unclip her leash and release her; she still needed to be near me. But she's now in a perfect place, a place not visible nor easily accessed from here where it's noisy and busy. She's in a place where she can be fully Dog without need for me to worry about her. And here she can cross the cold creek on a Bridge. "Go on, Mocha! Run and play!" We'll always be close together.