Kissu

Adopted 3 April 1988 in Tulsa OK - died 7 April 2002 in Tulsa

Living next to a rental duplex over a period of 30 years provided a panoramic view of human dysfunctionality. Of the many tenants who stumbled in and out of the corner house across the street from mine, only a young couple and later a middle aged woman were people I regretted to see go, the rest ranged from odd to criminal. What better proof of the troubles I’ve seen than the fact that “Bonus” 1985, “Jefe” 1986, “Kissu” 1988, and “Maximus” 1989 where consecutive rescues of mine from that address.

The stock market crash of 1987 brought in a wave of undesirables. There was even a murder. This story, however, begins with a band of potheads who at sunset rolled out of bed and ran a chop shop of stolen cars a few feet away from my windows. My elderly parents and I were sleepless under the nightly racket of powertools, bright lights, and dope fumes. Frequent calls to the police non-emergency number produced no results for at least a year. Suddenly one night the block was surrounded by cruisers and everyone was hauled off. What took so long!

Days after the raid, a man and a woman started hauling some of the contents of the house. A young German Shepherd mix rode back and forth with them until one day the dog stayed in the yard and they were gone.

Once again I took the customary trip to Dr. McCoy for vaccines and neutering, and negotiated with my recently widowed, 82-year old mother, to keep him. This time, my argument was that the degradation of the Woodward Park Addition warranted reinforcements for “Bonus” (Blog bio 26 APR 2015) and “Jefe” (Blog bio 25 FEB 2017).

The new dog joined the household, cats and all, without a ripple. For my mother’s benefit, I named him “Kissu,” the Catalan generic pet name my father called dogs he didn’t know and sometimes even those he did.

Kissu didn’t act like the nine-month dog he was; he kept to himself, pacing up and down the fence. If the others barked, he didn’t. There was emptiness in his gaze; not mistrust, not fear, just zero expectations. Quiet and detached, he remained silent for months. .... Why he decided one day to bark menacingly at a passerby only he knew. He was transformed. From that moment on, the yard, the house, and everyone in it were his to protect.  Kissu, the aloof, also became Kissu the attention seeker. The iconic image is one of Kissu sprawled in the center of the living room, amidst a dense crowd of New Year’s Eve party revelers.

Kissu was a congenial companion to the two first dogs he survived and to their successors, “Maximus” (Blog bio10 NOV 2016) and “Estrella” (Blog bi 30 APR 2017). His predominant German Shepherd good nature was marred by a Terrier-like compulsion for digging. Moon-like craters appeared wherever the lawn was greener. Yelling at him hurt his GSD sensitivity but not his Terrier determination. In a fit of frustration and possibly a drink too many, I once opened the gate and ordered him to leave. Gentle reader: Be assured that he was not about to obey nor I to allow it, but just in case, my mother slammed the gate shut and delivered a command backlap that brought me back to my senses. Two or three similar treatments in the course of my childhood were justified, but none more deserved than this one in my fourties.

In the early 1990s it happened that just before bedtime Kissu stood up in front of me panting, his chest cavity expanding and contracting alarmingly. I rushed him to the emergency clinic where he stayed overnight. Early next morning he was breathing normally and the cause of that episode had not been determined, but in the process he had torn his IV and bit two vet techs. One thousand dollars poorer, I took him to the regular vet, as instructed, for further observation and release. The symptoms never reoccurred but the episode may have heralded the manner of his death.

By 2001 Kissu was getting feeble. Ravenously hungry but not gaining weight, disoriented, needy, and often underfoot he was not aging well, but who does. Then in the morning of 7 April 2002 sound and happy one moment he suffered a fulminating heat attack, collapsing and howling in pain. I held him and hoped it wouldn’t last. Later that day I wrote: “Kissu loved me more than anyone ever did or will again.”

He was there for me in 1996, when Jann S., a disturbed and disturbing acquaintance, “accidentally” locked Kissu and me out of the house despite loud warnings not to slam the door while I unlocked a tricky gate. It was midnight, the temperature outside was -10 F, and I was in light housewear. No cell phone. My neighbors were either as menacing as the weather or too afraid to open the door. I had to rely on the culprit, Jann, to wrangle a locksmith at that hour and in a blizzard, while Kissu and I clung to each other for two long hours in an uninsulated, drafty tack room by the detached garage.  Hypothermia would have come long before help without my loving dog persistently sharing his body heat, for I had none left.

Kissu cemented my belief that German Shepherd stock is the gold standard of dogs. His ashes were not liberated yet when, in his honor, I rescued another Shepherd. But "Edelsinn" (Blog bio 5 FEB 2017) is another story.