Halligan: A Requiem

By Bill McCann and Jeanine Lister

Brindle-col­ored chest­nut-red pup who was trained to fight and to hate all oth­er dogs
and named Hershey by the res­cue, she came to us when Jeanine vol­un­teered to fos­ter her
—“for a few weeks”—
to teach her some man­ners and find her a home;
                        that was Jeanine’s plan.
Sweet tem­pered and qui­et at the shel­ter, the answer was eas­i­ly “yes.”

But then Parvovirus came her way and the very next day she was at the vet’s where, after
five long days at death’s door,
she was once again at ours.
Once healthy and strong, Ciara named our pit bull Halligan,
for the firefighter’s tool used to tear down walls and break into burn­ing build­ings
no keys required. A fit­ting name for a big-head­ed mus­cle dog.
Halligan nev­er met a dog she liked or a human whose face she wouldn’t lick

When fam­i­ly or friends came to vis­it she’d go wild
Running in cir­cles
            Bounding on fur­ni­ture
                        A whirling dervish of hap­pi­ness
                                    Yipping and yelp­ing, like the floor was lava.

But if from the win­dow she saw anoth­er dog or any ani­mal, espe­cial­ly a squir­rel
she’d run from win­dow to win­dow,
want­i­ng to reach it and tear it limb from limb.
With her bound­less prey dri­ve, when once again out­side
she tore up and down and round and round,
try­ing to find where that dog or squir­rel or creature’d gone.
She was relent­less,
            rang­ing over hun­dreds of acres in all direc­tions,
                        bound­ing like Tigger on her back legs so that she could see prey above the
                                    seas of flow­ers and bram­bles, this­tles, and teasels.

Blackberries and rasp­ber­ries grew wild about us;
            some­times Halli came home car­ry­ing evi­dence of car­rion
                        and some­times only evi­dence of hav­ing eat­en all the ripe black­ber­ries.
With her great ver­ti­cal leap she would pull Bill’s pants off the clothes­line and ram­page them round
the yard, and once jumped and grabbed a vul­ture from the sky.
She charged, tar­get locked and loaded, toward an inno­cent fawn,
only to come home yelp­ing and wound­ed when mama doe, a dear
stepped in to save her baby’s life with fierce­ly strik­ing, stomp­ing, sharp hooves.

But Halligan nev­er stopped try­ing to chase and catch every­thing.
She fought and tus­sled with snakes, from pen­cil-sized garter snakes to six-foot rat snakes galore.
Only skunks could send her away—
            now a stink­ing
hum­bled
dog—
                        reliant on Jeanine and her mag­ic Dawn/Peroxide/Baking Soda potion
to make things—and her—smell good again.
She caught more mice than did our cats; one could always tell Halli’s kills because they gave evi­dence of
hav­ing been severe­ly and thor­ough­ly licked.
And, for rea­sons unknown, Halligan loved our cats and was enam­ored of tiny kit­tens.
It took her a long time to real­ize that though she loved them and want­ed to play,
they want­ed to scratch and hiss and only want­ed her to stay away.
“Catalonia” was the place they wished to remain:
            “Leave the cat alone!!” we bel­lowed for weeks.
Pinka took revenge by tak­ing a sharp swipe from hid­ing, play­ing “You Shall Not Pass” in the hallway.

Halligan had lots of scars from her days in the fight ring
           And more than a few from slash-and-run cats.
Halligan’s life changed when we moved to town
where, no longer in the coun­try, she could not run free.
Jeanine, some­times I, would walk her through the city past snarling dogs
only light­ly con­fined. We learned to avoid the area where a mad pack of
loose Chihuahuas cir­cled us like pira­nhas, nip­ping and snap­ping for a bite.
And we were forced to con­fine her to the tiny city back­yard, about the
height and width and space of a long clothesline.

But Hallie was a dig­ger. Given a lit­tle time, she’d tun­neled under the six-foot pri­va­cy fence
            and was gone.
One hol­i­day week­end the police found her down­town and locked her up at the shel­ter
            after a long 24 hours on the lam.
But she always loved to go for car rides, so jin­gling the keys and hol­ler­ing,
            “Halli! Are you hun­gry?”
or turn­ing over the car engine would bring her run­ning back home.
An open car door to gath­er her in, a dri­ve around the block—or maybe a few blocks—
would always do the trick.
We’d have Halli back with­out hav­ing to post reward posters.

Yesterday

Was the last day trip we took with Halligan.
She’s now near­ly 12, old for a pit bull whose mind and body bear the scars of wars.
            She’s slow to eat, quick to retreat to her bed;
                        the can­cer she’s been fight­ing has won.
So we drove down high­way 89 toward the Mountain Parkway.
            Usually pant­i­ng and pac­ing, stick­ing her head out the win­dow, putting her paws on the dash,
that ner­vous ener­gy was not appar­ent yes­ter­day.
            She stood and watched the world go by—sometimes she sat, but she was so tired…
A McDonald’s cheese­burg­er did not tempt her; the years and can­cer had tak­en their toll
            and even a pupcup of ice cream from Dairy Queen was not enough to perk her up.

So today’s the day
            that Halligan cross­es the Rainbow Bridge
                        and we will be left with only mem­o­ries.
But she, we are glad, will be free of pain
and per­haps she will be able to fly, as she so often seemed to do
in the fields around our coun­try home
near Corinth.