A Eulogy for Heyoka

Heyoka, a mostly-wolf mixed with malamute, came to live with us ten years ago. He had been one of forty-something wolves/wolfdogs at the rescue center I worked with, having been given up by a private home at the age of two to three years old. At the center, he had been pen-mate to a female wolf/Samoyed mix named Sequoia. As much time as I spent socializing with the rescue’s permanent residents, there were still so many wolves and wolfdogs that it was impossible for any of them to get enough individual attention.

Heyoka and Sequoia came to live with me when I needed to find a companion for Phantom, a large black wolf I had rescued. No, I hadn’t wanted to bring home a wolf, and they’re certainly not “pets,” but Phantom would have otherwise been euthanized. We’d had a strong bond via the private home he was rescued from (he’d never let anyone but me touch him, including the people who had originally purchased him and the three subsequent homes they tried to place him in).

Phantom, Sequoia, and Heyoka got along well. Sequoia, always very social with people, kicked those boys’ butts and kept them in line. She was an alpha bitch in the best sense of the word! But from the beginning, it was obvious that Heyoka was the real leader. One look at him and you instantly knew that you were looking at an old, wise soul. He never bullied the others, though, and when Phantom, with his eternal teenage bratty personality, would go too far, all Heyoka had to do was give the tiniest of lip curls and Phantom would roll over on his back.

Heyoka had been extremely skittish around people from the time he had come into the rescue center. He’d been given up by a home with a man with a young boy, and we hadn’t known much else. He would not allow anyone to pet him. It took years of patience at my home, living in the palace of a pen my husband and I had built for the three, for me to be able to touch him at all—and then it was only on his terms. A soft stroke of his chest and the side of his face through the chain link before I entered the pen was comfortable, and as long as the others were around for security, I could stroke him on those areas from inside the pen as well. He always ran up to the gate with the others when I approached the pen. Once I entered, knowing that he didn’t want to be reached for, I would crouch down and turn my head slightly away, and he would come over and lick my face, and sometimes “scent roll” on my head—especially when I had just colored my hair!

Heyoka was with us for ten years. Two years ago sweet Sequoia passed over, and then it was just the boys. Heyoka developed a lot of stiffness in his back end, which was helped somewhat by various medications. Recently he developed neurological problems. He could not stand up for very long at a time and when he did he would walk mostly in circles. He stopped eating and was no longer himself. After a veterinary examination and a pronouncement of definite neurological damage that had almost no chance of getting better, I could not let him continue to suffer. Last Wednesday, February 18, a friend who is the only other person Heyoka felt at all comfortable with came with me to the vet’s office. She had loved Heyoka as well. It was ironic that sedated and lying there on the vet’s floor awaiting euthanization was the only time I had been able to really stroke him and hold him the way I had always longed to. I told him how much he was loved, and we both sent gentle loving energy to him as he passed over.

Wolves have always been associated with the full moon. The night Heyoka was euthanized, there was a full moon whose brightness was shadowed by a rare lunar eclipse. It is only fitting. I know Heyoka’s light is shining on in a place where its love would blind us all.

"Death is not the extinguishing of the light... it is the
putting out of the lamp because the dawn has come." 
~ Indian Poet Rabindranath Tagore