When Ghosts Speak - Mary Ann Winkowski [78]
When we were showing dogs, I was friendly with a very successful handler named Barry. He showed a variety of breeds for many clients. He had a very busy kennel in the state where he lived; it wasn’t unusual for him to board twenty or thirty of his clients’ show dogs at any given time. I met him when I noticed him in the show ring with a magnificent harlequin Great Dane. The dog’s name was Duke, and he loved Barry. The two had a bond that made them a spectacular pair in the show ring. Out of the ring, Duke was as clumsy as a puppy. Given his huge size, he never went anywhere without leaving a wake of chaos.
I hadn’t seen Barry for a while when we went to a dog show near his home. He invited us to stay with him and kennel our dogs at his facility. Well, it was a long drive home, so we accepted his offer. I asked about Duke and was sad to hear that he had died a few months earlier. I hadn’t seen Duke’s ghost with Barry earlier at the show, so I assumed he had crossed over. As we headed down to the kennel to lock up the dogs for the night, Barry told me that he hoped that they’d stay in their cages until morning. When I asked him what he meant, he told me that lately he’d been finding the kennel area a mess when he came in to see the dogs early in the morning. Towels from the grooming table would be strewn across the floor, dog toys would be flung all over the place, kibble would be spilled, and many of the dogs would appear to be exhausted, as if they’d been up all night at some big party.
“The weird thing,” he added, “is that when I leave at night, I double-check to ensure that all the kennel doors are closed securely. And when I come back in the morning, they’re all still locked tight. But the place is trashed. I can’t figure out who could be doing this.”
I had a pretty good idea, but I didn’t say anything until we walked into the kennel. There was no question about what I saw: Duke’s ghost was standing at the grooming table, his front paws up on the edge. He was almost as tall as me, and his tail began wagging a million miles an hour when Barry walked in. I didn’t have one doubt about how all those towels were ending up on the floor each night.
Barry didn’t believe me at first when I told him that Duke was there. “It’s impossible,” he said. “He wasn’t with me when he died.”
I asked him when the problems in the kennel had started. About three weeks ago, he told me, ever since he had returned from a dog show several states away. I asked if he’d seen Duke’s owners at that show; he had. They had brought one of Duke’s puppies to have him assess the pup’s show potential. “We were talking about how much the pup looked like Duke,” he said. He stopped talking and stared at me for a long minute.
I just nodded. “He’s really here,” I said.
As much as Barry loved Duke, there was no way the dog’s ghost could stay. Barry gave me one of Duke’s old favorite toys and watched as I made the Light and threw the toy into it. Duke wagged his tail happily and bounded in after it.
As sad as Barry was to say good-bye to an old friend, there was no denying his relief the next morning when we came down to the kennel to find perfect order and peacefully snoozing dogs.
The presence of ghost animals can sometimes put both animals and humans at risk. Because my home is so close to Kentucky, I have done a lot of work at racetracks in that area and have seen many situations where the presence of ghost horses endangers both other horses and the people around them. Ghost racehorses that run on the track during regular races can distract the other horses, causing them to spook or swerve. After several spectacular on-course collisions, one standardbred racetrack (where the horses trot around pulling little buggy-like carts called sulkies) called and asked me to visit. While I was there, I was able to send several ghost horses and their drivers into the Light and make the track safer for the living horses competing on it.
My first experience with ghost horses came