This is Lucien. He was cleverly named by my girlfriend at the time, Deanna, after two sub-culture figures: one Beat poet, one fictional werewolf… “Lucien” Carr, key member of the original 1940 American Beat Generation writers, and “Lucian” the emerging werewolf leader from the 2009 movie ‘Rise of the Lycons’. It was perfect name for him in my world, which celebrates these sub-cultures. Deanna had taken me to a wolf sanctuary earlier that year as a surprise gift to celebrate the completion of my first novel, a werewolf story, so it was a glorious season all wrapped up in wolf mythology, literature, road trips, beauty, adventure, and love. Thus I surprised her with our next gift, a puppy, our tiny Lucien. Here are a few of my memories of him.
1/ He was a pup surprise for my girlfriend. She loved dogs. I knew nothing about having a dog. We drove down to Georgia to get him from an American Indian woman who bred Alaskan Malamutes. The room was full of them. “He’s the alpha of the pack,” she told us. Lucien was just a tiny pup, like a soft single shoe, and gorgeous. That first hour driving back with our new puppy child was pretty magical. Pure romance. I was just so happy to be in love with my beautiful beloved girlfriend who I was having so much fun with and to be on a cool road trip together and to have this new little fella joining our life. He was just a few weeks old. Immediately he pooped in the backseat and looked up embarrassed. Such an adventure was beginning on top of an adventure…
2/ I built him an outdoor doghouse for daytime out front the hotel and painted on it his name and “Beware of Werewolf.” It was adorable to see this tiny pup shyly peek out and then jump out with enthusiasm.
3/ The above photo was from Lucien’s “middle stage” where he reminded me of Bart Simpson from the Simpsons. He would chew on everything, getting into all kinds of trouble, tearing the taxidermy apart in the hotel, etc, but he was pure adorable so got away with most anything. At one point the postmaster had me ink Lucien’s paw for him to pawprint sign my werewolf novel. A photographer, a complete stranger, came from New York City and photographed Lucien with this giant cupcake prop outside the hotel. We didn’t even know until we saw it later on the internet. Lucien was taking on a tad of a celebrity pet, certainly he was the Midway hotel mascot. Folks would walk by and sneak him hot dogs and treats all days long. The next door neighbors would feed him fine dinner scraps tossing them down from their roof. Sometimes from the hotel window I’d see different people stopping to visit him, high school kids kindly petting him, old guys who knew his name and would stop to talk to him. I discovered Lucien had a whole host of secret regular neighborhood friends who would come to visit him and talk with him. This made me feel really good. Once I saw a young boy come up and pet him kindly. From my third floor editing room window I saw this boy stop by several afternoons after school and talk to Lucien and pet him very gently. I got to see a secret side of people as I watched that was genuinely kind, which was heartwarming.
4/ I discovered I really liked being responsible for another living being. Every obligation to look out for his health, get him shots, feed him, whatever, I enjoyed the experience of providing for him. This was my first dog of my own. So I learned a lot. I had a lot to learn. His breed is particular in that early obedience training is imperative, which I naively didn’t do. The lessons we shared that we did get right, like teaching him the first time how to climb a staircase or how to sit and shake hands and lay down, were really neat moments for Deanna and I. You’d see the light bulb light up in his head when he got it. Wow, he’s learning and thinking and applying it! It was fascinating.
5/ Lucien was an Alaskan Malamute. He was bred to pull sleds in the harshest conditions and fight polar bears. So, he loved the snow. He literally wanted to dash around outside all winter long in the snow. He would roll in it and just plop down to rest in snow. Malamutes grow an extra fur for the winters. For Lucien, when it snowed it was like he was hitting the lottery.
6/ Lucien loved Dunkin Donuts visits too. If we were driving by he recognized their street sign and would hop about in the back seat out of control with enthusiasm until we went through the drive thru. The folks there knew him and would feed him doughnut munchkins through the window. He was like a celebrity in the backseat.
7/ Sometimes we’d drive into the woods for lunch picnics and just run around. In October this was so magical it was unreal. The colored falling leaves from the trees and this furry little being racing through them…pure endearment, pure enchantment.
8/
9/ He made a lot of long term friends during Coffee Nights at the Midway. Michelle would always bring him a big bone. Denise would bring him bacon strip treats. Sandy would take him on long walks and bring her own big dog to play with him. Syn would cry out “Luuuuuuuuuu!” from a block away and he’d excitedly lay down for her oncoming bellyrubs. Mark the magician would wrestle him to the ground playing, until eventually Lucien weighed more than Mark and the situation was flipped. I could mention another two dozen people and the kind things they did with him and the joy he brought. Everyone showed him so much love. He was one charming family member.
10/ Dog communication was interesting and came in many different forms. Chef Thom would work on his novel down in the bar and also spent a lot of afternoons with his pal Lucien. I’d hear Thom talking to Lucien in some kind of dog talk that went, “Arr Arr Arr Arr Arr Rar Rar Rar! No, I said, Arr Arr Arr Arr Arr Rar Rar Rar!” Sometimes Thom cooked Lucien steaks too. I watched Deanna talk to Lucien this way as well, in some strange doggie language, but her’s was a little more mumbled, like Scooby-Doo, “Ruh roh.” etc. Lucien would answer them back, in a similar garbled bark as if imitating his humans. It was like they all knew something. Most of the time I called him Buddy, like “Hey buddy, how you doing?!” So I wondered if he thought maybe his name was Buddy instead of Lucien. My friend Skot would tell me great stories about Malamutes and how his breed related to man and came to be and the harsh winter conditions they were capable of enduring. Malamutes are smart, and will out-think problems. They kept many men alive in conditions that otherwise probably no one would have survived.
11/ Once I got hurt badly on my lower leg. Lucien was never a licker. But that week he stayed close by my side and licked and licked and licked the exact spot I was hurt. He just knew and wanted to help heal me.
12/ Once when coming back from the doggie motel Lucien leapt from the open car window while I was going maybe 40 mph or faster. But I was still holding the leash so he shot down under the car. It was terrifying. As I hit the breaks I thought I’d killed him. But he was okay. He looked up from the street a little embarrassed with a look of “I’m okay. Sorry.”
13/ Malamutes aren’t barkers. They howl, like wolves. Perhaps my favorite sound in the Midway was every time a fire engine or police siren sounded Lucien would react to it, howling back. It was beautiful. He would put his head up and out came this long amazing cry. It was so endearing and primal and archetypal. Once in my office I put on a movie full of howling wolves just to see Lucien’s reaction. Sure enough, he howled and howled at the tv screen! I could listen to that long slow wolf howl any time. It became part of the Midway landscape, a beautiful sound that would climb and repeat itself and bring smiles throughout the hotel.
14/ As an adult Lucien quickly grew into a large, regal, proud, extremely dominant, beautiful canine. He certainly grew into his werewolf reputation. His paws seemed massive. He was very strong. He was over a hundred pounds and all of it pure muscle and enthusiasm. He just stood so majestic. Strangers started stopping me to ask if he was an actual wolf or possibly a wolf hybrid. To be honest, I didn’t know, we thought he was pure bred Malamute. Was I living with a partial wolf? When he galloped up and down the stairs and through the halls of the Midway he sounded like a moose pounding about at top speed.
15/ A very dangerous side of him emerged. Lucien got more and more alpha. Then he started biting people. It was frightening. One poor girl who he knew and loved passed out from fear as he attacked her. My god! It was ferocious. I took him to a dog trainer and he bit the trainer in the face! I was right there. The attacks I witnessed were terrifying and sprung out of nowhere and completely unpredictable. A second trainer warned me that I should be scared for my own safety, which I completely ignored because I didn’t feel it. But I had to curb Lucien from most everyone else, and by the end even from those who loved him dearly. This was a horrible, dark, sad time period.
16/ A man and his dog: Over the years Lucien and I had spent a lot of time together, entire days with no one else around. I never even thought I’d own a dog and now here I was with one around the clock. A year earlier I’d watched Deanna try to walk him once and he’d grown so big and powerful he was instead about to walk her. I would take him down to Carpenter’s Park, tie a rope from him to my belt, and let him swim way out into the creek. We went on long magical road trips together throughout the woods of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Once we survived driving through a tornado nightmare storm together heading to Chicago!
We had a secret communication that was just between us. Ever since he was tiny pup I’d whisper “Shhh shhh shhh shhh shhh shhh…” real low and he’d know that meant everything was okay and he could relax. For instance, he was scared of thunder and would hide in the hotel, so I’d whisper shhh shhh shhh shhh shhh and I’d see him take comfort. I let him sleep in my bed with me through these last two long magical winters. It was pure enchantment. And in the morning when he wanted to go outside he’d stare at the door as if that could somehow make it open. I really came to love him. He sat by my side as I edited film for long hours deep into the nights. I kind of started to think of him as my best friend. His eyes were these deep dark wet orbs, with orange brown and red in them.
In some quiet moments I swear I thought he could read my thoughts. I read somewhere that the Inuit Indians called Malamutes “spirit dogs” because they were so good at reading men’s minds. It was strange and unexpected to me how close one can get to a large beloved animal, almost mystical. In the end he seemed wild. When it was time I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. It was heartbreaking. I buried him myself patting the dirt over him with my bare hands. Shhh shhh shhh shhh shhh, buddy.
17/ Lucien the prince. Looking back over our shared time with him it feels like we were in some kind of magical fable.
Lucien is an Alaskan Malamute, which is a sled dog from Alaska bred for the harshest environments. The Inuit Indians called Malamute’s “spirit dogs” because they were so good at readers human’s minds. According to Snowlion Kennels, “Malamutes are descendants of domesticated wolf-dogs who accompanied bands of nomadic Paleolithic hunters from Mongolia across Siberia, eastward over the land bridges of the Bering Strait and into the North American continent in a series of migrations some four thousand years ago.” Malamutes also were used to hunt seals and polar bears.
The day after I finished writing my novel The Werewolf Lotus, my girlfriend at the time surprised me with a magical day trip adventure to a wolf sanctuary. It was a great day. So, later, I got Lucien for her as a surprise gift. She loved dogs. She cleverly named this one ‘Lucien’, linking him to two sub-cultures that are important to the hotel: Beat and Goth (Lucien Carr from the 1940s American Beat writer scene and Lucian the werewolf from the 2009 fantasy movie Underworld: Rise of the Lycans). Thus, Lucien!
Lucien grew fast. Even though he is already a large dog he’s still just a puppy, currently one year old. And he’s still growing! He’s an extremely strong, dignified dog, and not mean-spirited at all. He loves day trips into the woods where he can run and run. Each day when the train passes through Windber blowing it’s great whistle Lucien howls along with it. He’s kind of well-known in Windber lately as he can be found most any day in the park in the center of town right out front the hotel. Anyone who approaches the hotel can’t get by without being greeted by Lucien’s enthusiasm first.
This is Lucien eating the porch:
The hotel is so soaked in creative spirit apparently it summons and generates enchantment on it’s own. One day we found these photos on the internet with Lucien apparently encountering a giant mystical cupcake while we were out. At first, we had no idea…
