I used to have a dog. Chloe was half Malamute, half Husky. All white. One eye brown, one eye blue, like David Bowie. She was a beauty with her bushy tail. Sweet, too. She used her voice almost like talking, so you could tell when she was happy or sad, or wanted something.

Chloe was and wasn’t my dog. What I mean is, I wasn’t the one who got her. My girlfriend at the time, whom I’ll call J, bought her from a breeder named Margaret up in Colville Lake, where J was from, above the Arctic circle. She brought the puppy down to Vancouver, where I was finishing law school, and left her with me for a month. I raised that dog. I taught her how to walk with me, go to the bathroom, basic commands.

Then J came down and picked us both up in her new truck. We headed to Yellowknife, driving on the highway for two days. As we drove further north, the trees got smaller and smaller. The rocks grew more plentiful. J said this landscape was called the barrenlands. It looked foreboding. The insects got bigger too. Sometimes they splatted on the windshield. Their liquified remains were so large and grotesque, it looked like you’d killed a small bird.

J and I fought all the way up. Poor Chloe had to hear us. I think at one point J was mad because of the rap music lyrics I was playing on the car CD player. We were both stressed out. It was a long drive. We didn’t know each other well. We didn’t know ourselves. We broke up by the time we got to Yellowknife. It was June 21, 2004, the summer solstice. An Indigenous man shook my hand when I got out of the truck, and said, “Welcome to the land of the midnight sun.” He wore sunglasses and a cowboy hat. It’s funny how some moments stick with you forever. My first night, I slept in the YMCA homeless shelter. I had no money.

J and I got back together the next day.

I took Chloe hiking around Frame Lake every day. It took us about an hour. The mosquitos were so bad I would wear a hoodie and constantly brush my face and hands. Then it got so cold and the mosquitos left, but I had to wear a scarf around my face. The condensation from my breath would form icicles on my eyelashes. Chloe got bigger and stronger from our walks. Her chest expanded.

At the end of the year, I went New York for a month, and when I returned in the new year, J and I broke up again. After I had gotten her organization a bunch of funding. After she had not paid me for my work. I took it hard. I didn’t know anyone else in Yellowknife. I just knew Chloe.

I still took Chloe for walks, but she had bonded with J by now. J had also started seeing someone while I was away. A definitive break was inevitable. I was experiencing so much anxiety I could barely breathe. I talked to a woman who advised me I was in an abusive relationship. Some of it was financial abuse. Whatever the case, there was no question that J would keep the dog. That was really hard. I had to say goodbye to J, but also to Chloe.

I ended up staying in Yellowknife for a few years. Part of it was stubbornness and not wanting to admit defeat. I did some things up there that shaped my career. Worked on the Aboriginal Blueprint for health, worked with various Indigenous organizations and chiefs. Planned an elders’ conference. Travelled, and met more of the northern people. I wrote articles for the local paper. Stopped some bad legislation from going through. After about three and a half years I moved to Calgary, bringing only some paintings and sculptures, and a parka.

Before I left Yellowknife, I flew to Colville Lake one day for a meeting, and I had some time on my hands. I couldn’t visit J’s old house, because it had burned down, or had been burnt down. I decided to visit the former local priest, who had left the priesthood and married Margaret, the dog breeder who’d bred Chloe.

When I got to their log cabin, a big white Husky Malamute came up to me. She had one blue eye and one brown eye, just like Chloe. The dog whimpered and shook her tail. As Margaret introduced herself, the dog wouldn’t leave my side. The first thing I said, after my name, was that this dog reminded me a lot of a dog I used to know. Margaret asked the name of that dog.

I said, “Chloe.”

She said, “This is Chloe.”

I’d often thought about Chloe, and how unfair it was that J kept her. I never imagined J would send her back to Margaret and not even offer her to me. Margaret explained that Chloe was well integrated in a pack, with her siblings. I could see she loved the dog, and Chloe looked happy. I didn’t feel I had the right to take Chloe back. I felt it in my gut. I found life in the North hard, but it had taught me some things. I understood Chloe belonged with Margaret now.

I said goodbye to Chloe. I never returned to Colville Lake or saw Chloe again.

I read somewhere recently that Margaret passed away. I looked it up: Huskies have a lifespan of between twelve and fifteen years. We got Chloe around March 2004. That means Chloe has probably died too. Maybe right around the same time as Margaret did. I like to think they were faithful lifelong companions, those two. Sometimes when I tell this story, I still feel angry. I say, “Who gives up their dog?” I named that dog, and I’ve never had another. But you know, maybe J did the best she could. Maybe she actually did the best thing for Chloe.

And maybe before J gave up Chloe, I gave her up, too.