I sit here...alone. Thinking. I get up and move to another chair. I start to wonder about everything that is happening. Still I am alone. I move myself to another spot. I question things. And I am alone still. This is how it is. When you are alone.

I sit here...alone. Cringing. I try to get up and move. And I cannot. I can feel the tenseness gripping my body. This is how it is, when you are fearful.

When I began. When I started this, more than eight weeks ago, I pictured my life or rather I thought that my life had become barren and empty. Little did I know just what barren and empty would come to mean to me. I almost feel now that I was acting as though I were a whining little girl who couldn't see the forest for the trees. Over time I had become complacent about... well almost everything.

And then...it started. It was as if someone had reached out and threw that big, huge, Oh My God powered switch of devastation. My life seemed to be falling apart right before my eyes and it seemed I could do nothing to stop it. I thought that things couldn't get any worse and yet they did. Nothing was working and everything that was seemed to be breaking. I became caught up in this overpowering and accelerating spiral that wouldn't let up and kept me blinded as to what direction I should try to take and what I would do once I got there. I became a mess. I was my own worst enemy. I was losing control. There is a law in physics, everyone has heard of it. It became my new motto in life. Or rather I should say it became the new mold that everything fit into for me. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Every time I tried to do or take a step in the right direction to try and help myself, something would come along and knock me back an equal and opposite number of steps or weeks or days or minutes or whatever. I felt as though I had been beaten. Beaten in life, beaten emotionally, physically and mentally.

This is not the first time that I have felt this way. Without being aware of it, I have for a very long time had the support and love to get me through my hardest times. But being complacent, I had even taken this for granted. But sometimes reality has a way of coming around just in time to allow you not to make a mistake that you will always regret. And so it was when my turmoil was at it's greatest, that I awoke to what had become clouded and hazy to find again that light that had been the source of my strength for so long and in the process of doing so at the end of July, I realized I was soon going to lose the one thing that had meant the most to me.

I don't believe that things happen or come to us by accident. What we need the most for our spiritual growth is always given to us or we are led to it. So it was in this manner that 14 years ago I was led to Pharoah and he to me.

He came to me from the sky. It was December 31, 1982 at three in the afternoon. I had to pick him up at the Eastern Airlines freight depot on the east side of Houston International Airport. At four weeks old I was sure he would be screaming his little head off and that the workers there would be glad that I finally got there to pick him up.

When I last talked with the breeder in North Carolina he told me that he had sent me what I wanted. I was impressed because there had been no way to determine for sure whether or not the litter that had arrived would have any black cubs, as Timber Wolves come in every color possible.

It seemed that the care I took to select a breeder had paid off. For several months I had contacted every breeder of wolves that were in the US. Most gave me shoddy information and very bad pictures with equally bad brochures, some had no brochures at all. When I got in touch with Dysart's Kennels I received a large and well detailed brochure with black and white pictures within it, he also included several fresh colored Polaroid's of what he had to offer. After speaking on the phone we decided that a half breed would be best suited to the environment that my boy would be coming to. He would be around people a lot so I needed the calmer disposition that a half-breed would offer and also to hopefully allow me to control him to a greater degree than a 5/8 or 3/4 breed. 7/8 and full blood cubs were also available . It also had to be a male and hopefully black.

Pharoah's mother, an imported German Shepherd, had a litter of eight, all males and all black. I told him to send me one on to Houston. His father was a very large Mackenzie Valley Timber Wolf out of Canada, who weighed 160 pounds and had a 30 inch neck.

The kennel called and told me when to expect the little guy's arrival. I was so excited because I knew that this was going to lead to a really exciting time in my life.

I finally arrived at the airport and told the man at the counter who I was and that I was there to pick-up an animal. He left to go retrieve my little prize and I listened for screaming and whining but heard nothing and thought that maybe he hadn't arrived. But no, here he comes with a carrier in his hand and there were no noises coming out of it. I wondered if he was OK in there. He set him on the counter and prepared the paper work as I peered through the slots in the carrier trying to see just what had arrived for me. I was amazed, he was fast asleep and looked so comfortable. I signed the papers and carried him out to my car.

After setting the carrier down, I removed the top and finally got a good look at him. He was still sleeping. And he was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen. He looked just like a little wolf pup I had seen on a public television program. Call me crazy but I felt like his mother already. I stroked his little head and spoke softly to rouse him before I picked him up. He half opened his eyes and I spoke to him again as I picked up this lovely little creature. He was as soft as a cotton ball. His black baby hair was thick enough to bury your fingers in it and he had feelers all over his body like a cat does. His legs were amazingly thick and his feet were just plain huge. I think he weighed about 5 or 6 pounds and I could hold him in my two hands. As he awoke he looked at me and yawned. I cradled him in my right arm and nuzzled him a bit.

I put the carrier in the trunk and we got in the car. He looked around the front seat and took to me as if he knew that he was coming to stay with me. After getting aquatinted for a few minutes we headed back to the house in the southern part of Houston, about 10 or 15 minutes from the Astro Dome. As we left the parking lot he curled up along side of me and fell back asleep. He was home. I think we both felt that way.

His place in the house would be in my room and his bed my bed. I had already gotten the essentials for him, food and bowls and a friend gave me a container of tennis balls for him for when he would start to feel frisky. These would turn out to be one of his two favorite toys. He would never tire of chasing them, even at 14.

House breaking him turned out to be anti-climatic. He always took this particular posture before going and since I spent all my time with him I always was able to get him outside in time. Within two weeks time he was doing his duty outside without fail. He would alert me by going to the door.

I should explain how I was able to spend so much time with him. I was paid well in my profession and because of the nature of the work I had been working three months and then could take off three months and had done this for several years. Two years before Pharoah came along I had worked for six months and then took a six month vacation. After returning to work again I decided that I would work for a year and then take a year long vacation. I thought that I may never get to do this again so I went for it. I saved as much as I could and then near the end of that year of working is when I decided that I would finally get the animal I had dreamed of having ever since being around the half-breed wolf that a friend had gotten a few years earlier.

I did not take lightly the responsibility of having such an animal and I planned and thought out what I needed to do with great care. I think that a lot of people casually decide to get a dog or a cat or whatever, but owning and being responsible for a wolf should not be done so lightly. It would require a lot of training and patience. And he would also get to be very large and powerful. I would have to consider what was best for him, for me and especially for the public that he would be around.

The first two weeks I held him in my arms as much as possible and would not let anyone else pet or even touch him. No one much cared for that. I heard so many, "Ohhhhh's", that I lost track of the number and it soon became the norm. I wanted to be sure that the two of us would have a bond as strong as any Alpha wolf and her brood in the wild. After that I became his mother and he followed me everywhere, all the time. Since day one I took him everywhere that I went. To friends houses, the store, the gas station, everywhere. We had become inseparable. Like me, everyone thought he was just absolutely beautiful. To everyone's relief after that two week period all my friends and family finally got to hold him and pet him. The ooou's and ahhh's were as numerous as the first time anyone had seen him. And I suspect that Pharoah loved every minute of it.

Pharoah was my second pet. My first being a German Shepherd, Doberman mix. His name was Ceasar. I had him for only a year and a half and then when I left him with a friend he ended up being hit by a car. He was my first animal child. We were very close and his death was hard for me to deal with. Ceasar had been constantly at my side also, except for this one time. I never forgot that. I was determined that this would never happen with Pharoah and I.

I decided not to pick a name until after I had received him from the breeder. It took me almost the whole first two weeks to decide on a name. I finally decided on Pharoah because it means God. His name had to be comparable to Ceasar's which also meant God. It fit him to a tee.

It was amazing just how well we got along with each other. I had decided before hand that I would give him my all and try to give him the best life that I could. I am a half-breed myself, Caddo and Delaware Indian, and have often thought that that was one of the reasons we got along so well. I decided that he would get to be in touch with his wolf side and set out to give him experiences along those lines whenever I could. I would let him in my world and he could let me into his. And so it was.

I had been around many animals that others had and they always were lacking in their training and controllability. Even in the simplest of things. To enable Pharoah and I to do the things that I wanted us to be able to do, his training would have to be far superior to any that I had seen. Mainly because his wolf instincts could and would take over in the blink of an eye. I was not working so I actually had the time to do things right. I researched training manuals and other books and they were all so complicated, some of them four hundred pages. I wanted to train him, not teach him how to read. Hmmmmmmm. There had to be a simpler way, I thought. Then one day while at a small pet store I found a training manual. It cost $.69 and was 17 pages long. It was perfect as it covered all the basics and gave me a style of training that I could adapt and add my own commands. Eventually using this method Pharoah would have a vocabulary of 36 commands.