It was my husband who decided to buy a husky, much against my wishes. My beautiful black Pastor Mallorquin had just died. She looked like a cross between a Labrador and a German Shepherd, with big pointy ears. She was a dog bred for guarding sheep, very loyal, and she always stuck by my side. I was distraught and heartbroken after she died; getting another dog didn’t enter my mind.

Because I was crying and so miserable, my husband decided that the only way to cheer me up was to get me a new puppy! He had his eye on a husky. I knew all about huskies, their foibles, their difficult character traits and unwillingness to obey commands. Also, their fur molts like crazy (they have a double coat), they dig holes as if they are trying to get to Australia, they run away and are world-famous escape artists. They pull. After all, is in their DNA to pull sleds. They are also hunters. You turn your back, and they are five km away, probably stalking the local farmer’s chickens.

Throughout my childhood, we always had black dogs. Black Labrador mixes. The idea of a cream-colored husky with one blue eye and one golden eye had not occurred to me. But my husband fell in love with her online and we drove to Biarritz to collect her.

Biarritz sounds very chic and grand, but the puppy lived in a small house with her dog aunt, her father, and her mother, and she was a reject. Not rejected by her dog family but simply because she had been given to a woman with a baby, and the woman had promptly returned her to her canine family and their owners. The puppy was already four months old. The owners could not find her a new home.

Enter my husband… a sucker for beauty. For all things divine.

We stayed in a hotel that night after we collected our new puppy (whom we named Miranda), and although the French are very accommodating when it comes to dogs and you can even take them into restaurants, Miranda left lots of undesirable presents on the floor of the hotel room, Which we had to surreptitiously clean up. Little did I know this was a mark of what was to come. She never managed to be properly toilet trained until she was four years old! Slow to do what was asked of her, yet quick to please herself.

That was Miranda.

However, she was a brave little thing, her first night with us. Didn’t whimper for her dog or human parents once. Was immediately loving and gentle and with a mischievous nature. It was hard to not fall in love.

When we brought her home to our countryside house with a large open garden, I was sure I’d be able to train her to not run off and the first year was perfect. We went on walks together and she did not not run away. When she turned thirteen months, though, which I suppose is about thirteen years old in human years, she became really naughty—a rebellious teenager—would look us in the eye when we called and charge off in the other direction. From then on we had to put her on a leash, which was difficult because she pulled. And pulled.

And pulled.

I am no Caesar Milan nor Barbara Woodhouse. Dogs seem to take control of me! My husband too, evidently.

She had us both wrapped around her big white paw.

She escaped. She dug holes. Those commercials for vacuum cleaners on the TV would make me laugh—when they sprinkle a few crumbs and Hoover it all up in a couple of minutes. Our vacuum cleaner filled up with her glorious white fur (a shopping-bag size), brimming over after one session. Even if we took her out after midnight, at seven in the morning there would be offerings on the floor—her personal indoor toilette. She just didn’t get it; we tried everything. Luckily our floors are golden-colored stone tiles! Easy to clean, to dissimulate.

We were aware that most owners would’ve taken Miranda back to her husky mother and malamute father, back to Biarritz to the little house where she was born. But we are not most people when it comes to animals. We adapt to them, not the other way around. Yes, we are fools.

But happy fools.

I loved that girl more and more every day. Not once did she growl at us even if she had a bone. She was gentle and loving. Independent. Would prefer to sleep outside under a blanket of stars, sniffing the earthy air, than come into the house and sleep on the sofa, although of course we never let her when it was cold, even with her glorious fur coat. She loved doing her own thing, on her own terms.

She howled at the moon.

She never came when she was called.

She was a thief. Stole honey. Anything she fancied within reach.

But when that blue eye and that golden eye looked up and she fixed her gaze on you, you’d give her anything. Every last little piece of your heart.

And whatever treat she was after.

And she knew she had us.

Every.

Single.

Time.

Even if it was cupboard love on her part, we could never resist and would fall for her clever charms.

How she knew how to charm! What a pro! Huskies have charm laced through their DNA. I won’t say she “batted her eyelashes” because that sounds like a cartoon version of a dog, but really that’s what she would do.

Last summer I found her, as limp as a floppy doll, lying beneath our cherry tree. I thought she was dead. We rushed her to the vet and it was found she had a tumor on her liver. They operated but told us her chances were very slim. But she came back to life. Oh, how she came back! By this time we had another husky, a boy from Romania who had been dumped at the vet’s by a couple who told them if they did not take him off their hands, they would dump him on the highway. Of course we gave him a home. At first, Miranda was rude to him. Horrified by the idea of being a mother to an upstart, a rambunctious, too-eager puppy. She wanted a boyfriend! She ignored him for one full year, but once he was grown, she fell in love. As handsome as she was beautiful, the two made a stunning couple. And a couple of escape artists (even though our land, by this time, was completely fenced in. We had learned our lesson).

But just three weeks ago, her liver gave up. She had a seizure. Tears streaming down our faces, we took her to the vet after midnight, and although he saved her life, two days later she died peacefully at home in our arms.

Thirteen years old.

Loving Miranda and knowing her was a privilege. Burying my face in her thick neck of fur, kissing behind those silky soft ears and whispering sweet nothings to her, were some of the highlights of my life.

Willful, stubborn, wild, but the sweetest most gorgeous girl ever.

I won’t say “Rest in Peace” because she won’t be “resting.” She’ll be on the move, up there in Heaven. Sniffing, digging, hunting, chasing, getting what she wants. Being strong and powerful. Because that’s who she is.

A princess.

A queen.

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Arianne Richmonde is s the USA TODAY bestselling author of psychological thrillers, published by Bookouture, Hachette UK. Her Pearl series has sold more than half a million copies worldwide. Her stories are always character-driven and full of unexpected twists and turns.

When not writing about the passions and fragilities of human nature, she loves to spend time with her husband and their animals, including a femme fatale Husky with one blue eye and one golden eye. Arianne’s a chocaholic and sometimes sneaks off to sunny, exotic locations, all in the name of research.

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