On January 28, 1986, the NASA shuttle orbiter mission STS-51-L and the tenth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-99) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which consisted of five NASA astronauts, one payload specialist and a civilian school teacher. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC).

The same day, Cooper was attacked by a pack of dogs on the frozen lake in front of our cottage in Quebec. Lac Richard. I called Ian twice at work that day, which was very unusual for me.

One was a public tragedy, the other was a private tragedy. I can only remember the date Cooper was attacked by a pack of dogs by association with the Challenger disaster. Which everyone saw on tv. My brother the Computer Engineer reacted by saying it was as unthinkable as our Uncle Fred going crazy with an axe. That’s the kind of faith people had in NASA, that it was as trustworthy as your most reliable relative.

All the school children who were watching that day learned a terrible lesson. My husband was a bit less surprised than my brother Andy, as he had less faith in the government.

Cooper came with the name, the next door neighbours had originally given him the name Jackie Cooper. They called him Jackie until they decided to unchain him from their garage (to stop his incessant barking) and let him run free in the neighborhood, which is approximately when we took over his ownership. For a couple of weeks he was in limbo, wandering from house to house, eating whatever was thrown to him. One snowy night, he curled up on our porch and we threw him our bathmat to sleep on. In the morning he was still on it, surrounded by snow, and we took pity on him.

We didn’t much like dogs, but made an exception for Cooper. The neighbours gave us his veterinary records which is how we learned his full name. It turned out that they abandoned him because their little boy didn’t like the way he jumped up on him all the time. Cooper was so grateful we’d taken him in, that he leaped to our waist level every time we entered the house. He yelped with excitement to see us. We loved him for loving us.

I looked out the front window of our Quebec cottage. On the frozen lake there was a pack of dogs, when I looked through binoculars I saw a St. Bernard and two others attacking our dog. I grabbed the axe and went outside, stood on the sloped snowy lawn and yelled threats at Cooper, calling him a bad boy, hoping he’d stop fighting and come home. He did.

I inspected his wounds and waited anxiously for Ian to get home from work so we could take our dog to the vet. He was torn up on the inside of his back legs. Those dogs were trying to neuter him, but they hadn’t succeeded.

In the weeks following I tended to his wounds and his girlfriend, the Husky, visited. They touched noses when I opened the door a crack. Cooper, though he was terribly wounded, continued to stand at the door when he needed to pee and poo. He would leave brownish urine stains on the snow, showing that he had some damage to his kidneys, probably the after effects of shock, said my husband. I laid quilts and blankets on the floor in his favourite sleeping spots, so his wounds wouldn’t leak onto the rug.

We were just renting the place, after all. He moved from resting place to resting place, more often than he usually did, showing his discomfort. He seemed happiest when pressed against the front door, which had a gap under it and probably cooled his body.

I patted him a lot and talked soothingly to him, totally devoted to his care. He was uninterested in eating, and had to be brought bowls of water which he tasted only slightly. Yet when I first brought him in from the dogfight he lapped up a whole bowl of water right away.

I remember being so relieved when he finally ate something, after at least five days of refusing food. I tried heating up his canned dog food to make it more appealing, and he eventually gave it a try. He didn’t even lick the wounds on his inner legs, as they were so deep you could see the tendons. I poured warm salty water over them as he lay there, and the water was absorbed by the quilt or blanket under him. “I’m a dog nurse now”, I announced to my friends and relatives.

He lived for another four years. We were devastated when he died. Good old Cooper was good with our toddler daughter. But he wasted away and died at 16.