With snow squall warnings blaring from my phone and 100+ mile an hour wind rattling my truck windows, not for the first time I questioned my life choices as I white-knuckled the steering wheel en route to our daily hiking destination. “Our” being my dog Best and me, who were surely the only two souls who thought venturing out in such conditions wasn’t absurd.
Several years ago, I lost one of my two canine best friends, Rico, to an unexpected diagnosis of hemangiosarcoma that resulted in his death ten hours later. The year before that, his littermate, Remo, succumbed after a battle with osteosarcoma. These brothers had been a part of my family, my constant companions, really, for over a decade and I didn’t handle the loss well. Rico had made the cross-country trip with my new husband and me only three months earlier and had seemed his usual stoic, healthy self right up to the day before his diagnosis.
My husband David, knowing how much these furry clowns had meant to me, encouraged me to consider opening myself to the possibility of adopting another Dutch Shepherd when I was ready. I was convinced that day just wasn’t to come. I was done with having my heart crushed by such staggering loss. Besides, wasn’t it disloyal, didn’t it call into question the depth of my love for them by bringing a replacement into my life?
Fast forward one year: at school waiting for my morning class to arrive I was compelled to do a quick Google search of Dutch Shepherds needing homes within a 25-mile radius of me. Surely nothing was going to come of this; I mean, what were the chances of a dog who perfectly suited my needs being practically in my back yard? Still, I couldn’t question that something had inspired my inquiry on this random Tuesday morning, right? Not finding a hit from my search would allow me to say I’d tried but still excuse my prolonged mourning. I was shocked to see what for all the world looked like a profile pic on Match.com for canines looking back at me from the screen. Wide-eyed, mouth open in a laugh, looking like he was anticipating the punchline of what would surely be a hilarious joke, there was Best. My heart melted at the sight of him. Granted, as a life-long lover of dogs this was not an unexpected reaction; I knew, though, that this was my dog, and I didn’t need to wait another day before bringing him home. David, when I shared Best’s picture with him that evening, said only, “So when are we going to get him?” Bless his heart for seeing just how much I needed this dog I had no idea existed prior to that very morning.
Sure, there was an adjustment period where we all needed to learn one another and establish new routines, and it hasn’t been without occasional challenges. Best’s relentless commitment to lunging at any animal that appears on the television screen (even humans dressed as animals aren’t exempt from his rancor) is an issue we’ve faced, as has been his chronic itchiness (thanks to humidity levels that hover between zero to -20 here in Colorado) that necessitates special food and a skin care routine that rivals any super model’s. And even on days when the local news issues recommendations to tie down anything we don’t want hurled into oblivion by hurricane-force winds, or when the icy walkways require crampons and an updated will before we venture out for potty breaks, I regret nothing. In exchange for these minor sacrifices, I am rewarded with the sweetest chin, which now appears as though he’s been snacking on powdered doughnuts, resting on my knee, eyes looking at me as though the only thing he’s ever seen more lovely is David standing at the open refrigerator reaching toward the gourmet roast beef he buys each week specifically for Best.
It is true that loving, and inevitably losing, a dog is one of the more painful experiences I’ve known. It has made me question in the darkest times of despair as Rudyard Kipling did, “Why…should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?” But the answer, provided in the very same poem by Kipling, is one every admirer of dogs already knows: because to open our hearts to a dog is to receive “[l]ove unflinching that cannot lie.” And that makes every heartache, every expense, and every inconvenience that might accompany our furry family members exceedingly worth it for the gift of their all-too-brief companionship.
PartWolf 