The Ones That Love Us Anyway

If there is one unique skill I would say I possess and would readily brag about it’s my ability to acquire a dog.  Granted this has taken some honing over the years, but, there is simply no denying that I can convince even the most resistant of people that getting a dog is a great idea.  I love dogs, even the annoying ones (I’m looking at you, Tucker).  More than that though, I love the love a dog gives.  It’s a hopelessly-devoted, follow-you-to-the-ends-of-the-earth kind of love.  Having a dog, man, the fun is palpable, the cuddles are medicine, and the loss is gaping.  You spend their life making excuses for their mistakes, “He’s a dog, he didn’t know,” cutting nights short, “I have to get home to the dog,” and swearing they are your spirit animal, “no one gets me like she does.”  A dog loves you in spite of your flaws, on your worst days, and especially on your best.  And so, when they go, when you have to let them go, your world changes and there is just no getting around that.

I grew up with a dog for most of my life.  Usually, I’d beg and plead for one, swear my allegiance to my dog chores and hold up my end of the bargain for a solid two months.  While my excitement for ownership would wane a bit over time the feeling of calmness I would feel when I was around them held strong.  If I was mad, or sad, or in desperate need of an ally, the dog was always my go-to.  Their unconditional love and patience was not wasted on me. 

Growing up, our black lab, Tahoe, was a wild man and the only one in the house as afraid during a thunderstorm as I was.  We’d hole up in my room and I’d squeeze him while he shook, feeling comforted by his presence in spite of that.  He was my big buddy. 

When I left for college I’d convinced my parents that it would be a good idea to get a puppy so Tahoe wouldn’t be lonely without me.  Now, granted there were still four kids and my parents at home with him, there was no mistaking he was mine and he knew I had gone.  So that Christmas Santa brought us Honey.  A gentle, yellow lab puppy that became Tahoe’s and everyone else’s best friend.  She was an old lady from the get-go; never in a rush, and never had the wild streak the rest of them seemed to have.  

When it was Tahoe’s time to go she stayed with him until the end and by his side even after he left.  When I came home for my wedding 2 days after he’d died, she let me hug her around the neck and sob about my furry friend for a good long while, never trying to shake me off. 

She loved Sean like he was her own boy and tolerated Tucker, who took to her from the very minute we had brought him home.  And when my own little girl came along, we saw a gentleness and tolerance in Honey that couldn’t have been taught.   And, my God, did Kennedy love that puppy.  When we visited my parents, Kennedy’s permanent location was wherever that dog was.  Her favorite spot was laying on Honey’s back.  

So when my parents sold the house and made their way upstate my dad’s first layover was an apartment.  He could only get a second floor unit and Honey already eleven, couldn’t take too much of the stairs so I said she would stay with us without any hesitation.  Having lost my baby boy a few months earlier, I certainly didn’t mind the extra comfort of having the old girl around me and truth-be-told she was a calming force within the whole house.  

I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that feared she would pass away while she was with us.  She was old, and arthritic with bad hips.  But maybe it was being around Kennedy and Tucker, running in the big yard again, or the puppy we adopted that she took to “training” right away but she got a second wind in her.  When it was time for her to move to my parent’s new house Kennedy was devastated.  She yelled and carried on that, “Honey is my dog now, Nana and Gramps gave her to us!” and cried for a few days.  

Everything fell back into routine.  We’d see her almost every day even if just for a minute so Kennedy could say hi and lay with her girl.  She loved her new yard and to lay in front of the gas stove. 

But there was definitely a marked oldness in her now.  She didn’t move so great and she seemed to bark at nothing and have a restlessness about her.  And so when my brother texted me and said he was worried about her last week, I gently reminded him that she was so old, she was thirteen now and she’d lived a good long life.

When the next call came a few days later that she wasn’t doing good at all, it was myself I had to remind.  I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her.

And yet the time had come.  Friday night I drove over to my parent’s house, laid down on the floor next to her and pet her, and hugged her and held her head in my lap.  And when it was time for me to leave, I told her I loved her, what a good puppy she had been, and told her to go find my boy- that he’d be waiting for her with Tahoe.

 

My family said goodbye to Honey the next morning and it was time for me to do the one thing I was dreading the most; it was time to tell Kennedy. And so, after dance class I told her I had some sad news.  She looked at me, dead in the eye and said, “Tell me, Mama.”  When I told her Honey had died, her eyes filled with big tears that spilled over the brim when she said, “Not my friend, Honey. I just want to be alone.”  Listening to her cry in her room broke my heart in places I didn’t realize were still whole.  She was sad all day and the next day too.  We talked about how much we loved Honey, and missed her, and how baby Jack got a puppy just in time for his birthday this month.  We said goodbye.

So I can acquire you a dog.  I can show you how to love one.  I can tell you how to spoil one.  I can even tell you how to coexist with one that is a wacko and drives you crazy most days (Yeah, still looking at you, Tuck).  One thing I can’t do?  I can’t tell you how to let go.  I don’t think you can.  I believe dogs fill a void in places that, maybe, you didn’t realize there was one and when their gone I think we just have to understand that there will always be this space where they once were.  Even if you get a new dog-they’re not going to fit in the Honey-sized hole in your heart.  And that, my friends, is the price we pay for love a dog gives.