gratitude-a-thon day 256: I LOVE MY DOG

I used to not love dogs. There, I’ve said it. I’m horrified and sad that I lost all those years not having a relationship with the furry guys I now think of as the best people I know, but, well, there it is.

I didn’t exactly hate them. I just wasn’t interested in them. My dad brought a dog home and I wasn’t really prepared for him and he was too big and strong for me to walk, and so he wound up on a long leash in our yard, which wasn’t nearly the kind of exercise he needed. He was sweet, but we didn’t do training classes or pay the kind of attention we pay dogs now, so he one day, straining to get out and run free, squeezed past me out the front door and directly into the street, where he was instantly killed by a car and I was instantly scarred for life. My dad brought home two more dogs, the fate of the next one was exactly the same. The scar grew deeper. The third dog didn’t meet the fate of a car, but I was not able to open myself up to him, for fear he might be gone. So, as I grew up, dogs meant one thing and only one thing to me: pain.

My kids nagged for a long time for a dog. I was at least intelligent enough not to get one until I was ready to take care of one by myself. Because everybody knows even the kid who fervently, passionately wants a puppy, will not take care of one. The hunt for Riley was about six months long with lots of twists and turns. It ended with a casual email about a puppy five minutes from my house, who was flown here from a breeder in Minneapolis, and who was supposed to be hypo-allergenic and was not and now needed a home. It was love at first sight. He was ours within days.

All of this is to say that yesterday when Riley began yelping, and making that “pain” sound that dogs make,  I scooped that boy up and carried him to Angell Memorial, with total and complete terror in my heart. I sat in the waiting room sobbing, because I could see he was hurting, and there was no obvious reason for it. I was stumped. He hadn’t seemed to eat anything. He was just spontaneously in pain. My mind went on a vivid excursion of disease and death. And all I could image was a life without one of the best parts of every single one of my days.

The doctor could find nothing. Finally, we settled on the idea that he may have subluxed his knee and that it popped back in. He’d done this once several years ago. He hopped in the car and came home and promptly fell into a deep sleep, exhausted from his hosptial trip, the stress of having his anal glands expressed, and probably my intense psychic pain.

It’s hard for me to even understand how much my furry little guy means to me. He is the first one up with me in the morning. He practically throws a parade for me, when I even so much as return to the house after emptying the garbage, he is steadfast in his adoration, as he follows me around the park like a shadow. I know that he won’t be around forever, and that fact is as sobering as losing my closest un-furry people. But am I grateful this dog came into my world? Grateful isn’t a big enough word. Grateful doesn’t touch the feeling I have for Riley and how lucky I am that he causes allergies. But grateful will have to do.