March 19 - Menagerie
A Story of Hope
Do you have animals in your life? If yes, what do they mean to you? If no, why have you opted not to?
It’s hard to remember what stories I’ve told and which one I haven’t as we hit 77 days into the daily writing practice that is #writeclub—so I apologize if you already heard this story of how ended up with my dog and why I believe in magic.
It was the end of January of 2015. I was a little over a year of being sober. My friend had recently lost her dog and one night we went to S and talked about how much she had learned from her dog and how he had saved her. Even though she was in so much pain, I remember being in awe of how much she loved that animal and thought to myself, “Maybe I should get a dog.”
My sister lost her dog around the same time and she was devastated. Her dog had been by her side since college and he was truly her best friend but again instead of being scared off from pet ownership—their grief and love made me curious. In addiction I’d detached from my ability to love anything but there were other reasons I kept dogs at arms length.
We had dogs growing up but, like so much of the other stuff going down, it was dysfunctional. My mom and step-dad would get a dog (or two) and then return it for one reason or another. I stopped bonding with them because I knew eventually, they would probably go away. Between the ages of 15 and 19 we had (and returned) six dogs that I can recall. There might have been more that I blocked out but I’m pretty sure that’s the number.
Anyway, a couple of days after seeing my friend, I returned to my apartment and there was a dog running around the courtyard.
“We can have dogs now???” I asked. The building had recently changed ownership and apparently some of the old policies had been changed—the most important being that no pets were allowed.
“I think I want a dog,” I announced to Maggie later that evening.
“Oh weird you know how much work they are and you can’t just take off and travel whenever you want, right?” The Voice of Reason reminded me. “And pets are pretty expensive.”
“Yeah, I know but there is something in me that really wants a dog.” I said.
“What kind?” She asked.
“A boxer,” I said, knowing absolutely nothing about boxers other than that they looked fun.
“Oh those are pretty big!” She said. To which I’m sure I launched into my tangent about how little dogs weren’t real dogs or something.
A couple of days later my phone rings and it’s Maggie. “Bridget you aren’t going to believe this but my co-worker found a white boxer puppy today—do you want her? She’s so cute and sweet she doesn’t seem to have any aggression so I think someone will take her fast if you don’t.”
Her co-worker had taken the dog to the local vet to make sure she wasn’t chipped and she said they’d seen her wandering around for about a month. They didn’t pull her off the streets because they said she had a better chance being adopted than if she ended up in a shelter. She was covered in tar and ticks and severely under weight.
Well shit. I couldn’t very well put a request into the universe for a boxer and have it answered a couple of days later and then say, “I’m not ready.” Now could I? So I called Maggie back without much thinking and said I’d take her.
Maggie’s co-worker kept her for the night so I could get sorted. He picked off every single tick. She always loved him for that. I had nothing dog related so I had to get a crate and a bed and all the things. The next day Maggie brought her home from work and we went straight to the vet. She had a messed up stomach parasite and needed food and some vaccinations but overall seemed in good shape.
We went home that night and it was the beginning of me being a dog owner. The first night she slept with her eyes open and it creeped me out. Then I cuddled up with her on the futon and she slept for two days straight. At one point I thought she was dead.
I named her Hope because that’s what she brought me. I was in a particularly dark period of my sobriety and in fact, was struggling to see the point of remaining sober if I was going to continue to be depressed. Because boy was I depressed. Facing the wreckage of my past and what a horrible, selfish piece of shit I’d behaved like for many years, was uncomfortable. I also failed to see a path forward.
Hope grounded me right in the here and now. It was the only place I could be when I was with her and more than anything I needed to be in the moment. One minute. One hour. One day at a time.
I was completely unprepared for how challenging it is to train a feral puppy. I attempted it on my own for a while but by that summer realized I was in way over my head and a friend recommended a trainer—so I sent Hope to summer camp. The timing was perfect because my friend Hani (who I’ve written about before) was dying (and would die in August) and I was moving into a house with a yard with my friend Samantha.
Hard to believe that was eight years ago and now she’s a feisty old lady with cancer. We’ve been through so much together. I realize it’s extremely corny and cliche to say she taught me how to love—but it’s not an exaggeration. When I got sober I didn’t know how to do anything. She taught me how to be a responsible, loving grown-up.
Hope means everything to me and even though it cost me a small fortune to keep her alive—seeing her and my daughter’s relationship blossom is priceless. My daughter’s first word after “mama” was Hope and now she just repeats it all day. “Hope hope hope hope hope,” she says while she crawls around looking for her buddy. There is no husband without Hope. There is no daughter. I’m not sure I would have even stayed sober in those trying early years.
Hope is my everything. As a friend wrote when he lost his dog recently, “Dogs are eternal.”
I sure hope so.
I've had a lot of pets of the course of my life. We also had a white boxer for several years, too! I told the Universe (well, I told my husband and the Universe was listening) that now that we had a fenced in yard, we should get another dog.
The next week someone was giving away a litter of 8 week old white boxers outside the PetSmart where I worked at the time. It was love at first sight for my girl with the one brown ear. She was HUGE, taller than your average female. Delivery people were always on edge even though she was amazingly friendly.
She passed away a few years ago of an aggressive form of cancer called Hemangiosarcoma, a fairly rare type of cancer. We didn't even know she had it. The tumor had developed on her kidney where no one could see it.
One day she had trouble urinating. We rushed her to an emergency vet who told us it was cancer and there was nothing we could do. We had to put her down right then because she was in pain. We woke up that morning with a healthy, happy dog, so we thought, and by that evening she was gone.
In 2019 we decided to get another dog. This has been the only dog we've ever officially adopted through a shelter. We went to get a different dog from the website, but when we arrived we were told they "couldn't find" that particular dog. Personally, I think he was probably being treated for heartworms and was in no condition to be seen.
So they brought us out another dog and I sat down on the grass beside him. He immediately crawled into my lap and kissed me and I said "We'll take him!" The lady handed me a pen to sign the adoption papers, then she casually told me he had heartworms.
We adopted him anyway and went through the heartworm treatment that lasted 90 days. He had to stay in a crate for the whole 90 days. He wasn't allowed to walk too much or ever run or get excited in anyway. Which was very hard for a 1-ish year old dog who had so much energy.
But we made it through the heartworm treatment with huge success and there's minimal damage to his heart.
In November, while walking him, my husband noticed a large lump on his leg. We took him into the vet where they told us it was probably a lipoma, a fat deposit. We had it removed. The vet called us right after the surgery to give us the bad news. This was no lipoma. In fact, she'd never seen anything quite like it before and she sent it off to be biopsied.
Hemangiosarcoma.
Initially, the prognosis was that he had about 172 more days to live, which is the average after that diagnosis. We were devastated. But after many rounds of further tests, we discovered that the cancer STARTED in the leg. We caught it early. He has tumors nowhere else in his body. So we decided to do radiation and chemotherapy to give him the best chance possible.
He and I are staying in a hotel this month, because his radiation treatments are everyday Monday through Friday for 4 weeks. He seems to be handling it well, and he's in good spirits. If this gives us even one more day with him (as long as he's not in pain) it's worth every penny.
I don't know the odds of having two dogs with this type of cancer, but it feels pretty unfair, if I'm being honest. But I'm done crying. This time around we have Time, with a capital T. I bake him his favorite cookies. We go on long long walks, his favorite thing to do. I'm determined to make every minute he has left as happy as possible.
He's so friendly and full of life that he doesn't even know he's sick. He even loves the people at the vet we see every day, despite the treatments they give him. He's a gift from the Universe and I tell myself that another family might not have the money or the ability to treat him for this and give him the best chance he'll ever have at living as long as possible.
So yeah, it really fucking sucks, that my 5 year old boy won't get the 10 extra years we were counting on, but we are in a position financially and logistically to treat him and maybe that's why he came to us instead of someone else. It's a heartbreaking responsibility, but ultimately it's not about us, it's about him.
He is our family member, one of our children, and we'll do whatever we need to do.
I don't have any animals in my life. I have never really been in a 'settled' position, and therefore it hasn't felt fair to any animal. Growing up, my brother had a couple of mice, but other than that, we let in to our home the neighbours' marmalade cats, who were big personalities (which is not generally the way I feel about most cats). Slim and Garfield.
As a kid, I had only had bad experiences with dogs - barking at me, being aggressive, and so it came as a shock to me when I fell in love with my brother's big black Lab, Levi. I had moved to Vegas, and was staying with my eldest brother initially. Levi had the habit a lot of dogs have, where he thought he was still the size of a puppy and would come perch on my lap. What a goof. Later, when I'd moved into an apartment with my other brother, our neighbours below would invite us over to watch Lost every week, and I would be exposed to their rambunctuous twosome - a couple of wily mutts.
Could it be that I actually LIKED dogs?
I had various encounters with affable pups over the years, but it was in China (ironically, given the reputation of the natives and their treatment of animals) where my love of dogs really exploded. It really either goes one of two ways there - people are horrifically cruel to animals, or they love them. Street dogs were commonly seen in packs (usually a Pekinese or two, and some mutts) trotting off on adventures, and being fed scraps from the local street-sellers. Wealthier Chinese might have a Golden Retriever, and it would be trained to do all kinds of tricks. Leashes were not common, but I don't recall any negative interactions with dogs in China, those with an owner, or from those living on the street. They were very much part of the furniture.
One day I was walking down the street in Xiangyang, when a lovely Golden trotted over to me, stopped and held out its paw. I could not see an owner around, but I shook his paw, told him good day, and continued on my way. In Dalian, we had a couple of street dogs my husband named Boff and Eggbeard, who were friendly with the watermelon seller outside of our apartment. We would see him hoist Eggbeard on his lap and scratch his belly, lovingly, while feeding him scraps.
The apartment complex we are currently living in, in Minnesota, doesn't allow animals. I see many for sale on FaceBook, and I'd love a Blue Heeler, or an Aussie Shepherd (mini Aussies are very popular here) or maybe a Beagle... perhaps even a scamp of a mutt with one ear up and one ear down. It blows my mind how loyal dogs are, and how loving they can be to we humans.