Story of the Week, Little Dog, Big Love
August 2, 2009
I was not planning on getting a dog. I enjoyed travelling and being able to come and go as I pleased.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved dogs. I had always had one growing up, but in my adult years I was more of a cat person, probably because cats are more independent like me. I could leave them for days at a time and they would be fine without me. Not so with a dog.
But I went to Atlanta to visit some friends and while I was there, one of my friends showed me a picture of little spotted puppies, that someone had sent her. They were the cutest things I had ever seen.
My friend encouraged me to email the woman and ask about them but I told her in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t getting a dog. But my friend wrote down the email address anyway and said, “You never know.”
I’m not sure why, but I ended up emailing the woman. I thought that I was only going to find out what kind of puppies they were, nothing more than that. She emailed back saying they were miniature dachshunds. Yikes, I had always wanted a dachshund. I didn’t know they came in mini size and were spotted to boot. My resolve was going downhill fast.
We ended up having a phone conversation and she told me that she and her husband hadn’t wanted a dog either. But they fell in love with these little dogs and now they had 14 of them. In addition to the puppies they were trying to sell an older dog who was ten months old. They had wanted to breed her for her beautiful coloring, but she was too small.
I didn’t want an ‘older’ dog. In fact, I didn’t want a dog at all. But just to placate the woman, I told her to send me a photo. As you can imagine, once I saw this photo, I was a gonner. This was the cutest face I had ever seen.
I wondered if the woman had posed the dog this way just so I would find it impossible not to buy her?
But I clung on desperately to idea that I couldn’t have a dog with my single life. But even while I was telling myself that, I was printing out her photo and putting it up on my wall. Geez, she was cute.
This game of denial all came to a head the day that I just happened to meet two friends, both in the same day. Just by accident, I had scheduled a lunch meeting with my friend Dean and a dinner meeting with his wife Ginny. I never see both of them in one day so it was very synchronistic.
Over lunch I told Dean about the dog and he got very excited. “Oh that’s great that you’re getting a dog. Let me call Ginny and tell her to bring you our dog carrier so you can go pick her up.” I vigorously tried to tell Dean that I was NOT getting a dog but he was already on his cell phone calling Ginny. Oh well, I’d just have to tell her over dinner that she had brought the dog carrier for nothing.
When I met Ginny for dinner and she showed up with the puppy carrier, I proceeded to explain that I wasn’t getting a dog. But strangely, much like her husband, Ginny didn’t seem to hear me either. She went right on asking me what I was going to name the dog and she even had the audacity to tell me she didn’t like the name I chose. I ended up driving home with the dog carrier in the trunk and pondering a new name for this dog that I wasn’t going to get.
In a flash, I thought of the name Miss Sweetie, full name Sweetheart. I am Annie Hart and she would be Sweetie Heart. I got home and booked my plane flight. I was headed to Atlanta and retrieve her.
Upon seeing Miss Sweetie for the first time, I burst into tears. She was the tiniest, most precious dog I had ever seen. Thank God the dog owners didn’t laugh at me for crying so hard. I had never had this happen before.
Before I could take her away, she tried to cling to the owner’s leg.
But luckily we got out of there in one piece and Sweetie and I were on the plane home.
She was amazing on the ride home. I even took her out and sat her on my lap in the airport and she didn’t make a peep. I thought I had found the perfect dog. Little did I know that the quiet was not due to her manners, but that she was literally frozen with fear.
When I arrived home, a whole different dog unwravelled. Within a few days, I had come to the conclusion that I had bought the most anxious neurotic dog on the planet. What was I going to do?
I decided that she was going back where she came from. This was not what I had bargained for. I called the owners and left a message on their phone. “I’m sending the dog back. Something’s not right with her and I can’t handle it.” They never called me back.
Stay tuned for next week’s part two of Sweetie’s Healing Journey. If you’re a dog lover, write and tell me what you think of the story.
*author’s note – little dog insisted on lying in my lap and getting a belly rub, while I wrote this story :>)
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