Puppy Love
I have never been a dog person. In fact, as a child, I was deathly afraid of dogs. My grandma had a dog, Rusty, that I would quiver and hide behind a parent until he was locked away. The story is a cat got in my playpen as an infant, and more likely it was the jumping I feared. Needless to say, I never considered having a dog as an adult. Given this, I’m not sure how my girls became so enamored with dogs.
In an interesting turn of events, I received a promotion at work. I was giddy with the excitement of a new challenge. As I was leaving work for the day a colleague approached me, her dog had just had puppies and she needed to find them homes. In a moment of insanity, I agreed to take one. I had a few days to prepare. Part of the prep became how to surprise the girls. My then-boyfriend, went to pick up the pup while I was prepared with the video camera for his return. He walked into the house with an adorable black lab mix.
The girls named her Pepper. She was black with white tips. It didn’t take long before we realized what a bundle of energy she was. We decided we needed to get her a puppy to play with. We ended up with Cinnamon. I suspect Cinnamon had a bit of everything in her.
Unfortunately, both dogs got bigger than our house could handle. We ended up making them outside dogs. This was great for keeping uninvited guests away but ended up feeling like not having pets. A couple of years later, when we were moving, it turned out we couldn’t take the dogs with us. We worked hard to find them a home together. I finally received a call from an Amish woman that they could take both dogs. The situation did not allow for a real goodbye with the dogs. To this day I wish I had handled it differently, but it seemed like the only option at the moment.
The moved involved building a new house and living in a temporary house until it was built. I told the girls once we were settled in the new house we could get new dogs; however, they needed to be on the smaller side. I didn’t want outside pets again. They did lots of research to see what kinds of dogs would not grow larger than twenty pounds. My then-husband was fond of Pomeranians. Once we were settled in the new place, he discovered a litter of Pom’s not too far from the house.
My best friend was visiting at the time so joined us for the trek to check out the litter. It was love at first sight. These tiny pups were not much bigger than a soup can. Each of the girls, including my best friend, fell in love with one. We ended up leaving with three from the litter. Mocha, Elmo would visit Ginger whenever possible and Ginger would come to visit Mocha and Elmo. Mocha and Elmo living with us through the end of their natural lives.
Both girls are grown now and have new dogs of their own. I, on the other hand, have switched to fish, as I travel entirely too much to be fair to a dog. Legacy moments too many to count.
