Jaeger

 Meet Jaeger, the seven-week-old border-collie puppy we're adopting.

If you read the previous post, you know that my longtime pal, Harold, passed away recently. I had good intentions of waiting until after Christmas to adopt another dog.   But I made a bad mistake---I looked online at dogs available for adoption.  The first couple of stabs at adoption ended in disappointment, but one last look yielded a new posting---border collie puppies.  I've owned both a pureblood border collie and a border-collie mix previously.  Wonderful dogs, though if you don't exercise them, they will eat your house.  I'm willing to work with Jaeger.

Having a dog and walking it each morning has been part of my routine for years, and it has definitely helped my physical and mental health.  Those dogs have lived with me, been part of my family, and helped raise my daughters.  But I didn't always see dogs that way.

I grew up in the country at a time when dogs were not house pets. All through the surrounding South, you could see dogs hooked on chains, tied to trees and posts in the yard. Somehow Dixie, our bitch, still decided to have pups. We kept two from the litter, Beauregard and Ulysses, the latter named by a friend who didn’t know better.  I remember letting the dogs off their chains to run free, roaming the hollers and streams. I also remember coming home and Dad saying Ulysses had been run over. 

Beauregard was a coon dog—black, brown, bits of white. He was powerful, with a deep voice that carried for miles. He was bred for chasing a raccoon in the dark for miles, treeing it, then baying for someone to come shoot it.

What I don’t like to remember is the years after I left home—Mom and Beauregard alone in the country, Beauregard always hooked to his chain, day after day, seldom making a sound.

I can't undo my treatment of Beauregard.  I can only plead youth and ignorance. But I've learned to do better, and making a dog a part of my life has radically enriched it.  Life is so much better with a dog around.

Harold

This morning at 8:30 a.m. my dog of more than a decade died.  I was on the phone at the time with my older daughter, Ananda, now living in Idaho, who grew up with Harold.  She said that she never understood how people could grieve so much over the death of a pet until now.

Harold shortly before his death.

Knowing how to grieve was not something I've modeled well as a parent. From my own mother, I learned that the way to deal with death was to stay busy, take care of practical things, bring food, or clean.  So when my own mother died, I took care of the burial details, cleaned out the house, and wrote the thank-you notes... but didn't really share any sorrow with my daughters or wife.

I've finally begun to recognize that grieving is necessary before moving on.

Recently, I've been listening to Anderson Cooper's podcast on grief plus reading The Wild Edge of Sorrow, recommended to me by a good friend who is a psychotherapist.  These have been useful follow-ups to two books on transition by William Bridges.  

We've all heard the stories of the woman who finally leaves her alcoholic husband only to follow with another alcoholic husband.  It doesn't seem to make sense.

But it does.

Bridges says, "We resist transition not because we can't accept the change, but because we can't accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up when and because the situation has changed."

That explains that wherever the many places in the world I've been, there I was.  All the baggage of my emotional life got dragged with me.  I was changing location but not changing myself.

But today was a bit different.  My daughter and I cried together for our lost friend.

James Kavanaugh said, "Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter.  To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know–unless it be to share our laughter."