The dog will see you now
When the world is falling apart and a good night’s sleep is elusive and you can’t remember the last time you laughed, as in really laughed right out loud, I have advice: Get a dog.
We recently adopted an 8-month-old rescue puppy and our once-placid household now overflows with happy pandemonium. Take it from me, you and your brain will get a workout.
We’ve had to solve monumental obstacles like how to get her to the vet when she does not know how to walk on a leash. How to collect a urine sample from a moving target. (Try slipping an old metal pie plate under her abdomen at just the right moment. Hint: it takes practice.) And, when that urinalysis comes back positive, how to give her an antibiotic twice a day for ten days. (Luckily, we have a pup that will eat anything.) And, then, which one of us will confess to the clinic that we fumbled one of those precious pills right down the drain?
Our days are filled with urgent issues: Does she have to go outside? Did she eat her dinner? Where are the leashes that we used for our other (now deceased) dogs? What commands does she know? Sit? Down? And then there is the challenge of diapering a 40-pound puppy that just went into heat. Seriously, whose idea was it for us to get this lovely, exhausting creature?
The good news is that when you are picking up poop under the newly bloomed hostas in your garden while she innocently sniffs the flowers, you won’t be doomscrolling the depressing headlines. When she streaks through the living room proudly toting a stolen sock or shoe, you can’t help but smile. Thanks to her antics you might even forget for a moment the ongoing made-for-TV political drama.
And, because you will be awakened at 5:30 a.m. — Every. Single. Morning. — by the siren whimper of a pup with a full bladder, it is guaranteed that you will fall into blessed, exhausted sleep at the end of the day.
Sleep. Laughter. Joy. Good medicine. Good dog.