Rescue

Here is Abby. 

My husband found her on a rescue site and fell in love, and because I love my husband, I am to be a dog person again. 

Abby is ten months old, sweet and smart, and was found wandering in Texas, emaciated, with a too-small collar. She'd been spayed. Someone had taken care of her before she lost them. 

Now she's ours.

But for very good reasons, she's especially mine. 

We  had a dog years ago, when I wasn't yet  a "dog person," and did not yet understand that if dogs seem needy, they also reflect your ability to give, and more pointedly, receive love. 

My capacity to be giving in the years of raising small children with a husband who traveled was tested to say the least. But Bonnie lurked around the edges, lying asleep on the kitchen floor when I cooked, nudging me with her nose when I stared into space, thinking about one issue or another. As our kids grew and I wondered where my post-parenting life would take me, Bonnie often came to sit before me quietly, as if she needed something, or, more likely,  as if I did. She had amber eyes that looked right into my soul.

Bonnie urged her way into my world more every day, until she became a constant ally that I talked to like someone who had known me forever. When she developed a serious kidney illness in her last year, I sat on her bed with her. I cooked for her every night, asking her to "Please, just eat this." I would have fed her Twinkies if she'd wanted them. 

By the time she left us,  I'd gone from not being a "dog" person to being, simply, a better person. I connect with kind beings instantly. I love more easily. 

I give reflexively. 

I like to think that Bonnie has come back around in spirit. I like to think that Abby, with her own amber eyes is coming to us, but mostly, coming back to me. 

She's ours, and we will make her life wonderful. 

But for reasons I like to think Bonnie would understand, she's mine for all good reasons

On her way.

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