Cherished Read Online Free PDF Page A

me.
    And so I fell completely under her spell. I held her tiny body against my chest and felt her heartbeat, soft under her fur. She showed up in my life at the precise moment it was falling apart. It mattered. She mattered. I couldn’t lose her.
    But the problems with Mercy persisted. No matter how happy or calm I made the situation, if the puppy was near, Mercy immediately gave her the whale eye and lunged, sounds of murderous rage coming from deep inside her.
    Our friend from the animal shelter came over to help. “You’d have a long, dangerous road,” she said after two hours of awkward play at a fenced baseball field that ended in snarls. “Your dog just doesn’t like this puppy.” I called a trainer. “You have a territorial heeler with a prey drive. My guess is, you should find that little dog a loving home before the bloodbath ensues.”
    I couldn’t sleep. How could this be true? No one had come looking for this puppy. I’d posted ads and filled out the reports. It had clearly been fate that she stopped to smell trash right near our house after an epically bad year. The nights I slept with Don and Mercy in the bedroom, I got up repeatedly to visit the puppy in the new crate in my office, and every time, our reunion was ecstatic, full of heat and wild joy.
    But Don kept insisting that this dog could have a great life with another family — a family that didn’t have a dog who wanted to kill her. In addition, his eyes were itching. He felt allergic to her fur. All the dog people were telling me that two females have a hard time living together, that bringing a bitch in heat into the house with another female was unwise. During summer, I had the time to walk them separately, pet them separately — live a two-dog life. But once my teaching job started up in the fall, I’d be screwed.
    After a particularly bad day of trying to get the dogs to sit in the living room together (which ended with me bawling on the sofa, unable to understand why Mercy would want to prevent the exponential increase in animal love in our home), I emailed the staff at the college. My love for this dog must have come out in the writing, because in only an hour, I had twelve replies. A man came by, crazy for dogs, and was delighted by her underbite and the cute way she rolled and showed her belly. He claimed he’d take her home for an hour, introduce her to his dog, wife, and child. I reluctantly gave her to him, assuming I’d have her back later that day and could try with Mercy a few more times.
    Three hours later, the man phoned. The dog fit perfectly into their family. She followed their kid around, delighted. She rubbed up against their gentle coonhound. They needed to know if I was going to take this dog back. Already, he said, his wife was attached. The dog was lying at his wife’s hip. Everything was happy, peaceful, safe.
    What was it I wanted?
    I stammered. I stumbled. I said I would call them back.
    For a while, I sat dumbly on the sofa, staring at the font on the phone book. I wanted the dog to save me, but wasn’t it the dog who needed saving?
    The week following my decision, I waited with bated breath every time the phone rang, hoping it would be the family saying they’d changed their minds. That puppy and I were destined to make this work. I had to believe it. But they didn’t call. I emailed the man asking about her. He emailedback saying that all was well. Did I want to visit her? They’d named her Frida, after Frida Kahlo, saying they both were “almost attractive.”
    No. No, I didn’t want to visit. I’d like to say that I rose above it, that I took the high road. Frida was out of harm’s way, our rapture on the fold-out sofa bed lost in her doggie mind. She, like all dogs, existed solely in the present. But it wasn’t that easy for me.
    Because that puppy wasn’t simply a puppy. She was all the things I yearned for