Love Is the Best Medicine Read Online Free PDF

she said, and Sandi tried not to smile, knowing they would be together, knowing her choice of a peculiar yet precise moniker for this stray cat was guaranteed to secure his future.
    “I haven’t christened him yet,” said Sandi, “but with your permission, I thought we might call him Michael Ashley.”
    F AST-FORWARD a decade or so and instead of welcoming a new pet into her life Sandi was welcoming a baby girl. Unlike her mother, Sandi was thrilled to have a daughter, Sonja (her second child would be a son named Jamie). The exact opposite of her own mother, Sandi worshipped her daughter, loved her to the point of physical pain, an ache of happiness to have this joy in her life. Still, there is a big difference between cherishing a stray cat and raising a baby girl, and the consequences of Sandi’s years of emotional seclusion from humans who loved her back began to surface.
    When you confide in pets for most of your life, unrestrained honesty becomes the norm. Pets don’t stand in judgment. They don’t criticize. They don’t sweat the small stuff. For the most part their gestures and opinions are bold and clear and positive. Sandi was used to baring her heart, spilling her feelings knowing that she could vent the turmoil and always be rewarded by their gentle touch and even temperament. Their understated kindness would restore tranquility. They were never too busy. No rain checks, no bad days. Animals were predictable, reliable, and eager to share. Sandi had no reason to suppose that loving a child would be any different.
    Sonja, however, was not a foundling pet. Despite all their shared DNA—the sun-kissed freckles and russet eyes, pale skin and flowing red hair—Sonja Rasmussen was the emotional antithesis of her mother. Perhaps Sonja felt she was loved too much, if such a thing was possible. Perhaps she rebelled against all the transparency of her mother’s feelings. Perhaps she saw her mother’s desire to talk problems out, to instantly address, resolve, and bury conflict, as a sign of weakness. Whatever the reason, Sonja shied away from actsof affection, kept her feelings in indefinite lockdown, and preferred not to confide. Though their love for each other was undeniable, an emotional mismatch evolved and, as the years went by, this specific disconnect between mother and daughter became palpable.
    Husband Jan and the kids had come to accept Mom’s many strays and rescues as a fundamental component of the Rasmussen family. Pets were an essential ingredient of everyday life, and along the way Jan and Sonja developed a soft spot for Dobermans, something about their stature, presence, loyalty, and eagerness to please. Now eighteen years old, with college around the corner, Sonja was about to get a pet of her very own, but she knew her canine companion of choice needed to contract in size. Using the logic of “Honey I Shrunk the Doberman,” Sonja believed she had hit upon the perfect dog—a miniature pinscher.
    Sandi’s own subsequent fascination for Min Pins may have germinated from a chance to help her daughter when Sonja arranged a naive and hasty purchase from a so-called breeder who was really running a puppy mill. When they went to pick up the puppy, scenes from a hidden-camera exposé invaded their senses—the cacophonous barking of animals desperate for human contact and breeding bitches crushed inside converted chicken coops, the smell of the dog waste piling up beneath their caged feet, filtered for convenience through the wire floors on which their pads permanently splayed. This holocaust of factory-farmed dogs was more than Sandi could bear, but reading the embarrassment and shame contorting her daughter’s face, she decided to help Sonja rescue one hostage, even if they had to deal with the guilt of not liberating more.
    “He doesn’t look much like a Min Pin,” said Sonja.
    And Sandi had to agree. Their misfit had the domed head of a Chihuahua. Not that it mattered. Bruno, as he was later