Make Room for Sunny
A righteous man
regardeth the life of his beast:
but the tender mercies
of the wicked are cruel.
-- Proverbs 12:10
When our black Lab Shadow died at age 12, I said, "That's
it. My heart is broken. It'll never have room for another dog." We are big
animal lovers, but she was such a great dog, we didn't think another one could
ever measure up.
Well, that was then. This is now. Suddenly, there's a blonde
whirlwind in our house that barks and wags and chases her tail. Our new baby
sleeps in Shadow's old kennel in the laundry room, with the dryer for a
lullabye and a rawhide bone for a pacifier.
Suddenly, there's room in my heart -- plenty of room -- to
welcome a dancing spot of sunshine who came to us on a drab winter day.
We're calling her "Sunny," because she's a Lab like Shadow,
only she has tawny golden fur, and a bright, happy personality to match.
Funny how a dog makes a family complete. Funny how sharing
your life with an animal makes you a better human. Funny how day-to-day
irritations and stresses melt away in the wriggling and licking, prancing and
pouncing.
She fake-barks, investigates, worries a corner of the rug,
and then plunk! She's beat. She snuggles into your chest and falls asleep on
the spot. You see those whiskers coming out of her eyebrows, pat that puppy
tummy, smell that puppy smell and . . .
. . . you're smitten. I've never known anyone who can
resist.
We had to get her on her 49th day of life. Not
her 48th; not her 50th. My husband, you see, has a new
book. It's about training bird dogs. It's fussy about details, like dictating
the actual day you start training a puppy into a hunting marvel. But we'll see.
Besides all the wacky hunting accessories he's been buying
lately, now he's coming home with wacky DOG hunting accessories. One day, I was
vacuuming the living room when . . .
BANG!!!
. . . a gun went off!!!!
They had to peel me down from the ceiling. Turns out it was
a blank that he accidentally dropped from his new pistol that shoots blanks
only. I was mad enough about him loading a gun in our house, but what good is a
blanks-only gun, in pheasant hunting? Was he going to SCARE them to death?
Noooooo. He planned to fire a blank when Sunny is eating for
a few weeks, her happiest time of the day, so she'll associate the loud noise
with something good, and won't be gun-shy. So much for our widowed neighbor's
nerves, though, huh? Sigh. He read about it in that book. But hmmm. Maybe I
should rush to the market with a book of my own: The Gunfire Diet. How to get a bang out of losing weight.
There's more. He got special batons to throw into our
neighborhood pond to train the dog to retrieve (like a stick won't work) . . .
a huge net bag of eerily realistic duck decoys, two of which wound up in our
tub (what's a bath without a ducky?) . . . and even a realistic-looking dead
bird wing.
How have we survived this long without a bird wing in this
house? Every time I open the cupboard where he stores it, I freak.
Also, he recently bagged 18 quail on a hunting trip with
friends; Sunny stayed home because she's not ready yet. However, I have been
informed that I may have to keep one or more of them in our freezer for
training purposes for this dog. You know, right between the popsicles and the
leftover chili. Ewwww!
So she'll be a fearless, well-trained hunter to make his occasional
outings as a macho man more productive and fun.
But most of the time, she's going to be my companion and my
best friend, just like Shadow. She already naps at my feet when I write . . .
or do dishes . . . or try to walk anywhere. I'm the one who calms her when
she's yipping and holds her snout when she's nipping.
If only it were that easy rearing teenagers.
Our daughter Maddy is smitten, too. She carries Sunny around
like a doll, chills out on her sheepskin with her, and runs to fetch HER toys
instead of the other way around.
We're a dog family again. It feels good.
The other day, I saw that Maddy had unplugged her nightlight
from her own room, and put it in the outlet near Sunny's kennel. "I didn't want
her to be scared in the dark," she confided.
The nightlight is a white ceramic angel. I got choked up,
since Maddy always says Shadow is an angel now.
I bet she's watching us fall in love again, just like we did
with her. It's a testament to her that we don't think life is any good without
an animal friend in the house. She was quiet and always near, like a shadow, and
this new puppy is much more hyper. She reminds me of dancing sunlight on
rippling waves.
Yes, in our lives, the shadow came before the sunshine . . .
and both of them are beautiful. †
