Yesterday, my husband and I finalized the adoption of our new dog, an eight-month-old border collie mix who has been missing a front leg since birth.
It sounds corny, but watching her can’t help but lift my spirits, sliding on the ice and regaining her balance without even noticing something went wrong, hopping and jumping across the snow, asking to go faster. She doesn’t care one iota that she only has 3 legs, doesn’t even know that most dogs have 4.
It’s only been a little over a month since our year-and-a-half-old lab/pit mix, Harper, was hit by a car and killed. The intensity of my pain and grief over losing her has been astonishing to me. I miss her with all my heart, and I think about her every day. We thought it might be too soon to adopt another dog, but I literally could not stand the absence of a dog in the house, so we started working with a great rescue to find one.
We were looking for another large dog, Harper’s age or a little older, since I couldn’t bear to go through all the puppy business again so soon (we’d gotten Harper when she was 5 weeks old). What we fell for was an eight-month old border collie mix puppy who tips the scales at about 30 lbs, named Indi. The dog chooses you. Every time.
So this morning, I took Indi to one of Harper’s and my favorite walk-spots. Maybe I shouldn’t have, maybe it’s still too soon, because my heart broke all over again, and there were moments that I couldn’t even see the path I was crying so hard. Harper was an amazing, intense, joyful dog and I had an incredible connection with her. But she is gone, and there’s nothing I can do about it. One of the many things she taught me, though, is to live in this moment, right now, with whoever you are really with…and so I tried real hard to that, and this funny little puppy named Indi helped. It’s not fair to Indi to be giving her this sad energy. Fortunately, she’s so damned happy, I don’t think she has noticed.
With Indi, you have to move forward, even if you have to do it on 3 legs instead of 4.