11.21.11

Growing up I had a cocker spaniel named Snuffy.


When my mom was mad that she was making our new house messy, she gave her to my dad. I loved that dog. Loved her. 


I had a feeling one Tuesday evening after Taco night at my dad's house that it would be the last time I'd see her. She chased me out to the car, jumping and barking, as if to ask me for just one more little hug and cuddle. She never did that.


A few days later, my dad came by my mom's to tell us in person that Snuffy had died. (He said she'd just laid down in the middle of the driveway and perhaps had a seizure, but it wasn't until just a couple years ago that my dad confessed she'd been hit by a car.)


I think I swore off dogs. Maybe I started believing that they were just too messy, too much of a burden, too heart breaking. 


And then I met Greg, who had a serious love for labradors. Greg started volunteering at a lab rescue, and really, it was only a matter of time. 


We'd lived together three months in our little Mariemont townhouse. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and the rescue needed people to take home foster dogs for the long weekend to make room for out-of-towners' dogs in the kennel.


Greg took me to the rescue, seven years ago today, and that is where we met Seamus.


He was quickly renamed "Cooper," after Gordon Cooper, one of Greg's childhood heroes. 


As we were sitting on the ground in the rescue play area, watching dogs and interacting with them, Cooper lifted a leg and peed all over Greg.


We knew he was ours. 


He had a sunburnt coat, fly bites on his ears ("That fur will grow back!" we were assured), and a thyroid issue that he needed meds for, but he was sweet as can be.


After Thanksgiving, I remember saying to Greg, "We can't keep him! Look at how much fur he sheds! Our house will never be clean!" 


(Oh the silly things you say in your early 20s.)


The fur on his ears never grew back, the house is always coated in a fine layer of fur, his separation anxiety led to us investing in another dog...or two...or three...(and forcing Greg to take Cooper to work every day for a year), and he has eaten several hundred dollars in shoes, pillows, Glucosamine, Crisco, pies, and wooden blocks and puzzle pieces.


But my heart has grown an entire size bigger with the affection and love I have for him--and for dogs in general. 


Today he's nine...ish. Not sure. He has funny lumps that are probably awful tumors that would cost us thousands of dollars that we don't have to treat. But every night when he curls up next to me and lays his head on my shoulder, I have to think that he probably loves us just as much as we love him.