I have saved the last two days of my thankfulness project to
my two most special messages. The first is
my sweet Linus. I want to tell you the
story of how Linus came to live with us and how I am thankful to the universe
for making sure that we found the right pup at the right time. You see, our story does not start with Linus,
so let me begin.
MadZ had been gone for two years, but I didn’t know if I was
ready, or if our family was ready, to open our hearts again. I had so many pups on Twitter that I had “adopted”
and that was appeasing my need for giving love for a pup. We had Panthor, a senior cat, and we knew
that he needed to be a consideration before bringing another animal into the house,
we didn’t want to disrupt his life, as his end of life care was important also,
at 19 he has earned that right.
I had just come back from a run and my phone buzzed to tell
me there was a news story that I might be interested in. I read this article
about a pup called Dobby, he was 11 years old, had medical conditions and has
family had surrendered him after trying to have him euthanized. My heart just broke into a million pieces;
how could a family keep a pup for 11 years and then simply decide they were
done. I immediately contacted Andy, and
although I expected him to say that it wasn’t the right time yet, he surprised
me and said, “Call, right now, we need to save this boy!”
So, I waited about 30 seconds (ok, maybe not that long) and
immediately called. It took hours for
them to get back to me, only to learn that Dobby had found his forever home. I was happy he was with someone who loved
him, but I was sad, because I wanted that someone to be me. I almost stopped at this point. It wasn’t meant to be, the timing wasn’t right. Yet, Andy encouraged me to keep looking, as
we had found the perfect solution to our elderly cat, it was an elderly dog to
love. So, we kept looking.
Our searching brought us to other senior Corgis, a senior Great
Dane, finally to another pup from Old Dog Home that was a mixed breed. Our key element, the pup had to be ok with cats,
they had to be willing to leave our Panthor alone. When I spoke with Melissa at Old Dog Home, she
said that the other pup had just been adopted also; at this moment my heart was
ready to break and I was about to decide that this just wasn’t meant to be,
when she said to me, “…but would you consider meeting Linus. He is a black mixed
breed dog, he has bad arthritis, and he is part Chow but he is a sweet boy and
no one has considered him at all, not since we took him in in January.”
We met Linus on a Thursday and by Saturday he was living
with us. That first night, I questioned everything,
because I worried, I had taken him away from his pack and he wouldn’t be able
to adjust to a single dog household. I
cried much of that first night, worried as he paced and paced and could not settle
down. Little by little, this little man
relaxed, he became comfortable in his new home and he stole all our hearts.
What I learned during this journey was that I need to be patient,
I need to trust, and that I need to trust that sometimes the path I think is
the correct one; may not be. So, when I say that I am thankful for Linus, I can
only express to you what I can write, I can’t fully express to you how much
love there is in my heart for him or how very thankful I am for the journey to
him.
To show my appreciation and thankfulness for what I have
today, I have made a $20.00 donation to each of the following charities:
- Best Friends Pet Assistant Therapy (www.bestfriendspetassistedtherapy.org )
- Camp Chaos Puppy Rescue (www.campchaospuppyrescue.org )
- City Gospel Mission in Cincinnati (www.citygospelmission.org )
- Service Dog Project (www.servicedogproject.org )
I can so relate to this post. I had a 19 year old cat who died and I thought I couldn't handle another pet - it's so hard at the end. So I've been petless for many years but following dog twitter, including Linus' account, has got me longing for a dog. I sent in an adoption form about a month ago and then a few days later the dog's picture was no longer online. She got adopted by someone else and the Rescue said never received my online application. I guess it wasn't meant to be. Maybe my match will come to me in 2020.
ReplyDeleteI truly believe Rosemary, your pup will come to you, they will find you. Please don't give up.
ReplyDelete