On Dog Motherhood

Two things in my life keep me sane: gratitude and perspective. I must say though, they do not come easily – especially when browsing social media or lamenting the exhaustive list of things I wish I could still do. Being grateful and keeping perspective require consciousness and effort that I frequently lack, but – once summoned – also enable me to be mostly happier than sad. Mostly.

 

That said, I am having a harder time than I care to admit moving forward without my dog. She wasn’t directly responsible for it, but she played a major role in helping me snooze the incessant clanging of my irrelevant biological clock in my early 30s – mainly by reminding me how insanely impractical motherhood would have been for me, and also by keeping me distracted in perpetuity by antics that will forever be unprecedented. Izzy was a daily source of joy amidst a life that is – to my chagrin – overwhelmingly characterized by frustration. She was my daily activity partner and reason to be outside – even during the winter. She was filled with shenanigans that were only barely eclipsed by her fierce loyalty to me. On a particularly dark day during the first half of her life, I called my brother and asked him if he would take Izzy if something happened to me; he – apparently understanding what I was alluding to – said no. He refused to raise a dog whose very existence reminded him of the saddest thing that had ever happened to him. I’m sure that was not exclusively the reason I opted for therapy rather than the alternative, but I cannot overstate the importance of having a responsibility to something outside of myself for the last 14 years. I know with absolute certainty that there will never be another dog like Izzy in my life, ever. I also know though that she cannot be the only dog I have in my adult life.

 

Which leads me to another sticking point: my reality-based fear that no other dog will ever know me as its mom. For the first five years of is Izzy’s life I fed her, trained her, pet her, brushed her, attempted to cut her nails and walked her (or otherwise exercised her) every single day. When I impulsively picked her up at the Baltimore SPCA in 2007, she rode back to my apartment on my lap as I precariously navigated 83 S. using hand controls as she crawled up my chest with razor-sharp puppy nails. Thankfully, because of those first five years together, she knew – no matter what I could or could not do for the last 9+ years of her life – that I was her person.

 

It is that feeling, the feeling of being seen, occasionally willfully ignored, unconditionally loved and simultaneously taken advantage of that made Izzy feel like my kid. I’m not delusional, I know that she was just a dog and I will never truly know the depths of love that a mother feels for her child. And part of me actually is relieved that I will never understand that type of love, because with it comes the possibility of hurt, frustration, and – for some moms – heartbreaking loss. But with Izzy, even when she was getting kicked out of dog parks for attempting to eat her furry friends, there was one thing that I never questioned, not even once: her love.

 

A few weeks ago, as Izzy lay next to me on the floor, I decided to investigate the possibility of adopting a service dog through Canine Companions. I have a rather extensive list of needs (as one might surmise) and some of those needs could be addressed by a well-trained and loyal dog. I completed a pre-application online in order to receive an actual application for said service dog, but the website warned that they are inundated with requests and it would take 4 to 6 weeks to receive the application. Further, once approved for said service dog, the waiting list to be paired with a dog can take as long as 20 months and culminates with a two-week long stay in Long Island in order to be appropriately matched and trained together. Understandably, neither my mom nor caregivers seem super eager about the prospect of a mandatory two weeks in Long Island to complete the adoption process, which leads me – indirectly – to this blog post.

 

How can I avoid spending the next two years of my life dogless?

 

And how can I ensure – if I do not adopt a legitimate service dog – that my next dog will know I am his or her person? In my unrealistic dreams, Izzy is running wild in doggy heaven while finding her four-legged successor that she will magically direct into my life. Maybe this dog will arrive at the Tompkins County SPCA while Shelly is volunteering; maybe a perfect Kate-companion will end up surrendered in the exam room of one of my veterinarian friends; maybe he or she will magically wander into my backyard. More practically however, I know that – just as I must actively choose gratitude and perspective on a daily basis – finding my next dog will require some type of conscious work and patience that I’m not entirely sure I possess. Writing this post and opening myself to the possibility of a future that is absent of Izzy, but not necessarily absent of joy, is maybe just a small part of that work.