Growing up, I always assumed I’d have children. My mother had them, so did Uncle Ralph and Aunt Martha and Uncle Ollie and Aunt Grace. The family exception was Uncle Buzzy and Aunt Dorothy who were the subject of family whispers. “They have dogs because they can’t have children.”
In truth, we kids thought Uncle Buzzy and Aunt Dorothy were wonderful. We loved saying the word “Buzzy”; their dogs were kind, funny-looking basset hounds who won trophies, and beautiful glamorous Aunt Dorothy (a divorcee) gave great hugs.
Fast forward lots of years, I mean lots of years. My biological clock had just about stopped and I had given up evenings on the near-north side of Chicago with the singles. I even purchased a La-Z-Boy lounge chair. That’s one of the benchmarks of life, I think, the time you become your parents and purchase a La-Z-Boy. I was happy enough, I thought. I had an interesting job, was generally busy at work, had purchased a small condo and had friends I admired.
Then, through one of my work-related volunteer assignments, I met a man I liked, one who liked me and who had also long passed the “young father” age group. This man had a dog, a well-behaved pretty black dog, a mixture of some sort. I remember one night watching TV with this man, me in my La-Z-Boy, he in my one other comfortable chair and the dog on the floor snoozing between us. This was nice – better than being single – comfortable – a sort of family. Yes, this was very nice.
My gentleman friend and I ultimately became a permanent couple (he bought a matching La-Z-Boy) and when his dog needed to be taken to the vet because old age had finally done its worst, my boyfriend/partner/significant other (I didn’t know what to call him then) took a long time making the decision. I know he had tears in his eyes when he returned after saying goodbye to his dog.
A couple years passed. I suggested that if we got another dog, I would be inspired to walk it regularly and perhaps lose weight. No objections there. We went to a shelter and adopted a beautiful shepherd/husky mix, Angie. Yes, I walked the dog, but ever-so-gradually the dog also became my boyfriend’s dog. He didn’t mind walking the dog, especially when we were having a disagreement (the dog was all love and didn’t talk back); he made sure the dog always had water (and food) and when we three strolled the Chicago north-side lakefront and the unleashed dog suddenly took off, running far ahead of us, it was my boyfriend who sprinted after the dog until she had decided the game of tag had gone on long enough.
Our next move was a house with a fenced yard. We hoped the dog would like the yard; after all, we spent $180,000 so SHE would have a place to roam. For us, the house also meant that, whew, when winter came, instead of bundling up to take the dog on a walk, we could just open a door.
After being in the home awhile, the boyfriend and I decided we probably should get married. We were pretty sure we’d be spending the rest of our lives together and by that time, our family had expanded. We had fallen in love with a beagle puppy at the Chicago International Dog Show. That puppy grew and fathered a litter and we took home one of those puppies as well. We were a three-dog family and clearly right thing to do …was to marry.
That was about the time we asked a fancy decorator to come to the house to give us some design ideas. Two dogs were jumping near the decorator’s legs obviously excited to see a stranger. The decorator was not a dog person. “Well,” she said,
Sandy the beagle
Yes, we have made compromises in how we live. We stopped taking spur-of-the-moment overnight trips (got to get home to the dogs, we’d say). We stopped buying expensive shoes (too tasty for puppies) and we stopped storing anything important in our lower kitchen cabinets (guess who learned to open the cabinets). At the same time, hugging a dog and getting dog hair all over us is a trade willingly made.
I often wonder what our children would have been like had my husband and I met earlier and had children, not dogs.
Surely, like our dogs, our children would have gone to my husband for treats, would occasionally have run away (but always returned), would have played “chase me” tag day after day, would have misbehaved when they were home alone, and would have looked like God’s little angels when asleep. They would have always wanted to be where we were….and they would have slept with us every night.
Uncle Buzzy, you really were onto something.
(9 votes, average: 4.78 out of 5)
Loading ...
