Puppy Love
The Facebook Messenger text from Geralyn Kelly, my beloved dog Nilla’s trainer way back in 2009, arrived at 9:38 a.m. on Friday, May 10. “I wasn’t sure if you were still looking but…” Attached was a picture of 9-month-old “Destiny,” a 35-pound Sheltie mix that had just arrived at the Forsyth Humane Society.
Her text came 14 months after Nilla went to the Rainbow Bridge, and Geralyn knew that my wife, Terrie, and I had been looking—half-heartedly, to tell the truth—for a new dog.
What Terrie and I kept telling each other was that the time wasn’t right because we had vacation plans coming up or I was changing jobs or Terrie’s new position in her company was making her days crazy. All of that was true, but those were just excuses. What really was true was that we were still grieving Nilla, who was, by our book, the perfect dog.
Something about the face of Destiny, though, made me put my phone down and squeeze in a trip to the Humane Society on the final day of work at my old job. I called Terrie, and though she initially wanted me to check the dog out and report back, as we both had 11 a.m. meetings, something struck her about the situation, too. She decided to drive there herself. Pronto.
We took Destiny into our own hands, you might say. And then we took Destiny home.
We promptly renamed her, though, because while it was our destiny to have her as our next love, this pup didn’t answer to “Destiny.” Within a couple of hours, she was answering to “Roxie.”
That’s the story of how we came to adopt Roxie, and how we owe so much to Geralyn, who is herself still grieving the recent loss of her beloved 12-year-old Samoyed, Nanook. The good news is that Roxie and Geralyn will soon get to be friends because we intend to train Roxie with one of the best dog/people training businesses around, Geralyn’s Elite Canine.
We feel like our household is now complete again. For the first three years after Terrie moved in, we had Nilla and two cats, Zoe and Taz. Now we finally have the same mix again, but it’s Roxie, Nadia (who just celebrated her first birthday, and also arrived with Geralyn’s help) and Taz, the baby in the previous threesome, who is pushing 13.
As would be expected, the energy in the house is crazy; Roxie is infatuated with the cats, and though Nadia has made peace with being chased and will even sometimes play into it, Taz is in the “I’m staying in the back rooms that that crazy puppy can’t get into” mode.
A puppy, of course, tests your own energy. I’ve found having a young dog at age 64 is a lot different than at age 49, which is when Nilla was a puppy. On the other hand, Roxie is 9 months old and some of the most difficult tasks are already done: she is crate trained (and still goes into and sleeps in her crate) and house trained (no accidents yet, 10 days in), and she’s remarkably respectful of our furniture (i.e., she doesn’t chew it or even climb on it).
Roxie does love her walks, though. Since I get up the earliest, I’ve been doing two in the early morning and then usually one or two at night, adding to what Terrie’s done during the daytime. And Terrie and I do a joint walk with our pup after dinner. The extra steps and the running—yes, Roxie loves to run—fortunately come three months into a health kick in which I’ve already been dropping some pounds.
Bottom line: I’m frequently exhausted, yet also energized beyond the exhaustion. I had insight amid that new puppy energy this weekend: Though we remodeled our kitchen in 2021, our master bath in 2022 and our backyard last year, only now is our home complete.