Day 2/100

Day 2/100 Age: 51 Weight: 348.8 Mood: low grade anxiety

“Get a dog”

Sitting in my therapist’s office at 10am still pretty high from the night before, I was taken aback.

“A dog? Why?”

“Because you need to take care of something” he pressed.

“But I can barely take care of myself,” I whispered.

“Exactly.”

My first dog was Billie, an Australian Cattle Dog-Collie mix. Sweetest dog ever. I loved her and cared for her in a way I couldn’t do for myself. In a way I didn’t want to do for myself.

Billie hated playing with toys; only loved playing with dogs, so I got her a dog.

Enter Taylor who hated every dog on the planet other than Billie. Her ears were so large and her heart dwarfed her ears.

When they both turned about 3, I got sober for the first time. The last days of my addiction were quite a story, and it is fair to say that I would not have gotten sober if it wasn’t for Billie and Taylor.

At 9 I noticed a weird tuft of fur on the side of Billie’s neck, and 9 days later she was dead from bone cancer. I’m pretty sure my heart broke from the weight of the guilt I felt for not catching it sooner. I whispered “I’m going to be ok” in her ear as her last breath warmed my palm.

It took Taylor a year to get over Billie, and I don’t know if I’m completely back. I doubled and maybe tripled my efforts to care for Taylor and she lived until 16. The last year of her life was difficult, she could barely walk, and I was carrying her everywhere.

Her death was beautiful and it felt like her life was complete. But I knew I wasn’t ready for a dog.

A year later I was looking at the @seattlehumane website and there was a little pit mix named Molly.

“I’ll just send an application in,” I thought.

The next day I got a call and was told that no one had been to see Molly in her time there.

“It’s ok,” I thought. “I’m going to visit you.”

Of course it took one look from those eyes to confirm she was coming home with me. I renamed her Sydney because she wasn’t a Molly, and we have been together every day since.

Dogs are special and they remind us that we are too.