Tag: puppy

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March Hike

This month’s hike with Tosca & friends was to Arabia Mountain, a huge granite outcropping pocked with craters southeast of the city. It feels a little like visiting the surface of the moon. Or Mars. But signs of spring were everywhere. That’s actually one of the things I love most about this new ritual–taking a hike near the end of each month allows me to witness the slow creep of the seasons in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise. The sounds, smells, and temperatures have shifted subtly with each excursion, much like the vegetation. And Tosca’s warming a bit to new company alongside these new environments (emphasis on “a bit”). When I become impatient with her, I remind myself that certain things take time. Revisiting my last post re: remission is a perfect example of this. I expected my reaction to the news to be instantaneous, but I’m finding that it’s actually sinking in quite slowly. It’s as though a profound weight, which I’ve become so accustomed to carrying that I hardly notice it any more, is being gradually lifted from my shoulders. Each day, I feel a little lighter, and it’s the loveliest thing.

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January Hike

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church, but yesterday, we kept it at Morningside Nature Preserve, a lovely greenspace nestled in the center of the city. I think Emily would’ve approved. Years ago, I received a promotional pamphlet from a local realtor featuring “12 Great Georgia Hikes” and attached it to our fridge, hoping this might inspire us to take them. We’ve since been to a few of the trails listed but not most. Now that we have Tosca, however, I’m remotivated to tackle them. There are 12, so I made a New Year’s resolution to do one on the last Sunday of each month until we usher in 2025 (unfathomable!). Since no one in my family is a particularly seasoned hiker we started small, with an “easy” 2 mile loop not far from our house. Despite having lived here for over a decade, we had no idea this nature preserve existed! And, as with most family outings of this kind, it was a mild disaster. Which is to say, the weather was dismal (it’s late January, after all); the trail, soupy after recent rains; and my daughter, surly and exhausted from a sleepover. Although the trail was supposedly a loop, we still got lost and muddled much of our way back through the surrounding neighborhood. But none of these things kept the experience from being fantastic, at least for me and Tosca, who completely lost her shit when we arrived at the park’s much touted “dog beach.” Warily skirting the few other pets and people there, she raced around like a wild banshee, relishing the sand and stream with equal fervor. It was a sight to behold, as was the mess she made of the car on the drive home (amateurs that we are, no one thought to bring a towel). I’m surprised by how little I cared, though. One hike down, eleven to go.

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Dog Diaries cont’d.

I take the dog out and wait patiently for her not to pee. She’s already changed my relationship to time and space in subtle yet fascinating ways. There are now small pockets of each day when I find myself communing with the world differently—inhabiting it differently—because I’ve taken on the rhythms of this creature. For example, when we first brought her home, I worked the night shift. Which is to say, I took her outside to do her business whenever the need arose. Or what I assumed was the need; sometimes, I was mistaken. But more often than not, any nocturnal pacing, sniffing, or whimpering signaled a bathroom break. And so, bizarrely attired in pajamas and a parka, I would stand shivering beneath the half moon in the dead of night while Tosca squatted in the shadows, her head turned away from me in a touching semblance of modesty. It was then I realized that I’d never actually been out in my yard at 3am before. How still it was, how inky and many elbowed the trees appeared, how quiet. I found myself immersed in an unexpected moment of solitude and reflection that would have otherwise been filled with fitful sleep, and I felt grateful for it. Although Tosca’s now fully potty trained and can go the entire night without needing to be let out, these moments still crop up at other times. Like this morning, when I stood in a downpour while she flatly refused to do the same, waiting. Musing. Getting wet.

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Noel, noel

Our family’s big ticket Christmas gift this year was a new puppy, though I guess that’s a little redundant (are there old puppies?). We brought her home from the breeder’s farm in KY yesterday. How we found our way to this particular dog, from these particular folks, is a story unto itself, I suppose. My daughter—now nine—has long been obsessed with animals and has always wanted a dog. Both my husband and I grew up with them, but we already have a beloved elderly cat as well as an unfenced yard, so we’ve been hesitant to add a puppy to the mix. But sometimes it’s just time, and a confluence of concrete and ineffable factors makes this apparent. Like loss, for example. Just so much loss taking on so many different shapes over the past few years that welcoming something new into our lives felt strangely imperative. Not as a substitute for those losses, but a tonic to them, perhaps. And while I wanted to adopt a rescue from a shelter, my daughter became fixated on the relatively rare breed my husband grew up with: English Shepherds. They’re next to impossible to find, with breeders in far flung corners of the country and waitlists for unpredictably timed litters, but our daughter managed to find one within a six hour drive, the only puppy left from last spring’s brood. Cowgirl was, if not the runt of the litter, then certainly overshadowed by her siblings, all of whom got scooped up quickly. Sweet tempered and skittish, she hadn’t shown much promise working the cows, so her owners put her up for adoption at 10 months. We said we’d take her, not exactly sight unseen (they sent a recent photo), but close. It felt like quite the leap of faith, driving all that way for an unknown quantity, but I needed to take this leap more than I’ve needed anything in a while (my daughter, of course, carried nothing but absolute conviction in her heart). Dear reader, it was rewarded.

Tosca is my shepherd; I shall not want.