A Cold Winter's Night

For the past few years, I’ve had a toy fox terrier named Bubba. Bubba—like his predecessor, Bud—is my baby in almost every sense of the term. I have had him since he was about four weeks old (although we were told that he was closer to eight), and from the moment I first saw him on Petfinder, I was in love. Of course, with him being a little bigger than my hand when we first got him, Bubba had some health scares in the beginning. He bruised so badly when he got fixed that Haven Humane kept him overnight for observation. I cancelled my plans to go to an early movie release when we discovered that he had kennel cough. That’s also how he started sleeping in my bed with me; I was so scared, with him being so small and sick, that he would be too cold sleeping in his kennel alone and brought him into my room to keep a better eye on him. Let’s just say that was the last time he willingly slept in his own bed.

You might think that sleeping with a small dog would be a big nuisance. I won’t lie, I’ve had my sleep-challenged nights. Sometimes, it’s from him keeping me up wanting to play. Other times, it’s from me not wanting to roll over on him by accident. Overall, though, it just feels right to sleep with him, like sleeping with a stuffed animal that likes to randomly jump on me and lick my face mercilessly. I am his mother, and we are pack mates.

This fact proved particularly true one cold winter day following the November we got him. I’m sure that everyone in America knows by now just how much Californians hate PG&E. I can confirm that there is good reason for that. Black outs during what, for us, is extreme weather are extremely common. Normally, they occur during the unbearable heat of summer to reduce the chance of wildfires (at least, they have ever since the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise and the Carr Fire that destroyed a good part of Redding). That winter, though, my family got unlucky one evening, and the power for our entire block went out. Keep in mind that my neck of California, despite being surrounded by mountains, does not do cold well. We don’t really do heat well, either, but when the temperature is constantly around 110 degrees in the summer, you learn to adapt. I can’t remember what temperature our house dropped to that night the power went out, but we were not prepared.

We gathered up all the blankets and warm clothes that we could, and I went to bed early after using my phone to inform clients that I had to extend deadlines due to a power outage. Luckily, they understood, so I had nothing to do that night or the next day except bundle up and cuddle with my baby boy. He stuck to me like glue, lying on top of me between the covers and my stomach. Oddly, I slept better than I had in a long time—and I kept sleeping. So did Bubba. Well into the next day, until the power came back on, we stayed in my bed. We rarely even left that warm sanctuary for the bathroom. All we wanted was to lie in my bed as our own little two-member pack, sharing our warmth and forgetting that the rest of the world even existed.

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of that day was that Bubba didn’t even bug me for food. So many people say that pets stay with humans solely for the food, but this instance might prove them wrong. Bubba wasn’t just looking to me for sustenance; he wanted love, protection, and a feeling of home during a time when he couldn’t understand what was happening. I wasn’t some living food dispenser. I was his mother. I am his mother.

I have had so many fond memories with Bubba: him climbing onto my back and head as a puppy, him curling up on my lap on his first drive home, the puppuccinos I sparingly give him (you don’t want this toy fox terror on sugar). Yet this day that the power went out surpasses them all. It’s not fancy or complex; it’s hardly even detailed. We didn’t save a life or see some spectacular miracle. Bubba didn’t even do a trick beyond “lay down.” He only confirmed to me that day that I am his family, and there’s no one’s side he’d rather stick to than mine.