The Universe Knows

I can not in good conscience tell you about any of my fur babies without telling you about the alpha.

Her name was Lady and she meant the entire world to the 6 year old me.

As a little girl I felt like our father treated our home like a revolving door, he was in and out so much I lost count. Because of that, my loving mother was seldom home, she had to work 3 sometimes 4 jobs to make ends meet, especially during the times when my father was not there. I do have siblings, but I was the middle child, a little quirky, a lot of a loaner and a bit strange. I often times felt like I was lost in the mix. I wasn’t doted on like the oldest, and I wasn’t spoiled like the youngest.

This is where Lady came in, she was my best friend! She became my very heartbeat! Lady is in every child hood memory I have. Whether it was playing ‘house’ where she was the ‘baby’, dressed in doll clothes and laying in a doll stroller. Or if we were engaged in a, ’don’t ride yo bike on our side of the street’, turf war with kids from the other block, no matter what memory it is, Lady is always right there in them. I don’t even recall how we got her or where she even came from, it was like she didn’t have a beginning, but the universe knew I needed her and so she just was.

Little did I know the end would come way before I was ready. During my freshman year of high school my beloved Lady had a heart attack and I lost her. I was beyond devastated. Inconsolable and just broken. It was the greatest loss I had ever felt in my young 14 years of life. People who meant well said, just go get another dog, you’ll be alright, but they never understood the love I had for this dog who had been in my life for longer than I could even remember being alive! It has been more than 30 years ago and I still feel a tug, at the part of my heart where she now resides, as I write this.

On one of those occasions when my father was on the inside of the revolving door he took me to the local humane society. He was thinking maybe if I volunteer there it would help ease the pain I was in. I walked through looking at all the poor babies and I wished I could provide a loving home for them all. It made me even sadder.

Walking back towards the front I noticed an open area with a low fence around it, inside there were little fur balls, playing and yipping at each other. I stopped and looked down at them, most of them noticed and ran over to the little fence. I stooped down and put my hand in to rub their little heads. I thought to myself how cute they all were! I remember the worker asked me did I want one of the puppy’s? I was hesitant, was I ready? I looked at her and said “I don’t think I can choose they are all too cute!” But as I stood up the worker said “looks like somebody chose you”. I looked down at my arm and there she was, the tiniest out of all the puppies.

So tiny I had not even felt the weight of her hanging on to me. The puppy had wrapped her hind legs around my hand and her front paws were clinging as if for dear life to the friendship bracelet I had on my wrist. I scooped her up so she wouldn’t fall, she fit in the palm of my hand. We found out she was the last surviving pup from a litter that had come in from a mother dog who wouldn’t care for them, and owners who couldn’t care for them.

We signed all the paperwork, agreed to take her to the vet as soon as possible and left. Adoption back then was not as involved as it is now. On the ride home she kept sighing and looking up at me, ‘thank you’ was what I heard. Back at home, because she was so very tiny I tried to see if she would nurse from a bottle. She did. When we got her to a vet we found out she was actually to young to have been taken from her mother, and definitely to young to have been adopted out! She probably would have died like her siblings before her, had I not come along! Again the universe stepped in, this time the puppy needed me.

And throughout the years I would be there for ‘Toni’.

Toni once suffered a broken pelvic bone (due to an accident), and let me tell you that was no joke! She couldn’t stand or walk on her own for a good while, and back then they didn’t have any of those rolling wheel chair things, so I had to carry her and help her in everything she did, eating, going to potty, and dogs don’t just poop when its sunny outside!

I would be there through a pregnancy that resulted in premature birth and a c-section to remove the puppies, (and of course this happened on a weekend in the wee hours of the morning, pet owners know about those Emergency Vet visits)!

I recall the veterinarian telling me to go home and get some sleep and come back for her later. I slept outside in my car, it was enough I had to leave her in there alone.

And Toni would be there for me, whether it was her braving the snow because I wanted to play in it (she hated the cold), or both of us running scared from a noise we heard while home alone, to fighting little garden snakes in our backyard, or fleeing for our lives from the flying cock roaches that took up residence in a dead tree in our yard.

The best memory I have to date is her being there for the birth of my first son. She guarded him with her little life. She abandoned her spot on the foot of my bed for the spot under his crib.

She was always, always the first face he saw when he woke up and peeked through the bars of his crib. She would stand guard at the front door if anyone other than my mother or sister picked him up as if to carry him away, not on her watch! Her name was the first word my son spoke, not mama not daddy...but ‘Toni’.

So, I found out my heart was able to beat with the love of another. Toni has of course passed on and my son is now 22, so you can see how many years it has been, but as sure as I’m sitting here writing this, I feel a tug at another part of my heart, where Toni now resides forever.

But all will be well! I have accepted the calling the universe has put on me and I will not let the sadness of losing a beloved fur baby deter me, instead I continue to move forward and with my most recent adoption of ‘Bleu’, we will listen as the universe tells us why it has brought us together!