I had an entirely different blog post drafted and ready to go for this week. Then, late Friday evening, we had to bid farewell to our four-legged friend. There’s a lot of love and sass and joy I could share about being lucky enough to call a rescue dog—and this specific one—my family.
I’m not here, though, to cue Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” nor do I wish to make you sad just because our house is sitting with this sorrow. I do wish to make some tribute to our Larry boy, so I dug around my Google Drive and found a small assignment from a class I took senior year at UMaine.
It was Creative Nonfiction, and it’s one of my most cherished writing workshops from undergrad. Before this course, I hadn’t thought much about writing creatively about my life through a nonfiction lens. Taking pieces or inspiration and giving them a fictional twist? Sure, yeah. That sounds great. How was I going to write about my actual life, though?
Well, I found material and had great fun and discovered necessary catharsis in it. I also found another life I wanted to play around with in story form, so, without further ado, please enjoy a glimpse of the first time my family and I met Larry, told through his eyes.
Larry first met the people who would be his family on a bitter morning in an unassuming house in Hudson, Wisconsin during the first, fresh weeks of 2018. Leading up to that fateful day, he’d been staying with a foster-family: a husband, a wife, and their son and daughter. Endless energy ran wild with the kids, and all he could simply do was go along with their giggles and games. As crazy as they were, they were affectionate.
But then these three showed up. Two of them, looking similar though one was older than the other, walked ahead of the one with wheels. Larry shivered, not out of fear but from the cold, and his four, small paws ached with every icy step. He was just a pittie from Alabama. Short, tan fur wasn’t cut out for the northern climate, though the splotches on his neck and chest were as white as the piled-up snow.
His foster-mom made small talk with these newcomers. They did not know each other, but they shared friendly smiles all the same.
The older woman stepped behind the man in the wheelchair and helped him in through the open door, and everyone huddled together in the downstairs entryway. Warm air that smelled of waffles and bacon wafted down to them. Larry, grateful to be inside, curled up on a brown cushion. Though he closed his eyes, every now and then he would look around at the strangers. They were good, he could tell, but he did not know them. He would not trust so easily, again.
There was a point in time when trusting someone could hurt more than little Larry ever wanted. By some miracle, instead of being beat to death or torn apart in a fight, he came to be cared for by Coco’s Heart, a dog rescue organization based near the Twin Cities. He wasn’t sure where his brothers, Curly and Mo, had ended up, but he was glad he was safe. Since May 2010, Coco’s Heart had found homes for over 6,000 dogs, and finding a forever home for Larry was one of their current missions.
Were these new people going to treat him as good as his volunteer, foster-family had? Were they going to be gentle and patient? Not everyone was.
Then the younger woman sat down on the linoleum, her stocking hat still on and her eyes expectantly watching him. The man in the wheelchair watched him, too, though more nervously than the girl. There was a chance Larry would not respond well to the chair, that it would scare him.
Larry decided he was going to set his anxiety aside and rose from his cushion, cautiously sniffing shoes and hands. Nothing dangerous. Nothing unexpected. Slowly, he approached the sitting girl. She was cross-legged and quiet. She was good. Larry could still tell. So, he crawled onto her lap, got cozy. He settled, and he wanted to stay.
If you’ve ever been lucky enough to love a dog like we’ve loved our Larry, then you know one of the simple yet immensely delightful joys of life. Arguably the greater joy because it’s too pure: to be wholeheartedly loved in return.
Thanks for reading, please enjoy some favorite photos of our sweet pup, and I’ll catch ya back here next week!
