We had a puppy. A very cute puppy named Bo. Now TJ’s parents have a very cute puppy named Bo. We rehomed Bo to them a few weeks ago and I am 100x happier without a dog. I am not a dog person and we are not a dog family. Story is definitely a dog girl. So that was the challenge we faced: How do we say “we can’t have a dog” to the one who loves the dog the most?
I have told this story in person to many of my friends, but it feels important for me to tell it one more time in writing.
Having a dog was harder for me than I thought it would be. Actually I didn’t really think about how I would feel, back in the spring when we made the decision to get a puppy. How did I not think about it? It seems strange to me now that I didn’t think about how I would feel being home with a dog after the kids went back to school. What I was thinking was how much Story wanted a dog and how the dog might provide emotional support for her. Story has a lot of love to give, and this dog would give her the opportunity to love and be loved unconditionally. I didn’t think the dog would magically do my job for me, but I believed the dog would fill in some gaps while I continued to grow in my ability to be a person for my people.
Bo was born on April 19, 2021, and he became ours on June 17th at 8.5 weeks old. Bo did a good job being a puppy, and all summer I felt okay about us having a dog. In terms of puppy care, I was the least involved on a daily basis, but I was happy for the kids to be enjoying Bo so much, and I was thankful for TJ’s willingness to take on so many of the dog responsibilities. It wasn’t until the kids went back to school in September that I realized how life-altering having a dog was going to be for me. I am not one prone to dramatic, emotional outbursts, but Bo brought out some unusually intense emotions in me once I realized I was to be home alone with him every Tuesday and Thursday while the kids were at school. Being at home with a dog made being home no longer feel like home, and if you know me, you understand the significance of that loss.
So the kids went back to school and I began to cry. I would call TJ at work and say, “I can’t do this. I can’t be here.” I talked to friends who had dogs and tried different ways of having “alone time” at home, even with Bo still here. A couple times Bo did well in his crate while I spent a few hours in my room upstairs. I would have to tiptoe around and not leave my room unless I wanted Bo to know I was here, but I was managing. But then a couple other days, Bo barked and barked in his crate, and I could not think at all. I tried sitting outside to read with Bo, both on a leash and not on a leash, but all I could think about was the dog. My next coping strategy was to think of Bo as if he was cancer. Cancer is not something I would want or choose, but if I got cancer, I would have to find a way to dig deep and deal with it. I took one of Gretchen Rubin’s mantras as my own: “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.” I was determined to “get into” having a dog….because who gives their kids a dog and then takes the dog away? I just couldn’t let myself go there mentally yet. Then a good friend gently reminded me that a dog isn't cancer. No one chooses cancer, but we had chosen to get a dog.
In telling this story to my friends, eventually the same question would arise: What was actually so hard about having Bo? I have yet to fully reconcile in my mind what it means that I could care and not care at the same time (something with attachment I assume?), but I will explain things as best I can. I have to start by going back to when we first got our chickens. I always wanted to let the chickens out of their run to be free in our yard to eat grass, peck at the dirt, eat bugs, etc. I had it in mind that there was an “ideal” way for chickens to live, which is not in a dirt run but free ranging in the yard. The problem with this ideal is that the chickens would inevitably find their way to any areas of mulch in our yard where they would proceed to take dirt baths, leaving TJ’s nicely-situated mulch all disheveled. Also, if left out long enough, the chickens would discover our back sidewalk / grapevine area and poop where we might be walking or perch on our picnic tables. TJ began to be annoyed by the chickens’ messes, and he didn’t want me to let them out anymore.
“But chickens need to run around and eat grass…” I’d say, to which TJ would respond, “The chickens have plenty of room in their run, and you give them produce scraps, and I give them grass clippings. They’re fine. They’re chickens! But if you still want to let them out, then you need to either watch them so they don’t dig up the mulch or you need to rake the mulch back when they are done.” It didn’t take long before I was able to override the message that my brain was telling me (“Chickens need X”) because I didn’t want to change my life or my schedule to watch silly chickens.
Now, take this concern for what I thought was the chickens’ ideal environment and apply it to Bo. Even though it would not bother me in the least for Bo to be rehomed immediately, I was very bothered on a daily basis with feeling like he needed the ideal environment in our home. I didn’t want Bo to be bored or have to be in his crate for too long or not be exercised enough. So I began to take on the stress of managing the dog’s (perceived) needs in a way that was not only unnecessary for Bo’s happiness, but was also becoming detrimental to mine. I began to live with an underlying agitation and anxiety, feeling this internal pressure to keep everyone, Bo included, “happy.” So to answer the recurring question from my friends, the part of having a dog that was painfully difficult for me was the emotional, attachment piece, the figuring out how to care for all the people in my life well while being weighed down under the pressure of caring what an animal wanted or needed. I couldn’t strike the right balance of this T.S. Eliot quote I love:
A few weeks into the school year, after realizing that a dog isn't cancer and that no matter how hard I was trying, I wasn’t able to see Bo as a chicken (i.e. override what I thought he needed and go on with my life and just let the dog be peripheral), there were two new developments. First, I moved from saying I can’t do this to I won’t do this on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I felt like I couldn't live or breathe or be home or have peace if I couldn’t be alone when the kids were at school, so Bo began to go to doggie daycare on those two days each week. Thankfully, Dog Culture was practically on the way to Veritas, so TJ began to take Bo to daycare on his way to drop off the kids at school. Then the kids and I would pick Bo up in the afternoons after school. Home became home again on those two days and I got a reminder of what life without a dog was like.
The second development is that I began processing in writing the waves of emotion that I had been dealing with during the past few weeks prior to that, and I began entertaining the thought of rehoming Bo. I wrote page after page after page for about 3 weeks. I made lists. I took notes of things a friend would say or ask. I read and re-read the notes and prayed for wisdom. Twice, I fasted as a way to try to listen for God’s voice better. I talked and talked to TJ. I even decided to go to a therapist who works with children to talk about how we might language to our children (and to Story specifically) our decision to rehome the dog. I asked the therapist questions about how children process grief and how quickly they attach to animals and whether we should tell the kids all together or tell them separately.
Everything felt so heavy to me for those few weeks of processing, praying, and deciding. I kept asking myself: Which pain is worse, digging deep inside myself in order to bear with having a dog for the next ten years of life, or dealing with the unknown potential pain/trauma we might cause Story by taking Bo away? At many moments, it felt like an impossible decision to make. How do you rank pain? How do you decide who needs what the most? There were other factors at play as well, which came to light during those weeks of processing, but the more TJ and I talked and observed and waited for wisdom, the more clear it was becoming that rather than strengthening our family and bringing us together, having Bo (as adorable as he was) was making our family dynamic more strained and less healthy overall. Could we dig deep and do the work of having a dog? Yes, I know we could have. But did we need to? Was it necessary? Was it for the best?
The turning point in the decision about whether to keep or rehome Bo came one night when TJ said in words, from his own heart, that he didn't think having a dog was going to work for our family. For starters, sending Bo to Dog Culture was a good short-term solution to my angst but not a good long-term solution or use of our resources. Additionally, TJ said he had begun to feel that too many of the dog responsibilities were falling to him with all of his other work and life responsibilities. This was a “sit up and take notice” kind of comment from an Obliger / Enneagram Nine. TJ serves without ceasing for the happiness of those around him, so for him to acknowledge his own limits was the final push I needed to be able to truly “own” that this wasn’t going to work for our family, therefore officially landing us in unison on the rehoming side of the decision.
At that point, we had one good lead on a new home for Bo. TJ has a friend whose parents had been thinking of getting an Australian Shepherd, so when this friend told his parents about our dog possibly needing to be rehomed, his mom took some time to pray about it. She said that after praying, she felt that if the dog’s name began with the letter “B,” then it was a good sign. When TJ told me this, my mouth dropped open and I was speechless. This felt like a personal reminder from God that he would take care of all of us as we went through this difficult decision to rehome the dog. I felt surprised, grateful, and on the brink of relief, but also scared, anxious, and held in suspense. Would we really go through with rehoming? had morphed into How will the kids take the news? How will we come alongside them in their grief? And how soon will this happen?
Before we proceeded with this rehoming option, I suggested to TJ that he ask his parents if they wanted to take Bo. His parents, who moved to Greenville this past summer, already have a 5-year old German Shepherd. We had no idea if they would be interested in a second dog, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask them first, just in case. Were Bo to go to the grandparents’ house to live, the decision to rehome might prove less traumatic for Story than I had been envisioning. TJ asked his parents with no expectation that they would say yes (actually, we both thought they would say no), and we waited. Within a couple days, they told us that they had been considering getting a puppy, and that yes, they would like to have Bo. Again, I was speechless. I couldn’t believe this might end so much “better” for Story than I had been anticipating.
And so it went that we took Bo to his new home on a Friday morning in early November. There was definitely sadness then and for some days following. Story has verbalized her feeling of loss the most, but Cash and Sailor have also had their own moments of missing Bo. The kids have gotten to visit Bo weekly and Story continues to talk about Bo, think about Bo, buy things for Bo, and dream of the dogs she will have one day when she grows up. I am excited for her to have that opportunity in her life, and as a way to honor the dog-lover that she already is, I bought her this card at M. Judson yesterday to frame and put in a prominent place. Bo can’t have prominence in our family, but Story’s big heart for dogs can.
