Phoebe Fox's Blog - Posts Tagged "breakup"
How My Dog Got Me Through My Breakup And Taught Me To Love
Twelve years ago, right before my worst breakup ever, I adopted a dog.
The midsize shepherd mix that the shelter named “Slick” (because when they’d found him wandering the streets he’d been shaved to the skin) wasn’t what you’d call an in-demand dog. He was four years old and had heartworm. His ears were set crooked on his head. In the four months he’d been at the shelter, not a single person had taken him out to consider adopting him.
While every other dog in the shelter clamored and barked and jumped around like they had springs in their legs, begging for attention, this one stood quietly regarding me with bright brown eyes and a calm doggie smile.
I’ve never believed in soul mates, nor love at first sight, but the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to either one was when I took this dog out of his kennel to meet him: From that moment he was my dog. Unlike the other animals, spastic with freedom at being released from their cages, he merely sat in front of me, his attention and his steady gaze focused squarely—and solely—on me.
He came home with me, and I immediately renamed him (because Slick was far too undignified for him); I called him Brinks, because I’d had my house broken into recently by neighborhood teenagers, and my police officer brother told me that the best deterrent to burglary was a dog. He was my four-legged security system.
I was living alone at the time, struggling through the death throes of an unhealthy relationship, and days after I brought Brinks home it finally gasped its final breath. Suddenly I was single—but for the first time after a breakup, I wasn’t alone.
He had life-threatening worms wrapped around his heart and slowly strangling it, while mine was shattered into pieces, and we started working on our suffering hearts together. Brinks endured shots of arsenic into his back and six-weeks of enforced inactivity as his welcome-home to my place, and I began the always painful process of knitting together a broken heart.
But this time was different. This time I had a creature who needed me, who loved me wholly and completely. Who would stretch out beside me when I lay in bed crying, his head resting on my chest and his warm eyes steady on mine, or curl up on the sofa with me watching reruns of Sex and the City for hours on end.
He made me laugh at a time when I thought nothing could possibly be funny, with his big goofy dog grin, the way he would start the deep, rhythmic breaths I called “happy breathing” when I rolled over almost entirely on top of him—what I called a “full-body smothering”—and lavished him with too-tight hugs and kisses and endless petting. He craved affection as badly as I needed to give it, and he returned it in measures I’d never experienced from any boyfriend.
If I got up to grab another bag of Cheetos (postbreakup binge eating) or refill my wineglass (you know how that goes) or get another box of tissues, he trotted at my heels, contentedly curling into a ball near wherever I settled.
When we went into the backyard, he peed and sniffed and explored, but always checked over his shoulder to make sure he knew where I was, that I was nearby.
If I went out of the house, he eagerly jumped into my Honda and happily accompanied me, his nose jutting up out of the sunroof to take in all the scents of the areas he was still too sick to go explore any other way as his lips blew back hilariously in the wind, or his tongue lolling happily out of his mouth as he rested his head on my shoulder and watched the road as intently as if he were my navigator. Dog truly was my copilot.
It sounds ridiculous, but Brinks turned my “me” into a “we.” Suddenly I wasn’t just a single girl alone—we were a family, a household. Yes, my heart was broken, and his was in danger too, but gradually, as the poison of his treatment worked through his system, it killed off the worms strangling his heart. And as I fed him and cared for him and walked him slowly along the beach near where we lived, the pain strangling my heart began to fall away, and I started to heal too.
What we both went through seemed horrible at the time. But it made us stronger. Healthier.
When I finally started dating someone again, it was Brinks who showed me he was a good man—the first time he stayed over, this man crept out of my bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. As I secretly watched through slitted eyes, I saw him stop to lean over and gently stroke my dog. He wasn’t trying to impress me or suck up—he thought I was asleep. His treatment of Brinks showed me that he simply was a kind and warm and loving person.
When I’d first gotten Brinks, my best friend saw the way the dog devoted himself to me and how I basked in his constant and unconditional love, and said, “You do know you’ll never find an actual human guy like that, right?”
But as I got to know the man I was dating, I was thrilled to realize she was wrong, and I had.
When I married that man a few years later, both our dogs not only attended the wedding—they were in it. And now, twelve years after Brinks and I found each other and helped save each other, here we are still, happy and healthy and now living in a household full of love.
He’s mostly deaf now. His former puppy-like energy has mellowed, and he spends most of his days sleeping beside my desk as I work, his legs twitching in some glorious remembered run. His limbs have tremors in them, and I sit on the floor with him a few times a day and gently massage the trembling away.
I know that our time together is coming to a close.
And though it will be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through—harder by far than any breakup I’ve ever had—I wouldn’t trade one second of that coming pain not to have had the life I’ve shared with Brinks.
He didn’t just get me through a breakup, or keep my house safe (I’ve never had another break-in), or provide companionship.
He came to me and taught me what it is to love completely and unstintingly.
And he proceeded to change my life.
The midsize shepherd mix that the shelter named “Slick” (because when they’d found him wandering the streets he’d been shaved to the skin) wasn’t what you’d call an in-demand dog. He was four years old and had heartworm. His ears were set crooked on his head. In the four months he’d been at the shelter, not a single person had taken him out to consider adopting him.
While every other dog in the shelter clamored and barked and jumped around like they had springs in their legs, begging for attention, this one stood quietly regarding me with bright brown eyes and a calm doggie smile.
I’ve never believed in soul mates, nor love at first sight, but the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to either one was when I took this dog out of his kennel to meet him: From that moment he was my dog. Unlike the other animals, spastic with freedom at being released from their cages, he merely sat in front of me, his attention and his steady gaze focused squarely—and solely—on me.
He came home with me, and I immediately renamed him (because Slick was far too undignified for him); I called him Brinks, because I’d had my house broken into recently by neighborhood teenagers, and my police officer brother told me that the best deterrent to burglary was a dog. He was my four-legged security system.
I was living alone at the time, struggling through the death throes of an unhealthy relationship, and days after I brought Brinks home it finally gasped its final breath. Suddenly I was single—but for the first time after a breakup, I wasn’t alone.
He had life-threatening worms wrapped around his heart and slowly strangling it, while mine was shattered into pieces, and we started working on our suffering hearts together. Brinks endured shots of arsenic into his back and six-weeks of enforced inactivity as his welcome-home to my place, and I began the always painful process of knitting together a broken heart.
But this time was different. This time I had a creature who needed me, who loved me wholly and completely. Who would stretch out beside me when I lay in bed crying, his head resting on my chest and his warm eyes steady on mine, or curl up on the sofa with me watching reruns of Sex and the City for hours on end.
He made me laugh at a time when I thought nothing could possibly be funny, with his big goofy dog grin, the way he would start the deep, rhythmic breaths I called “happy breathing” when I rolled over almost entirely on top of him—what I called a “full-body smothering”—and lavished him with too-tight hugs and kisses and endless petting. He craved affection as badly as I needed to give it, and he returned it in measures I’d never experienced from any boyfriend.
If I got up to grab another bag of Cheetos (postbreakup binge eating) or refill my wineglass (you know how that goes) or get another box of tissues, he trotted at my heels, contentedly curling into a ball near wherever I settled.
When we went into the backyard, he peed and sniffed and explored, but always checked over his shoulder to make sure he knew where I was, that I was nearby.
If I went out of the house, he eagerly jumped into my Honda and happily accompanied me, his nose jutting up out of the sunroof to take in all the scents of the areas he was still too sick to go explore any other way as his lips blew back hilariously in the wind, or his tongue lolling happily out of his mouth as he rested his head on my shoulder and watched the road as intently as if he were my navigator. Dog truly was my copilot.
It sounds ridiculous, but Brinks turned my “me” into a “we.” Suddenly I wasn’t just a single girl alone—we were a family, a household. Yes, my heart was broken, and his was in danger too, but gradually, as the poison of his treatment worked through his system, it killed off the worms strangling his heart. And as I fed him and cared for him and walked him slowly along the beach near where we lived, the pain strangling my heart began to fall away, and I started to heal too.
What we both went through seemed horrible at the time. But it made us stronger. Healthier.
When I finally started dating someone again, it was Brinks who showed me he was a good man—the first time he stayed over, this man crept out of my bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. As I secretly watched through slitted eyes, I saw him stop to lean over and gently stroke my dog. He wasn’t trying to impress me or suck up—he thought I was asleep. His treatment of Brinks showed me that he simply was a kind and warm and loving person.
When I’d first gotten Brinks, my best friend saw the way the dog devoted himself to me and how I basked in his constant and unconditional love, and said, “You do know you’ll never find an actual human guy like that, right?”
But as I got to know the man I was dating, I was thrilled to realize she was wrong, and I had.
When I married that man a few years later, both our dogs not only attended the wedding—they were in it. And now, twelve years after Brinks and I found each other and helped save each other, here we are still, happy and healthy and now living in a household full of love.
He’s mostly deaf now. His former puppy-like energy has mellowed, and he spends most of his days sleeping beside my desk as I work, his legs twitching in some glorious remembered run. His limbs have tremors in them, and I sit on the floor with him a few times a day and gently massage the trembling away.
I know that our time together is coming to a close.
And though it will be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through—harder by far than any breakup I’ve ever had—I wouldn’t trade one second of that coming pain not to have had the life I’ve shared with Brinks.
He didn’t just get me through a breakup, or keep my house safe (I’ve never had another break-in), or provide companionship.
He came to me and taught me what it is to love completely and unstintingly.
And he proceeded to change my life.
