Canine Cacophony aka Why Shouldn't I Get Another Dog?

I think we can all agree that 2011 was a difficult year. My grandfather, an amazing, incredible, funny, intelligent octagenarian, passed away in March. I miss him more than words can say. However, this post isn't about him. Instead, it's about my dogs. At the start of 2011 I had four dogs. By March I had five, and I was in a near-constant state of utopia. Emma had been in my family for eight years by then, Rebel for seven, Rosie for five, and Luke for about two. When Eli joined us, it seemed like we had the perfect set. The "Big Kids" (as we called them) were Rosie and Rebel, and Rosie was as dedicated to looking out for the other dogs as Rebel was to looking out for me. The "Snowballs" were Luke and Eli, always a good source for funny new observations on dog behaviors we'd never seen before. I think every dog secretly wants to be a lapdog at some point in his life, but there is something particularly endearing when said dog is actually 140 pounds of fat and fur.

In any case, pet life was good at my house. Obviously we knew it wouldn't last forever, but we were fairly certain we had at least another year. We were all grateful for at least one more Christmas as a family, and we were so certain of our stability that we failed to be as grateful as we should have been. We made regular trips to the vet, of course, but it didn't occur to us that even the most conscientious pet parenting cannot prevent the unpredictable. We lived our lives in a glorious round of food, prescriptions for the dogs, and more dog food, and we didn't think anything else of it.

July 28, 2011 seemed like any other day, and each of our dogs settled in for naps after their evening bowls of food. We had our usual evening of tv shows, mindless chatter, and cuddling our daughter. It wasn't until we were preparing for bed that we realized Rosie's nap had taken on a permanent status. She wasn't sick. She wasn't injured. She'd simply gone to sleep for the last time, laying on a rug right outside our doggy door. Without warning, she was gone.

Losing Rosie was devastating, and I can't honestly say we're over it. I don't think we ever will be, really. By the end of September we knew we needed to keep moving, however, and so we agreed to let my dad give Ellie a puppy for her fourth birthday. Enter Henry. Henry is the only non-rescue dog in our home, and he is a handful in the many ways that every puppy is for at least a few months. Henry is also deceptive. He house-trained faster than any other dog I've met, but I think he knew, in his crafty-German Shepherd brains, that house-training would buy him extra time to refuse to chew-train. His chewy list is long: books, shoes, diet Coke, Ellie. You have it, he'll chew it. My dad swears that he'll stop chewing as soon as his puppy teeth fall out. In the meantime, I spend at least a few minutes everyday trying to make sure Tracey doesn't "help" evict his baby teeth. So far so good.

Five weeks after Henry moved in, Rebel passed on. Everyone who would even consider reading this blog more than likely knows at least part of Rebel's story. Rebel was my best friend, my soul mate, my partner, my security blanket. Rebel was everything I ever wanted in my life. For the last four weeks of his life, Rebel could not really walk. We carried him wherever he needed to go, comforted him in everyway possible, and vowed not to put him to sleep as long as he was not in pain. After explaining this to people on numerous occasions, I gave in and wrote a blog about letting Rebel go when God was ready to take him. Sometimes I wonder if that blog wasn't a sign that I had finally, fully accepted Rebel's situation. In any case, Rebel took a turn for the worse that afternoon. I called the vet to describe his symptoms, and she said he was not getting enough oxygen and the time had come to bring him in. I sobbed. I sobbed while I called my husband, I sobbed while I carried him to the car, and I sobbed the entire way to the vet. I continued along this vein while they explained what they would do and I agreed to stay in the room with him. While the nurse went to prepare his medicine, I finally stopped crying. I told my baby boy that I loved him, that I was so sorry that I couldn't save him, and that I was sorry I needed him to go. I told him we had waited as long as we could, and we did not want to make that decision. In reality, I begged him not to make me make the decision to end his life. Rebel was as loyal as ever, and in the few moments the nurse was gone, Rebel died. I didn't have to make any decisions, and I still got to be with him in the final moments. I will never forget that time.

We moved quickly after that and decided to get another dog right away. We are a sentimental family (to say the least) and knew that if we waited too long to get a new dog, it would become a big "thing" to make the decision to get a new dog after Rebel died. If we moved right away, it wouldn't be so significant after all. Cue a new round of questions! Why would we possibly want another? Wasn't four enough? Where would we put a fifth dog? Didn't we have our hands full with Henry? The short answer to all these questions is, "Everybody's gotta be doing something."

However, I do have a longer answer available. Dogs need to be saved. Someone needs to save them. I happen to be in a position to save another dog, so why wouldn't I? Honestly, I think helping others gets infinitely easier if we ask why we shouldn't rather than ask why we should. The answers for why should help others is endless. Because we can. Because it's the right thing to do. Because we would want people to help us if we were in need. Because it's the Christian thing to do. Because we want to be good people. Because we get a tax break for donations. Because it's Wednesday. Really, regardless of what motivates you, there's always a good reason to help others. However, it's an incredibly different moment if you stop to ask why you shouldn't instead.

In those situations, I've found one of two things will happen. The first possibility is that you will start to answer that question. You'll list all the reasons the potential recipient isn't worthy, why you need your time/money/energy for something else, how it isn't the right time for you, and the list goes on. In reality, you already had your answer the second you started making a list. You shouldn't help in that circumstance because you don't really want to help in that regard anyway. If you did, you wouldn't make the list. The second possibility is that you will treat the query as a rhetorical question and move forward with your purpose. In that respect, you realize the answers to either question on motivation aren't so important after all. Your recipient will be all the better for it, and you just saved yourself several hours of potential list-making. In any case, this is how these questions work for me.

Now I'll be the first to admit that Tracey doesn't always see dog rescuing as I do. Likewise, not everyone considers saving dogs to be the worthwhile venture that I consider it to be. Despite these potential obstacles, the reality is that millions of dogs are euthanized every year. Cats and dogs outnumber people in the United States by ten to one. I can't save every dog. I can't help every person, and I can't always say that my motivations are completely altruistic. However, I can say that I'm saving dogs because it's what Rebel and Rosie would want me to do. I'm saving dogs because I can. I'm saving dogs because it's what my husband wants to do as well, even if he doesn't approach our animal rescues with the same zealous enthusiasm that I do. For whatever it's worth, when he puts up his biggest protests I find myself answering in one of two ways. Sometimes, occasionally, I listen. I let it go, and I accept the fact that we have at least another year before he's ready for another dog. When that doesn't work, I just point out to him that to *really* do our part, we should have thirty dogs (ten per one person) in our home, and compared to that I'm not really asking all that much. I can't say this argument works on him completely, but I can say that he realizes the possibility of me asking for thirty dogs is not quite the impossibility he wants it to be.

After all, why shouldn't we have thirty dogs?