Forgive me if this column seems a bit disjointed. I have one eye on a wiggly puppy, and she is pacing around my home office, sniffing.
Is she searching the floor for runaway crumbs? Or is she scouting for a prime location to pee?
She’s gone from a half a dozen accidents a day to no accidents, and now back to six. As for me, I’m sleep-deprived. Overstimulated. Irritable. And lovestruck.
Months ago, I told friends that I needed a new puppy like a hole in my head. But the desire to bring one home was building inside me. In my Oct. 3 column, I shared with you that I questioned whether I could ever take in another dog after my canine soulmate, Memphis, passed away six years ago. I couldn’t imagine loving another pup as much as I loved him.
Of course, once you start meandering the internet for adoptable puppies and then visiting them in person, you’ve already decided, even if you don’t know it: You’re getting a new puppy.
Lamentations from my husband were frequent and fierce. He reminded me about the work and anxiety that new puppies produce. I countered with the universal gesture for Mother Cradling Baby. “A little joy would be good for us,” I told him. Plus, I insisted, we should do it for the children.
So that’s how we came to adopt Frankie, a “beagle mix” who was plucked from a kill shelter in Arkansas by a wonderful Minnesota rescue organization, Rescue Network.
I don’t see a lot of beagle in Frankie, and my iPhone’s built-in dog scanner is convinced that she is all Dobermann. With her chocolate brown coat and splotches of creamy tan, she seems to have descended from a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. (Don’t worry and don’t judge — we’ve already splurged on a dog breed DNA test.)
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