Not that puppy, but another, whose story I’ll tell soon
From a year and a half ago, when my sweet boy was just a few months past his fourth birthday, instead of less than two months from his sixth:
We went to the shelter today and there, in one of the cages, was a tiny pit bull puppy named Cyclone. He had a big round wormy belly, which made his head seem tiny in comparison. He was mottled gray and black and really cute. Lucas stood in front of his little cage and the puppy whimpered quietly, those little puppy cries that almost sound like sighs. Lucas looked a little bit like he was going to cry himself. He ignored the other puppies, just standing in front of this puppy’s cage.
Tonight at dinner, he asked, “When are we going to go back to the animal shelter?”
I asked him, “Why do you want to go back to the animal shelter?”
And he said, “Because of the puppy who loves me.”
Dear God, I wanted to get in the car and drive through the rain to the shelter, break in and snatch that little round-bellied, grunting and sigh-crying puppy out of his cage and bring him straight home. For Lucas. Because my kid is empathetic. Because my kid recognizes that puppy’s need, not only to be loved, but to have someone to love himself. And he wants to be that someone. I saw it in his eyes, as he gestured towards the puppy, wanting to hold him, cradling his wish in his arms as though the puppy were already there.
But we didn’t hold the puppy. We just stood there in the puppy room, and while the rest of us looked around, visited the other puppies, Lucas stood loyally by his little puppy. And he never spoke the words asking us to take him home, but we felt his wish all the stronger for his silence. We didn’t touch any of the puppies. We’ve seen parvo firsthand and so we’re super careful not to spread contagion, even though this shelter hadn’t seen parvo in a long time.
We wanted to be careful, and yet I am reminded of that episode of This American Life, where they talk about how babies were getting sick and dying more often in hospitals when people were picking them up — this was before they knew about germs — and so instead, these babies’ illnesses and deaths were being attributed to being picked up. People were told not to pick up their babies, not to kiss them. And in the hospitals where the no-touch policies were strictly followed, they started to see babies and children die. They literally died from lack of loving contact. And I look at those puppies, and I don’t want them to die of parvo, but I can’t help wondering, are we killing them just the same by not holding them close?
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