A Pocket Full of Posy

A Pocket Full of Posy

Empty your pockets right now; every one of them. Now pile everything on the kitchen table and play detective. Who is this person? What does all this crap reveal about this mystery person? Artificial tear drops: probably in his 50s or 60s. A dog-eared pack of matches and breath mints: a closet smoker. Wipes and hand sanitizers: obsessive compulsive behaviour. A broken pencil, a building block and a strange stone: an eight-year old boy, for sure.

Well, my pockets would tell you that I’m a dog owner. Two months ago, my pockets would have told you something very different. Two months ago, my pockets screamed FREEDOM! Two short months ago, my pockets were either empty or they held a spare lipstick and a couple of tissues ... maybe a mini hand sanitizer. I was done with the toddler years, when my pockets contained soothers, biscuits, a spare diaper, toys, a picture book ... and the kitchen sink – or so it seemed some days!

Today, my pockets are jammed with doggie treats, a little plastic fire hydrant holding a roll of tiny poop bags, and a plastic clicker for training. Some days, I find a spare leash or little pieces of kibble. What happened to me?

I’ll tell you what happened to me. I adopted a little mutt from a local shelter here in St. Louis. Some days, she howls and we all agree there must be hound in her. Other days, she’ll spend the day furtively burying, digging up and re-burying her bone. We nod at each other and say, “yup, beagle”. Still other days, she chases her toys and obligingly, retrieves them over and over again until – exhausted – we sit down and sigh “retriever, or sure”!

What I could not have predicted – especially since we adopted her for the kids – is that I would fall madly in love with this little dog. Every morning, she greets me like she hasn’t seen me for weeks. She is still in a crate, so she’ll come out, stretching and pushing up against me, licking me madly and wagging her tail so vigorously that she stumbles as she walks.

Around mid-morning, when I ask if she wants to go for a walk, she runs to the front door to fetch her leash and bring it to me. Our walks are slow; she’s a puppy so she needs to sniff and snort at every blade of grass and blowing leaf. But, it’s fine with me. I breathe the fresh air and, when the jays scream overhead, I try to find the hawk they’re harassing. I get a chance to talk to the neighbours and we compare observations on the weather and raising dogs.

After lunch, she sleeps until it’s time to get the kids from school. I tell her to get in the car, so she doesn’t get her leash; she just runs to the driveway where I lift her into the back. She whines all the way to school and barks with delight when “her people” are in sight. Yesterday, she got very confused because I drove for a long time. I drove all the way back to the shelter from which she’d come. There, we had an appointment for her to be spayed.

After I asked worried questions about the procedure and her potential pain, I sat in my car and wept. As I jammed wet tissues into my bulging pockets, I finally realized what it means to have a dog. My pockets would tell you that I was a dog owner, but now I’m a dog lover.