Blinky in '22!
As many of you know, my long-loved dog Pablo passed away in early December after six-weeks of struggles with a neuro-muscular disease. While those six weeks were brutal, I was shocked by how bad the next two were, as I battled life without a dog.
I’m a weirdo, for many reasons. But one of my oddest idiosyncrasies is that I enjoy waking up long before the sun rises. I usually get up at 3am, but I’m always out of bed by 4:30, with a skip in my step, ready to feel…lonely and bored.
Enter dogs. Dogs love to wake up, take walks, and rid their humans of loneliness and boredom. This explains why I took less time than Larry King did after divorcing to look for my next dog. And just like my last search, “it happened in the blink of an eye.”
We started at a rescue shelter, walking distance from our house. We entered to find thirty dogs accosting us with the din of barks, woofs, and howls, but just like 12 years ago, there was one dog abstaining. A calm, smiling pooch, waiting...
Unlike Pablo, this mutt was a bit larger (20 pounds) and female, but she was the same age (about a year), and most importantly, she seemed to possess the same energy I loved in Pablo, a confident sweetness with no detectable aggression.
I shouted at my wife, who was yards away, knee deep in puppies. “Honey! Come here! I found her! I found our dog!”
She held up a finger and proceeded to promise ten puppies to adopt them, even though we’d agreed to get an older dog since we just got our five-month-old human to sleep at night. She eventually arrived with a quizzical look. “I don’t get it. Where is she?”
I pointed at our future dog. “This one! Blinky!”
“That one? She’s missing an eye!”
“Shhh.” I scowled. “What if she’s sensitive about it?”
“Wait, what did you call her?”
“Blinky. And she’s perfect!”
We left, discussing the countless reasons not to get a puppy compared to why we needed one, (SO CUTE!), but fate was on my side. After visiting every shelter in the county and using a “pet finding” site where you send complicated forms to agencies that never respond, we returned to Blinky, who gave us a smile that said, “Kismet, right?”
Right! Life with the Blinkster is magical. And everyone loves her, not just friends and family. It includes fifty-or-so neighbors who met her when she ran away at 6am on a Monday to stop, bark, lick, n’ leave house after house in what we assume was the debut of her political career. And you know what? Based on the last decade of politics, she’s the best candidate we have. So have a Happy New Year, and vote Blinky in ’22!
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