I am constantly asked when we are getting a new dog. It’s a reasonable question given what a crazy dog lady I am. While I do love the thought of getting a new dog, my husband (always the voice of reason) isn’t so sure. Although he loved Jessie to bits, he reminds me we are in a different stage of life than when we had a family dog. 

Jessie came into our lives when our sons were in public school and died a couple years ago at the age of twelve. I hold on to happy images of my boys and their friends bursting through our front door and Jessie hopping off her perch on the sofa to greet them. Our perfect family dog with her big muddy paws fit perfectly with our almost-perfect family.

Our home in Ottawa is not a family home. It is an empty nest that I am fastidious about. I practically walk around with a dust-buster attached to my hip, and tell my boys they can only eat dessert in the dining room when they come to visit. “But it’s my birthday,” one of them protested as I told him to march his plate of cake right back to the table. The bar for order and cleanliness is so high that people who were well acquainted with our life in Toronto (including our sons) wonder if I’ve had some sort of a breakdown.

“Do you really want to be vacuuming dog hair all day?” my husband asks rhetorically, also reminding me that he travels a fair bit for work to places I also like to visit. A dog would complicate things, for sure. Secretly I’m hoping a dog just lands in our laps, like how storks plunk babies onto the door steps of hopeful parents. 

For now, I only write about dogs. Here are links to two recent publications.

First the kids, then the dog: at some point, everyone leaves home (The Globe and Mail, April 2021)

The vet’s footsteps reverberated on the porch stairs through the stone silence inside our house. I squeezed the hand of one son and glanced over at my other. I turned my gaze back toward Jessie. She lay on a green quilt by the front window as the sun set in the winter sky.

When my sons were 12 and 10, they wanted a dog. I don’t remember whether they convinced me in the way kids typically do with promises of walking, feeding and grooming a pet. I would not have taken their promises at face value given their ages. When Jessie came into our lives, I did most of the work. This made me her favourite. She slept by my feet in the attic office during the day and at the foot of our bed at night. While the kids were at school, I would consult with her on important matters: “What should I make for dinner, big girl?” Looking into the pools of her brown eyes always inspired an answer, and made life slow down a beat.

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I Promised My Sons a Puppy: Then We Had to Give Him Back (YMC, August 2021)

Our two young sons wanted a puppy. Romantic notions of the perfect family dog completing our almost-perfect family led us to a bucolic farm one Saturday afternoon. We were all smitten with Riley, a handsome little golden fellow. I gave the breeder a wad of cash, carried Riley to the car, and tucked him between our excited boys in the backseat to take him to his new home.

For the first few weeks, I chalked up Riley’s behaviour—chewing shoes, gnawing the corners off furniture, clawing the legs of my younger son (inciting tears)—as puppy exuberance. The day he barred me from leaving my home office with a menacing growl was the day I started to see him in a different light. 

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