A Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers by Colleen Sell

Author:Colleen Sell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.

Born to Be Wild

Mom!” My son Ben stomped up the stairs from where he'd been playing outside with his younger siblings, Chloe and Sam. The anxiety in his steps was the kind a mom hates to hear; it usually means someone is bleeding. “Sam let Dakota out of the yard, and she's gone!” he said, gasping to catch his breath.

It took most of my strength to contain the expletives that leapt to mind. It was hardly the first time this had happened, and Sam wasn't the only perpetrator. I'd done it, my husband had done it, and every child except the toddler had done it at least once.

“You go make sure the gate is closed before Kelly gets out, and I'll go get Dakota,” I told him.

I headed out the front door and immediately spotted Dakota in the cul de sac. I called to her, but when she looked at me, I heard the lyrics of “Born to Be Wild” in my head. Dakota had a penchant for heading down the roadway in search of adventure. As I stepped toward her, she bounded down the street, stopping only to see how close I was.

I called down curses on her head and followed her at a slow walk. If I ran, she would run faster. If I acted desperate to catch her, it would only make her more elusive. If I called more than a few times, she'd just hide and play tag with me. We'd done this before. It was her one failing: Give her an open gate, and she would run.

I called her name a few times. A neighbor looked up from spraying weeds in his sidewalk. “She's a good listener, huh?” he chuckled.

“Oh yeah, she's brilliant,” I said. Dakota, meanwhile, kept running.

When I got to the end of the cul de sac, I turned around. The choice had to be made — chase a dog who didn't want to be caught but would probably come back anyway, or go make sure my seven-, five, and three-year-old children didn't do something else I'd have to fix. It wasn't a tough choice.

It had never been a tough choice, to be honest. Like many people who have dogs before kids, we'd seen our dog take a back seat to each successive baby.

Dakota pre-dated our kids by about three-and-a-half years. She'd been our baby before we had babies. We got her about six months after finally buying our first home. We'd had cats for a couple of years by that point, and I would have been happy with just the cats for quite a while. Much as I love dogs, I was content. My husband, though, wanted a dog now that we had a yard, and since he put up with my cats, who was I to argue?

We brought Dakota home when she was about six weeks old. A black Lab/German shepherd mix, she was small enough to fit in my cupped hands. She was a snuggler; we could tip her back and cradle her like a baby, and she would fall asleep.

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