Blood Sugar by Sascha Rothchild

Author:Sascha Rothchild [Rothchild, Sascha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 28

LOVE

Once we were engaged, Jason told me he wanted to get a dog. He grew up with dogs and missed having them around. And he always enjoyed seeing dogs at weddings. Bringing the rings to the altar, wearing bow ties, sitting with the wedding party making staged photos seem a little more candid. But I worried about Mr. Cat.

I asked, “What if they don’t get along?”

“We will make sure that they do.”

“But what if they don’t?”

“I promise Mr. Cat will be okay.”

And I worried about other things too. Like, “I’ve never had a dog, I have no idea what to do.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“But . . .”

“But what?”

The real “but” I would save for my next session with Alisha. I knew she would be able to pull out of me my true aversion to getting a dog.

While sitting on her couch, I finally got to it: “But what if I don’t have enough love to share with Mr. Cat and Jason and a dog? I’m happy just the way we are.”

Alisha reminded me that my favorite Ellie quality, one I often talked about, was her belief that joy brought more joy, and there was no finite amount. Alisha said there was only so much time in the day, so if I was worried about making my schedule work with dog walks and vet visits and such, that was a reasonable concern. But if I’m open to it, my capacity for love is limitless. So fearing I would run out of love was not a reasonable reason to not get a dog.

Jason and I went to a no-kill shelter, figuring by rescuing a dog from there, we were saving two lives: the one we rescued and the one that would fill the space of the one we rescued. A small fawn boxer weighing in at forty pounds, every rib showing, that the shelter had named Star, caught my eye. They said she was about three years old, but it was hard to tell for sure. She had the kindest eyes, and when they brought her out of her crate to say hello, her little nub of a cropped tail wiggled with glee. She nuzzled up to Jason and me and trotted by our sides, as if to say, I’m already yours. And she was. We filled out the paperwork and proudly walked her out of the shelter.

We immediately drove to the veterinarian, Dr. Hamilton. He was able to fit us in and gave “Star” a once-over. Heart and lungs and eyes and ears looked and sounded good, and the shelter had already spayed her. She desperately needed a flea bath, a regular bath, a teeth cleaning, and about fifteen more pounds. The vet said, based on her general condition, that she was probably used by a backyard breeder to push out puppies, way more litters than her little body would have liked, and then they abandoned her when she could no longer get pregnant. He punctuated all this with, “I could kill those people.

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