This post is about two separate but related events in our family’s life. I’m going to tell them backward, out of order.
The second event that happened: We got a puppy. On Friday evening. This is Rose.

The first event that happened: We said goodbye to Suzi. Just a week ago, last Sunday, our family gathered to say a difficult goodbye to a dog we knew was sick and only getting sicker, but such a tenacious present soul. The house felt so empty when she was gone. We’d been wanting a puppy for a long time, but we knew that Suzi wouldn’t have been able to tolerate sharing our attention, and we didn’t want the end of her life to be plagued by anxiety, jealousy, stress.

Still, I think we all felt a little guilty about so quickly wanting to get a puppy. But here’s how I’m thinking about it: we aren’t replacing Suzi, we’re recognizing how much she (and her departed sister DJ) meant to us, and we’re filling the house with the presence of another little creature to hold, to love, to care for. Once you’ve become accustomed to sharing your space with a dog, your space without a dog feels empty (even with six people living in said space).

If I ever had to live alone, I would get a puppy. It seems like that would solve everything; or at least one very big thing — loneliness.

I would get a puppy, and I would zip it into my coat, like I did yesterday afternoon when Rose got shivery and cold on our outing. I would get a puppy, and I would watch it tumble over itself in the wet grass, picking up leaves, hopping like a bunny, sitting down suddenly and just as suddenly darting sideways. I would get a puppy, and I would hold it close and feel its body go calm and relaxed. Time would slow down.

Puppy time/baby time/small child time isn’t like adult time. I’ve been reflecting on the capacity for play that exists and expresses itself almost constantly in the newest arrivals on our planet. Puppies, babies, young children — their whole existence revolves around play. Play is how we learn, yes, and explore, and discover: it’s necessary for survival, no doubt. But play also contains a dimension of joy. (Is joy necessary for survival?) Joy is readily accessible to the pups of the world. Joy seems to emanate from existence itself.

I wonder at it.

Do we have to work for joy when we’re older? When experience has returned to us too many signs and signals of joylessness, grief, broken trust, the weight of responsibility? When we’ve become analytical, accustomed to living our lives from outside ourselves as well as inside ourselves?

Is joy even something you can work for? Or is its essence spontaneous, intuitive, magical?

I wonder.

My guess is that we can draw joy nearer, draw its possibility nearer, through conscious effort; but we can’t command it, no more than we can command grace, or trust, or love. To witness its vivid, effortless expression is such a gift.

I miss Suzi. I mourn that she was never able to relax fully, except when asleep, that although her trust in humans grew during the 6+ years she spent with us, her experiences before we knew her had done intractable damage. I’m glad to have a puppy upon whom only love will be poured; even while I mourn for all the Suzis of the world who have had their joy blotted and extinguished by cruelty and abuse. It was a hard task looking after two rescued dogs; I wasn’t up to the task again, so soon. So we start again with a puppy instead.

Give/receive. Maybe my spirit needs to receive joy, witness joy, in order to be able to give joy/give with joy.

xo, Carrie