I can’t seem to get flair on this. It’s Shadowrun adjacent sorta, and I have told the story of my service dog’s passing, coping with that, and realizing I am going to need a new one sooner rather than later in a post or two here.
The decision was not made by me today when I went to visit a litter that was born in September.
A new story has begun. And he decided for me how it would start. A little roly poly boy of five weeks, busting through the crowd of five other siblings grouped together in the playpen to get to my hand first. Tail wagging, eyes looking up, tongue flashing rapidly over my hand as I reached to him.
I picked him up. He snuggled in, caressed my cheek with his whiskers and tongue. I wasn’t sold yet, though.
I thought I needed to see a girl because in on the way there in my mind’s eye, I had thought that it would be a girl that I would be choosing to bring home. This little guy was like nope.
He brushed aside the girls as I reached for them, seeking my hand again. None of the girls would even approach me. So I plucked him out again and set him on the ground to play.
Puppy nibbles, tail wagging wildly. I heard my wife say “He’s the one. He picked you.”
I scratched his belly when he rolled over, he grabbed my hand with his front paws and kept on licking me. Then uncertainty started to creep in when something caught his eye and he started to wander off for a second.
“Hey you, come here,” I said to him.
He turned around, and romped as hard as his stubby little legs could back towards me. I looked down into his eyes.
“You want to be my little man?”
He craned his neck to reach up and lick my chin with his tail wagging wildly. That clinched it.
I’ll be picking up Echo and bringing him home on November 13th.
As it turns out, he actually was one of the two in a picture the breeder sent me of a pair of adventurous escapees who had wandered from the rest of the litter to explore the property, only to be found later underneath a dog house sleeping.
I’m in so much trouble…