I had a first this week. I cried at work for the first time in my life. No I didn’t get fired. I didn’t have my head bitten off by some entitled local who wanted “Cookies! As in Oreos you idiot not cookie dough!” I didn’t have a freak accident with a yogurt machine. No the earth-shattering event that whittled my composure — from Pollyanna to pathetic — was a pair of puppy eyes. Really. A puppy named Riley.
At first I reacted the way any animal-loving college girl would when an adorable puppy hugged in the arms of someone who loves it walks into the ice cream shop I call work. I squealed and nearly vaulted over my cash register to touch its feathery little ears and brush my fingertips against its soft whiskers.
I reduced my syntax to baby-talk toward a googly-eyed puppy.
I was in heaven.
Now that I live off campus I can should and deserve to have a dog. I can afford one right?
Not with this job.
Then I looked up to acknowledge the owner for the first time and ask this little one’s name. Riley. The rosy glow dissipated. I looked slowly and silently back down to where the puppy should have been now lost to my view behind an instant lens of hot acidic tears. Riley.
In my blurred eyes a memory exploded of the first time I saw a different Riley sleeping in my sister’s arms in the bucket seat of our family’s minivan one unusually hot October.
The fall that I turned 11.
Puppy Riley turned into monstrous German Shepherd Riley who sidelined at our soccer games and strained against his leash like a tethered bottle rocket. My parents had to put him down two weeks ago.
Once you have a dog of any sort or size a part of you wakes up. That person thinks about simplicity and reliability and wonders why every creature on the planet can’t be as wonderful as that dog is. That person chats with other dog owners for no reason. It’s the part of you that cried when Old Yeller died. For those of you who can only relate to current pop culture comparisons it’s the part of you that cries when Owen Wilson’s character in “Miley & Me” finally puts Marley down and buries him in the backyard.
When Jennifer Aniston’s character takes off her favorite necklace and talks about family tears in the corners of her pretty eyes that’s it. It’s good stuff people. Movies like that don’t come along very often.
Some days I wonder if having a dog is worth the all-encompassing emptiness of saying goodbye. Call me a cynic or an unfair over-simplifier but when a person waltzes out of your life it’s possible to let negative memories provide a pretty convincing balm for separation blues. Not so with dogs. A dog is nothing but noble from first sniff to last tail wag and the “Yeah but he sure ate a lot doesn’t seem to hold water.
So I don’t roll my eyes anymore when Malibu locals buy a child size vanilla yogurt with no toppings and hold it cone style for their pampered dog to slobber up. They understand something that you don’t have to be 11 to know: Dogs are a joy.
I hope this little Riley is as precious in five years as he is today. As mine was. Keep bringing your dogs in, Malibu.