No Matter What, She's Always a Puppy to Me

Yesterday my dog, Molly, went to the vet for her first "old dog check-up." She came home laden with pills, slightly wobbly from two shots, and scheduled for a surgery to remove one of her teeth. I was shocked. The little ball of fluff that I'd always called "Puppy" or "Baby" was entering into her senior citizen years. It seemed like yesterday that we had gotten her.

When I was in fifth grade, I badly wanted a dog, as did all of my sisters. It got so bad that my mom bought us a life-sized "real dog" stuffed animal to play with, along with assorted strange outfits, but that did no good. We had to settle for babysitting other family's dogs when they went away on vacation, getting to pretend we had one for a few days before we had to give it back. That changed the fall of my fifth grade year when we took in a shih tzu named Moxie.

A family friend of ours called one day and asked if we could watch this little dog for about a week. They were watching her for an older woman, and just went over to let her out in the backyard three times a day. She was cooped up in a house, and the living conditions were horrible. The woman they were watching her for was in the hospital for a "brief procedure," they assured us. Of course, we jumped at the opportunity, and Moxie came to stay with us.

Moxie was the stereotypical lap dog of an old woman. And by lap dog, I mean that she was incredibly lazy and not used to living with four girls and two energetic parents. Moxie loved to sit on laps, but didn't know how to play. We would toss a ball and she would run toward it, only to get tired halfway and plop on the floor for awhile to rest. She didn't know how to climb stairs, and when she learned she would get tired after two or three steps and just sit and look at us, with those giant brown eyes. We LOVED her. So, when the week was up, the thought of giving her back was very painful. But no one contacted us, or came to pick her up. Moxie remained at the Michael house.

After that one week turned into two, two turned into three, a month passed, and eventually two. We had no idea what was going on, but we soon received devastating news. This woman who we thought was in the hospital only for a brief procedure was an 85-year-old woman who was very ill, staying in the ICU. We were stunned. No one had mentioned this to us, and we didn't know what to do. A few days later she passed away, leaving no mention of what to do with her dog. We didn't know either, until one day when my dad came home and suddenly got up during dinner with an announcement. He turned to Molly and said, "Moxie, would you like to become a Michael?" 

That was the biggest surprise to us, because the one stick in the mud with the dog situation was my dad. Seeing him now, you would have no idea that he used to despise dogs. He refused to touch Moxie, and only occasionally referred to her as "Dog." Then one day, he came home from work and fell asleep on the couch. Moxie jumped on his stomach, curled up in a ball, and fell asleep too. Since then, the two of them have been inseparable. He takes Molly on long walks, feeds her scraps from his plate when he gets up to put it in the dishwasher, and lets her sleep on his stomach every day when he gets home from work.

And that's how we got our puppy. Of course, we had to change her name to something a little more dog-like, and Molly Michael became Thing 5 (in picture). It seems like she was a puppy such a short time ago, but now she's entering her grown-up dog years. And although sooner or later she may have to invest in something like Dentures for Dogs, she'll always be a puppy to me.