Good Hands: Notes on Letting Go

Years ago, in the early nineties, back in the days when I foolishly scoffed at under-eye moisturizers as something I would need ‘one of these days, but surely not now’, Cosmopolitan magazine published an article called, “Women Who Love Their Dogs Too Much.”

I read it, riveted. I Identified with every word. Yes, I was one of these women. One of these women who would spend their entire lunch hour driving home to make sure the dog was ‘in a good mental place’ while left at home during my work day. Yes, I was one of those women who would forego any kind of a blind date that didn’t entail my dog’s being able to tag along. Call me codependent if you must and call me completely beyond hope if you will but I was what I was and I still am. Still. The article left a huge impression, and since reading it nearly a decade ago, I’ve strived to make positive change. I’ve realized that my dog, like me, needs time away from the one who loves them the most. Occasionally, I make this possible. I take Basil regularly to a doggy day care facility. On a regular basis, I walk up to my local convenience store and buy groceries* (*I’m single. Groceries means a loaf of bread, a six pack of Bud Light, a jar of peanut butter, and a pound of cottage cheese) and leave her tethered outside, unattended. Sometimes, I return a library book and leave her in the car. With these small gestures I console myself that I am not truly one of those women who love their dogs too much and cannot stand simple separation anxiety.

In short, I lie. Like a rug. To myself. Case in point being recently* (*’recently’ meaning: today).

Recently, I promised Roy that I would allow him to have my dog as a ‘therapy animal’ while he recovered from surgery. You all remember Roy, yes? Oh, wait a minute. I suppose not. You see, Roy was someone I dated through the entire summer and thought I would spend the rest of my life with and long story short I wound up deleting every post I wrote about Roy because Roy frankly and honestly told me, he’d prefer not to be written about on my blog. So, I deleted every post. Hence most of what you read that I wrote this summer seemed as if it skipped around and it did because I literarily deleted everything he and I experienced together. In the long run, this was an OK thing. Putting myself in his shoes, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in someone else’s blog, either, so it was easy for me to not write about Roy during the duration of what was, and/or appeared to be, our ‘relationship’.

Uh, hum. Anyway. Being as we’re no longer in a relationship, let me make a long story short and say that we are friends. And where Roy and I may not exactly meet in the middle, he and Basil absolutely connected on more than a fur-deep level. I’ve often pondered how tough it is for single parents (Lainie goes through this a lot. She’s the world’s greatest mom, and yet when you’re a single mom even that isn’t always good enough) and if you want to know the truth, when I first heard from Roy again, after he’d sort of gotten back together with me then not really and then disappeared again and then turned up again and then told me he was having major major surgery (yes, I wrote ‘major’ twice, and I meant to) the first thing that came to mind was, gosh, it would be great if you had a therapy animal.

Which is to say, gosh Roy, since I can’t be there for you any longer because we’re not together but because I still really do care for you (I wasn’t, in the long run, the one who pulled the trigger on the whole thing) you are more than welcome to have Basil come out and stay with you for a few days, if you like…or longer, if you like, because there’s a lot to be said for a therapy animal.

And there is, really.

Roy is supposed to take three to four walks a day. Much easier to do with a dog, especially a dog who wants to take these walks. So today, with heavy heart I took Basil out to the west side of the valley, with a carefully packed bag. I left her The Essentials:

Dog food
Dog treats
Dog sleeping quilt (which she likes to be covered with when she sleeps)
Leash
Dog food (two bags. That’s it. I’m not committing beyond that)
Mom’s shirt ( for sleeping on. If she misses me, it is immersed in Estee Lauder’s Cinnabar, so she’ll remember me)
Dog brush (Who am I kidding? I don’t use it on her, so doubt he will, either)
Leash (Complete with red LED flashing light to alert other cars and dogs to her presence after dark)

So Roy and I had a brunch today, eggs over easy and lots of bacon, and I left my life’s companion with him, and I said, see how it goes, and I can come get her tomorrow, or the day after. Already they’ve taken a walk, and probably gone to bed. “I feel bad,” he said. “I know you will miss her, and you will be sad.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “I have the cats.”
Yeah, the cats.
So far, they haven’t been quite that entertaining.

It has been a matter of hours now since I left Basil with him, and I know she is in good hands. He and I may not have worked out so well, but I do know that he loved her, and still does. So I console myself with an evening on my own. My cats are nothing but thrilled that they have my sole and complete attention. Perhaps tomorrow, Basil will come home.

Or maybe not.

Maybe Basil will stay several days with Roy, which he said he would enjoy very much, and I can hardly begrudge her that. She loves his yard, she loves the fact that he walks three, four times a day and enjoys it, while her ‘mother’ drags herself out maybe half that on a good day and really would rather be inside watching Lifetime Television for Women.

“When you come back,” he said today, “your dog will be a Nazi. She will be a German Shephard. She will salute you and say, ‘Heil Hiltler!”

Yikes. Given Roy’s German heritage and Basil’s proclivity to believe any doctrine coated in bacon, I have something very real to worry about.

But, what the heck.

At one point, I truly loved that German. I made him a huge part of my life, and in the same vein, of my dog’s life. Holly would have my head if she knew we were even in contact let alone that he had my dog, but at the same time, I have to let go of that, too. Roy told me, he could have died, during that surgery. And a lot of things became clear to him while he was waiting to ‘go under’. Things that were probably and for the most part of the variety of ‘too little too late’.

OK.

We’ve all moved on.

I do love my dog too much.

But I can, despite what Cosmopolitan writes, let go.

Every once in a while.

In the case of necessity, or triple neck fusion, whichever comes first.

And that’s all I have to say, and all (Holly) I’m going to say, about that.

It’s just that I know Basil is sleeping very well. And she is in, if not my first choice, in ultimately the very best choice, of good hands for her.