Floppy ears, wide eyes, an intoxicating plaintiveness. Right size, right age, right look. According to her profile, she was found abandoned in the woods of Tennessee with two siblings, but they carried no obvious anxiety about people. In fact, they appeared eager for emotional connection.
So was I.
I submitted my application to the rescue league, made an excuse for my partially fenced yard, pitched the convenience of my work-from-home setup and pledged my canine devotion. It was oddly similar to marketing myself as a dating prospect; throwing humility to the wind, I put myself out there as an “active 54-year-old writer” who had “a lot of love left to give.”
Within 24 hours, I was invited to an open house to find out if Charlene and I were truly a match.
I brought my friend Miriam. Under a large white tent, a dozen chairs had been arranged in pairs for the hopeful couples. The two women in charge brought out Charlene, who quickly burrowed into my lap. After ten minutes of embrace, I took her to the mulch yard to play with the other canine adoptees. She burst into action but kept coming over to make sure I was still there, then burrowed into my lap again. This was flattering but also, well, rather fast for someone who should probably, given my recent losses, be taking new relationships very slow.
Miriam took photos of us, since it seemed like an open-and-shut dog-human match. But as the rescue league women were filling out the forms, eager to close their event with this final adoption, something didn’t feel right.
“Wait a minute,” I said, petting Charlene while my eyes welled up.
I just didn’t feel ready to love another creature so deeply, to be so needed. I wasn’t prepared to give up my newly obtained freedom or to tolerate that grip of worry for another being — especially an abandoned pup likely to have “special needs,” as the pet profiles warn. Should something happen to her (her health history was unknown), I wasn’t sure I could endure another heartbreak.
“I’m sorry, I’m just not ready,” I told the organizers, who seemed both annoyed and perplexed. How could I give up such a great dog when I was in no position to be picky? After all, there must be many more middle-aged single women than there are cute dogs for adoption.
