I Love Him A Lot, But Some Things Aren’t Meant To Be

We lost a member of our family last week.

He had been with us for only nine months or so. Doesn’t sound like a lot of time. But it didn’t take nearly that long for him to twist my heart around his big brown eyes. It was hard to let go of him.

Last November, when we found him literally chained to our front porch, we figured this was a sign that someone thought ours would be a good home for this sweet, Rottweiler/Labrador-your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine puppy.

Our conscience wouldn’t allow us to let him wander his fate away or send him to the doggie gas chamber. But how could we care for him? Our hands were already full with one dog, not to mention three children, the oldest barely 5.

So we did the “right” thing. After all, he did have a collar on. Someone belonged to him. We published a “found” ad and waited. And the calls poured in.

Stolen Rottweilers, mostly, but they were all female. “Our” dog was a little boy.

One woman demanded to know when I had found him and still didn’t sound convinced that I wasn’t the one who had taken her dog. Wrong age, wrong color, wrong sex, wrong dog. We were really beginning to love this little guy, even though he felt the need to christen our kitchen floor several times a day.

We named him Hootie, in honor of the Hootie and the Blowfish concert we had just gone to. Our children were a little skittish. Hootie was nothing like our own dog, a 10-year-old Doberman Pinscher named Elvis who had never quite understood that he was not a human and needed to be escorted off of our couch on a daily basis.

Elvis didn’t like this young punk with all the energy, but Hootie didn’t know that. He would run underneath, over and around Elvis all day long.

Hootie’s energy increased as his size did. Whenever we let him in the house, the kids would race for higher ground, the top of the sofa, where they would squeal if Hootie even looked their way. He outweighed them all and had a penchant for leaping on them in their constant state of “oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” They were used to the chronically sedentary Elvis, who wouldn’t jump to save his own life.

In the spring, Hootie discovered that a young Labrador lived behind us. Someone to play with! Our fence became no match for him and he sailed over it as if it never existed. Our friendly neighbors were good sports but as quickly as Hootie jumped our fence, he would jump theirs. Soon, he was visiting every home in the neighborhood.

A kennel for when we weren’t home was in order and it wasn’t long before he climbed out of it, dug under it or simply jumped against it until it moved halfway across the yard. We had to tie Hootie up when we weren’t outside to keep him in the yard. One day, the neighbors called to say that Hootie had climbed on top of the kennel. We got him down before he hanged himself.

Happy Hootie’s sparkling eyes were losing their luster. He was beginning to look depressed. The demands of our young children and the rest of our lives meant that Hootie was spending more and more time tied up to the clothesline pole.

A new and taller fence was financially unfeasible, yet letting him run wasn’t safe, let alone legal. We thought, debated and prayed, and then thought again. We loved Hootie too much to sentence him to a life like this.

So another ad appeared in the paper, this time for a kind and loving dog that needed a very tall fence and room to run. After many calls that ranged from people wanting to know if he had enough Rottweiler in him to make a profitable stud to another person who wanted to chain him to the porch as a living security system, a young girl called twice wanting to see him. She arrived in minutes with a friend who fell in love with the same big brown eyes I did and off Hootie went, this time to Montana.

I, of course, cried my eyes out as I watched my little Hootie disappear down the street in the back of their car.

I pray that Hootie is happier in his new home. But no matter where he is, there will always be a home for him in my heart. xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Michae’l Alegria Special to Roundtable