Dear Violet,<\/p>\n
You’ve always been different from Boone and Redford.\u00a0 You chewed a few things when you were a baby, but it seemed like you got over that pretty quickly.\u00a0 (You’ll still collect my things, but you don’t chew them.\u00a0 I’ll come home these days to find a sneaker, a flip-flop, and a bra in your bed, all perfectly intact.)\u00a0 Redford’s tail conducts a little symphony of joy all the time, a work of varied time signatures and tempos, but your tail has always had three settings:\u00a0 side-slapping with joy, the metronome tick, and between your legs.\u00a0 You’re smart, unlike your brothers, bless their hearts.\u00a0 You memorize places where I put you back on-leash, and from then on, it’s like I have a force field around me when I hit those spots.\u00a0 You won’t come within ten feet of me.\u00a0 Though you don’t always follow the rules yourself, you are The Enforcer and sound the alarm whenever your brother is doing something naughty.<\/p>\n
You love having play-dates and slumber parties with your friends:\u00a0 Jackie, Barley, Raven, and Moby.\u00a0 One time, I stupidly left Moby’s food bag on the floor.\u00a0 I walked in to find Boonie sniffing at a giant, slobbery hole in the side.\u00a0 I started to chastise him, but something else caught my eye.\u00a0 You, looking like one of Dr. Seuss’s star-bellied sneeches, prostrate on the living room floor.\u00a0 Sure enough, I took you all out for a walk and, ORP, you barfed up an enormous rainbow pile of Beneful.<\/p>\n
From Day One you were terrified of children, and really anyone who didn’t love dogs.\u00a0 You love to swim and dig your nose under the water (I call it The Bulldozer).\u00a0 You love wrestling with your brother.\u00a0 You send me on a total guilt trip when we haven’t been hiking in a few days.\u00a0 You prefer to be rubbed on your chest and belly and will contort yourself on the couch to make it happen.\u00a0 Despite my dismay, you insist on digging holes in my yard when I’m not looking, and then stare at me wide-eyed and innocent when I see your nose covered in red clay and give you a talking to.\u00a0 Redford’s all ADD and will wander away from his food mid-bowl, and you’ll slink over and munch quietly until I yell at you.\u00a0 If he’s being particularly focused one day, you’ll run to the door and arf as if there’s something he should be aware of, just to distract him.\u00a0 When you lie down, it’s in full frog pose.\u00a0 I sent a picture to ihasahotdog.com<\/a>, so you have been immortalized.<\/p>\n That horrible day, when you popped out of the woods after four hours missing, I thought my body would fall to pieces.\u00a0 I had never experienced relief like that before, which made it all the more horrible when Laura told me Boone was dead.\u00a0 For days, I’d tell Wa, “I feel like I’m dying.”\u00a0 And she’d ask if I was suicidal, and I’d say no, I didn’t feel like dying, I felt like I was dying<\/em>.\u00a0 The only thing that kept me going was you and your tragic, confused face.<\/p>\n It’s safe to say you’re the best decision I’ve ever made, Violet.\u00a0 You are my rock and my guard dog and my shweetie pie.\u00a0 I love you so much.<\/p>\n Love,<\/p>\n Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Violet, You’ve always been different from Boone and Redford.\u00a0 You chewed a few things when you were a baby, but it seemed like you got over that pretty quickly.\u00a0 (You’ll still collect my things, but you don’t chew them.\u00a0 I’ll come home these days to find a sneaker, a flip-flop, and a bra in … Continue reading Dear Violet, Part 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animules","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}