Dear Redford,<\/p>\n
I cried for nine days straight after Boone died, and Violet lay on the floor in her frog pose and looked up at me, confused, lonely, helpless.\u00a0 I started reading The Grief Recovery Handbook<\/em>.\u00a0 It said don’t try to replace the loss.\u00a0 At work, I told my friend Kate that I was going to live through my grief and when the time was right, I’d get another dog.\u00a0 Kate said she was going to give me some advice, take it or leave it.\u00a0 Kate’s mother had loved animals like it was her job—well, actually it was<\/em> her job; she was a horse farmer, but she loved goats and dogs and whatever else ended up on her property.\u00a0 And Kate’s mom would lose a pet and go right out and replace it.\u00a0 Kate said, “Ame, go get yourself another dog.\u00a0 It’s what you want.\u00a0 Get another dog.”\u00a0 And I did.\u00a0 I got you.\u00a0 And I loooooooooooooooove you.<\/p>\n I made the mistake of getting on petfinder.com, and there was this lady Dawn, see, who rescued pit bulls, see, and she could show me some dogs that day<\/strong>, but then she’d be unavailable for a week.\u00a0 I told her I’d be there by 4:00.\u00a0 (Just to look, of course.)<\/p>\n I drove way out in Orange County and took a dirt driveway a quarter-mile to a mobile home surrounded by kennels, fenced areas, and broken-down trucks loaded down with bags of Eukanuba.\u00a0 Dawn was sunburnt and smoking a Camel.\u00a0 You and your sister and another pit puppy, all about 3 months old or so, were arfing and wagging yourselves into circles.\u00a0 I petted the two girls, and they were so SWEET and WILD.\u00a0 But when I scooped you into my arms, you gave me a smooch on the face, let out a big sigh through your nose, and put your head on my shoulder.\u00a0 So much for just looking.<\/p>\n I made the rounds with you that night, and everybody was besotted.\u00a0 People kept trying out names.\u00a0 Rosie said she wanted to call you Cracker because you were the color of a cracker.\u00a0 Um.\u00a0 Mary mentioned something about the Sundance Kid, and I’m not sure who said it, but all of a sudden, there it was, hanging in the early-summer humidity above Mary’s porch:\u00a0 Robert Redford.\u00a0 You had strawberry-blond eyelashes like him, and you were certainly<\/em> as handsome.<\/p>\n The next day we went to the vet.\u00a0 You were a mess.\u00a0 They clipped your nails and cleaned your ears and put drops in your eyes and treated you for hookworm and kennel cough and injected fluids into your shoulder.\u00a0 A few days later, I threw you and Violet and Rosie in the Outback and drove to Dan’s house in Princeton, NJ, a nine-hour drive which took us twelve because of the damn traffic around DC.\u00a0 You were a champ; you peed in the car only once—and hey, what are those rubber mats for anyhow?\u00a0 The four-hour trip to the Cape took seven.\u00a0 Ugh.\u00a0 Again, you were perfect.\u00a0 And Mom and Dad were so excited to meet their new granddog!\u00a0 Even Great Uncle Russell, a dyed-in-the-wool Cat Person, agreed you had a “wonderful disposition”.\u00a0 “Hello, boys!” he’d say when you and Violet came in the room.<\/p>\n Ah, Cuttyhunk.\u00a0 You loved that island just as much as Boonie had.\u00a0 We went to the BEACH AND ATE DEAD SKATES EVERY MORNING and CHASED RABBITS FOR HOURS EVERY EVENING.\u00a0 You showered the Lovells with love.\u00a0 If anyone could make Dog People out of my mom’s family, it was you and Violet.\u00a0 Course, you were still suffering from liquid poops.\u00a0 Son, those are hard to pick up, but I did it because I didn’t want every other beast on that island getting hookworm.\u00a0 (It would eventually take three more treatments to get rid of the worms and the protozoa that was backstroking around your intestines.\u00a0 At least, I hope we’re rid of it all by now….)<\/p>\n Anyway, we spent the summer hiking, going to the dog park, and dog-sitting Moby, Katie, Jackie, and Barley.\u00a0 You remind me in many ways of Boonie.\u00a0 When you sit, it’s on your heels; your ass never touches the floor.\u00a0 You have that wrinkly-headed, dopey look.\u00a0 You poop at the drop of a hat.\u00a0 You torture the cat when you haven’t had enough exercise.\u00a0 You chew everything<\/strong>.\u00a0 (So far:\u00a0 all of my flip flops, Mary’s flip flops, four blankets, two pillows, a doormat, the cat’s scratching post, and a director’s chair.\u00a0 That’s in addition to eviscerating all the chew toys<\/strong> I’ve bought you, dammit.)\u00a0 Your bark gets houndier every day.<\/p>\n But you’re not Boonie.\u00a0 You’re your own dog.\u00a0 You love all dogs and kiss them square on the mouth with tongue to let them know it.\u00a0 When you run, depending on the direction you want to go, your opposite hind leg kicks out like a rudder.\u00a0 You’re a little wall-eyed which I find staggeringly adorable.<\/p>\n You’re not Boonie, Redford, and that both pleases me to no end and breaks my fucking heart.<\/p>\n Love,<\/p>\n Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Redford, I cried for nine days straight after Boone died, and Violet lay on the floor in her frog pose and looked up at me, confused, lonely, helpless.\u00a0 I started reading The Grief Recovery Handbook.\u00a0 It said don’t try to replace the loss.\u00a0 At work, I told my friend Kate that I was going … Continue reading Dear Redford<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","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=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2077,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/2077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}