The way to end a story you want people to read, especially one about dogs, is with a happy outcome. Old Yeller may have been shot in the corn crib after getting rabies because he saved his boy, Travis, from a rabid wolf, but the Disney movie ends with one of Old Yeller’s pups mischievously stealing his way into Travis’s broken heart. And while it’s true that there will never be another Kirby, it was our experience with Kirby—and the desire to honor how Kirby had loved, shaped, and enriched us—that got us thinking about getting another dog.
After Kirby’s ashes were buried in our backyard, I began to do something I told myself I wouldn’t do. I knew I needed to grieve Kirby. I needed time, I told myself. Plus, I was sure no other dog could replace him. Or maybe it was the fear that I would actually love another dog and forget Kirby. Nevertheless, I found myself online, searching for dog breeders. I told Kara that this time we should get a female yellow Lab. Going opposite in color and gender to Kirby seemed a nice way of keeping our memory of him. The more I searched, the more right it felt.
Months passed, and with each week, I became more certain: I wanted us to get another dog. I wanted Owen and Maisy to bond again with a dog. Kara was afraid I was going too fast—what if we’d just gotten lucky with Kirby? Naturally, I drew on my research on dogs and spirituality to make my case. I told Kara that our kids needed a new puppy because dogs echo a deeply spiritual reality, connecting us to empathy, bonding, and play…in other words, pretty much reciting to her what I had just invested months of work to learn, and I had the Amazon bills to prove it. How could she resist a little cognitive ethology?
Turns out she could, and did.
When my intellectual justifications fell short, I went back to the basics: Our kids had never helped raise a puppy; they knew life only with an adult dog. Having a puppy would be enriching to them and would grow them as spiritual human beings!
Again, she looked at me like I was full of it.
A puppy in particular, she reminded me, would drop a ton of chaos into our lives. My stomach turned when I thought about standing outside in the middle of the night teaching the puppy to pee in the grass and not on the carpet, but in the end, the real reason I wanted a new puppy was that I wanted Owen and Maisy to have another dog to play with. I wanted a dog who would celebrate Owen’s and Maisy’s presence with excitement, always reflecting to them that they were beautiful and worthy of attention. I wanted a dog who would summon them into shared play, helping them rest in the knowledge that they are wonderfully made. (You can see that I couldn’t help but drift out into the theological deep.)
Finally, Kara agreed to think about it.
On a family road trip, I knew we’d pass within a couple of hundred miles of a breeder, so I had taken his number with me. With Kara open to the idea of a puppy, I asked Owen and Maisy what they thought about it. The backseat erupted with instant agreement, so I told them that we’d spend the trip considering it together. This initiated their campaign of relentless pleading and persuasion that became the nonstop soundtrack of our vacation.
Within hours of announcing our discernment process, Owen became the biggest advocate for a new dog, thinking of names, promising to help, and talking about the possibility incessantly. We’d waited some time before calling the breeder, and were almost certain all the puppies would be claimed, so finally, we told the kids that if we called and there was one girl left, we would take her. We would check, but there were no guarantees, and that while we were ready to get a new dog sometime, this might not be the time. Maybe the decision would’ve already been made for us.
Kara called Brad the Breeder in Brainerd, Minnesota (cue the Coen brothers), and asked if he had any puppies still available. Of course, it turned out that he had just one unclaimed white female. Like déjà vu back to the day we chose Kirby, Kara found herself blurting, “We’ll take her!” When we told Owen, he shouted, “Prayers do come true!”
We now needed a name. The kids had all sorts of stupid ideas, but having just finished a week of putting our kids to bed early so Kara and I could binge-watch season three of HBO’s Game of Thrones, we thought the perfect name for the pure white female Labrador would be Khaleesi, the white-haired, badass Mother of Dragons princess. To our surprise, and without having any familiarity with the character, the kids agreed. Khaleesi she’d be.
We cut our trip short to drive to Brad the Breeder’s house, excited to pick up our puppy. We stopped by PetSmart and bought a pink puppy collar, leash, and a small kennel we could drive her home in and use as her bed for the next few months. That night, we stayed in a hotel, preparing to pick up Khaleesi the next morning. I got up early to put together the kennel out in the back of the car, trying my damnedest to assemble the dumb thing in the hotel parking lot while projecting an “I’ve got this” confidence whenever anyone walked by.
As I was wrestling with it, a couple talking in the deepest southern accents I had ever heard approached the car next to mine. Seeing me fighting the kennel, they asked each other with enough volume to reach the entire parking lot, “What’s he doin’? Oh, I see! He’s puttin’ together a critter bucket! But I don’t see no critter for that bucket! Where’s the critter?”
I finally got the bucket together, and we were ready to pick up our critter.
An hour later, we pulled off the country road and into a gravel driveway. Maisy was the first into the garage of Brad the Breeder. Before I could get in the door, she was inside the pen, being mobbed by a pile of the cutest things I’d ever seen, a mess of tiny pink tongues, black noses, and wiggling white-yellow bodies. Maisy shrieked with joy as the slew of roly-poly, velvety puppies crawled over her and kissed her, going, of course, right for her face.
Brad picked up the one with a green collar and handed her to Owen, saying, “Here she is; here’s your new dog.” Owen’s face lit up so bright that it looked as if his hair could stand up straight. And the white, eight-pound Khaleesi sniffed his chest, stretching her little body to reach for his chin, sniffing at his face with her wet nose.
Seeing that puppy in his arms, Kara and I both fought back tears. A child and a dog. It felt right, oddly holy, and a deep privilege to witness.
On the Journey Again
And three years later, here we are on this journey again. Khaleesi has grown to be a fabulous dog. Her preferred way of greeting us is to press her face against ours with her eyes half closed, breathing deeply and contentedly. She decided early on to sleep every night with Maisy. Each evening, she lies in the middle of Maisy’s bed with her paw thrown over Maisy’s legs and her head resting beside her. Every morning, she bounds into our room and burrows between Kara and me to cuddle and say good morning, to welcome us in joy to a new day filled with possibilities. Every afternoon, I see her face in the window watching for my return, and at the door, her happy eyes and frantically waving tail greet me excitedly.
I drop to my knees and bury my head in her neck, feeling her happiness against me. It is grace.