Unless your a dog owner, and a real one, you don't fully understand the connection people have with their dogs. I love my girls like they are real breathing people. I cherish the moments when it is just Jeremy and I and the girls are being so silly, Maddie throws socks if you ignore her & Ellie is my long time spoiled child. I'm from a family that rescues dogs and loves them. Heck, in the early 90's I was photographed for an add for the humane society in our area...because my mom worked there. My best friend was any ad everything at that shelter, especially this one pig.
I got Ellie when I was 20, just a few weeks after our beloved boxer died of cancer and kidney failure. Even typing that now, 7 years later makes me cry. Ellie brought life back into a world that ended very sadly for me. She was also my first dog that wasn't also a family dog. I was single and living alone. Every step I took, Ellie took. It almost breaks my heart to watch her age. The only thing worse would be of she went to kindergarten.
A few years later I was engaged to marry Jeremy. I talked nonstop about how poor Ellie monster needed a friend. One day Jeremy sent me on the weirdest mission after work. All I had was a envelope with an address on it. I was convinced he was buying me that tv for upstairs at my townhouse. No, instead I walk up to a door to see a sweet woman grinning from ear to ear. She knew what was going on and thought it was so sweet. I handed her a check and asked about a tv, she handed me a tiny red dachshund. Ellie had a friend. A friend with no name, that would take some time to name. Jeremy wasn't find of the name Kitty. I scooped up this tiny pup and headed back to the restaurant, everyone knew but me. Little Maddie Moo stayed snuggled in my lap the whole night.
When we got to my house Queen Ellie wasn't thrilled with the idea. But within a few weeks she loved this weird little puppy with an obsession with ripping apart every studded animal Ellie loved.
Like the commercial, Ellie went everywhere with her lofa dog. Even taking it to bed and sucking on the feet to fall asleep.
Then Maddie ate it.
It didn't go over well.
That little dog was a mess, she was so small that following Ellie and I to potty just upset her. She would sit in the grass and cry, until I picked her lazy self up.
We had our own little family. For a couple that didn't foresee kids anywhere near, these two pups became our kids and Jeremy grew to love them as deeply as I do.
This weekend we came to a youth ministry training conference and the devil came at us the only way he could.
Our dogs.
Satan could take everything we owned and we'd still have each other and the girls. Nothing ever matters except our family and our dogs. So last night while I was sitting in a diner laughing, Jeremy walked out and came back in insisting I come outside. When he told me that 16 hors earlier Maddie had been lost I fell apart. Lost. The baby dog is gone. I thought surely it just happened, I had tips for that. But out of fear I guess, no one called us. Had it need immediate I could have said what to do, but coulda shoulda woulda. It doesn't matter now.
I hate to type this because I know someone will feel bad reading it. But that's not why I blog. I blog about these things to cope. Writing is how I cope with what life throws me. Just click the Nanny label at the bottom of the page, to full of me working through heart ache.
All I can do now if lay in bed, 9 hours from my babies, and wish I could search for her. It is so hard when the people looking for your dog don't love your dog like you do. I feel robbed that I can't do an amber report. No I didn't birth it, but your looking at a few days away from 27 woman with no kids. That's my child.
I know Maddie. She panics without me there, which is why I normally take then to my parents. This is the first time we were gone longer than overnight and dust take them. Time didn't permit. And now I regret that. Maddie gets upset and searches for us when we aren't home, she more than likely ran out thinking she could find us. Now well over 24 hours later, no one has found her alive or dead. At least if se were dead I could cope on that level, but I don't know where she is. I feel like my heart has been ripped from my body.
Jeremy said it best to me last night, someone could take everything he has except his dogs. We eventually got it together enough to go back into the worship service. We stood there holding onto each other praying and praising God for what he has done for us, and pleading with him to get Maddie back. We have gone through so much change that the only constant has been God and those dogs.
We they began to play In Christ Alone I lost it all over again. I knew the song, but the first time I remember it in church was the 1 year anniversary of Nanny dying. So now I'm losing it for every reason my body could come up with. Every time it gets to the "no fear in death" part I cry, it makes me think of those emotions I felt when Nanny died like they are fresh all over again.
When she died I got the call from my mom, held it together to know what I needed to do, hung up, and laid in the floor weeping while the girls clamored to get near me and make me feel better. Oddly many of the same feeling come back over Maddie. At the saddest moments of my life the girls were there to make me feel better. If ever I look the slightest bit down, especially when I cry, they push to get in my lap.
But now I'm just sitting here, in someone else's bed, sad. I know God doesn't want us to feel this way and we are leaning on him for comfort. If she were dead I could cope easier, but lost just means I can't settle down. Mentally I want to search. The only time she has ever escaped us was after the hurricane, she accidentally got into the cane field and it took an hour to find her. If Jeremy and I were there the searching wouldn't have stopped until she was found that first night. But I'm not there. And she isn't back.
Pray that we find her, and that if not we are comforted by God. My heart was so open before I got that news, now I feel like it has been ripped from my body. I can't imagine how little codependent Maddie feels right now, Ellie is our little Momma dog and babies Maddie so much.
I realized some people will think this is ridiculous, I know some will understand.
