What a lot of people don’t know is that Rhodee (Queen Rhodesia II – there was never a first, but I just liked throwing on that double I) isn’t my first dog.
(I’m actually writing this as Rhodee lies next to me in her spot in my office.)
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted a dog. But of course, in a Bajan/West Indian/Newcomer household, that shit was never going to happen. And it if was going to happen, a dog lived ‘outside’ and ate table scraps. That was the beginning, middle, and end.
Living in Canada, you can’t be having dogs living outside in February, so the only opportunity was for me to move out my house to get me this dog of mine.
It was around the first year of my PhD and I was living in grad school housing (Bayfield) at the University of Western Ontario (it was still called that when I started my grad life). Kendra and I had always talked long about getting a dog together. Getting a dog was one of those ‘commitment’ things, where you had to jointly take care of a living thing, but you didn’t have to get married or worry about diapers and RESPs.
So we decided to get a dog.
Bru.
A puggle.
At the time, puggles were the ‘hot breed’ out there. A puggle is a mix between a pug and a beagle. You turn around, they were all over the internet and were a perfect ‘fit’ dog for grad students: small, but not too small; relatively cheap to buy; and, cute.
It wasn’t taboo to buy a dog off of Kijiji then, so Kendra and I looked around and found a ‘breeder’ (really it was a farm in southwestern Ontario) and off we went.
To get Bru.
Sidenote: Bru is a spin off of one of my nicknames. The first time Cara and I went to England, we were in a shop and saw a drink called ‘Irn Bru.’ I shouted out in a Bajan accent ‘Irn Bru!’ and we laughed hysterically and the name stuck.
Yes, I named my first dog after me. A man dog, for the record (I'll probably never get another man dog). Something that I’ve always wanted and it was finally here.
What all the cute photos and ads don’t teach you about dog (puppy) ownership is that the first 6 weeks (3-4 years) aren’t all shits and giggles. It’s just shits and more shits. You’ve got to think about it: you kidnap a puppy away from its mother and litter mates at 8 weeks old, to an alien environment. Of course it ain’t going to be easy.
I wasn’t ready. Not even remotely ready.
Kendra and I agreed that the dog would live with me (she had a fulltime job, and I was a grad student), and she would come down on the weekends to take care of it. She would finance everything for the dog, and all I needed to do was take care of it. That’s it. Simple as pie.
In retrospect it was pretty easy. I just wasn’t ready to be home every 2 hours to take the dog out to pee and poo. Nor was I was ready to listen to a puppy cry all night in its crate. I wasn’t fundamentally ready to be a responsible dog owner/parent, and after about a week, Bru went back to the breeder.
Yup, I was one of those people.
The official story was that Bru was sick and had to go back to its breeder. But really and truly, I just wasn’t ready to make the commitment that it really takes to raise a dog as a fur-baby (I still call Rhodee my ‘puppy-baby’).
Am I sorry about how it all went down?
Not really. It was a real relief in the moment, and I’m sure Bru (or whatever it ended up being named) went to a great home with great people. Bru taught me about myself, my wants and needs in my life at the time, my immaturity, my relationship with Kendra, and what it takes to care for someone other than myself.
If the false start with Bru didn’t happen, there would be no Rhodee.
Sidenote: Life also works in funny ways: about a decade later we ended up rescuing Gizmolien from someone that didn’t want her.
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