rumiNATION

Whilst driving home from work on Wednesday, the morning show I listen to was talking about pets and how long people wait to get a new one (dog, cat, duck, etc...) after theirs passes away.

The consensus of the callers and the on air personalities was that it's a very subjective thing. But, for the most part, people seemed to err on the side of waiting longer. Some even had (what I would consider to be) crazy stories like waiting 9 YEARS after their old dog had died to get a new puppy - and their mom still being upset that they were trying to "replace" the old dog.

Shortly after we got Jessie was when this topic first came up between Melissa and I. I don't know exactly how or why, but it did.

I told her how, in my family, we always seemed to get a dog very quickly after ours passed away. The one instance that most stands out in my mind was in 1990 when our dog Rusty (who was born almost exactly one year before my brother, in 1974) died one morning, after several months of slow decline. That afternoon my dad picked my brother & I up from school and we went out to get a new puppy. This process also happened several times with the "guard dogs" from the shop - who never seemed to live quite as long as the house dogs. (Go figure, a steady diet of motor oil and antifreeze does not lead to long life.)

Instead of finding it weird that we should get a new dog so soon after an older one passed away - I found it more odd when susequent dogs passed and we DIDN'T get a puppy right away. Most notable example of this was when our dog Mindy passed away. Porkchop had long since decided to move into the house, so my mom was happy with just having two dogs instead of three shedding all over the place.

Melissa's view of this situation was more in line with the callers from the radio show, however. She loves Jessie so much that she couldn't imagine ever "replacing her" and felt as though she would need several weeks or months to mourn her loss when that day comes.

So we agreed to disagree.

Recently, however, our friend Marti's cat, Mortimer, passed away and Melissa got to rethink things with a different point of view. She heard Marti describing how it was so weird to come home from work now and have the house empty without Mortimer waiting for her. It was this thought that finally helped Melissa understand me on the matter.

With a dog who is as personable and ever present as Jessie, our house will feel oh so empty when she leaves us. We will be very sad for a long time, without a doubt. And I would also probably add that I don't think we will ever find another dog quite like Jessie. (For better and for worse!) But when that sad day comes, I am very sure that our house will not be dog-less for long. Not because we'll be able to replace her. But because a new puppy and all the work they bring are just the right medicine for taking the sting off of the emptiness in the house while still leaving room for all the good memories of friends gone away.