The Joy of Hazel

It’s been twelve years.

Twelve years since my husband and I last had a puppy.

That puppy was our sweet Ruby, whom we lost in May, sooner than we hoped or expected.

We knew we’d get another dog, we knew it would be another German Shorthaired Pointer like Ruby, and we knew it would be sooner rather than later if only for the sake of poor grieving Eva, our 11-year-old Weimaraner. Ruby and Eva had been the best of pals.

My husband and I discussed the timing. He was inclined to wait a little longer. I wanted another dog yesterday. We had my summer travels to consider, my dad’s declining health, and my husband’s retirement plans.

I bribed my husband with the promise that I would get up with the puppy in the night—he’d been the one to take on that duty all those years ago with Ruby. (And little Ruby had to go a lot!)

All we needed was to find a litter within driving distance with a female GSP that would be the right age at the right time.

So, we began to scour the internet. We researched the breeders. We looked at pictures and watched their videos. We eliminated one because we didn’t like how roughly the breeder handled the dogs. We know nurture matters as much as nature.1

When we saw the one who would become ours, we knew immediately. We filled out the application and waited to be approved. We were.

On a lovely mid-June morning, we took Eva and drove to northern Maryland, crossing in and out of Pennsylvania at one point. We went down miles of country roads carved into rolling green fields and arrived at a beautiful farm where we met our new puppy. She had been born and raised in paradise, romping freely with her littermates on green lawns and taking refreshment in a tiny pond.

We decided on the name Hazel on the drive home. Funny, that name wasn’t even on the list we’d made beforehand. None of those names seemed to fit this pup’s personality (as much as we could tell having only known her a few hours). So, I looked up a list of the 1,000 most popular girl names last year and rattled them off. Somewhere in Charlottesville, “Hazel” appeared in the list and we narrowed our own list down to two. I texted my niece who had been following along for the whole saga. My niece had been with us twelve years ago for the drive to pick up Ruby, the one who got to hold her in the truck most of the way home. I asked her which of the two names she liked best. And that’s how Hazel became Hazel.

Roy says she has two switches: on and off.

Make that three: most nights around 9:30 p.m. the turbo switch suddenly comes on and she races around the house like a tornado, literally bouncing off the furniture. Eva can only sit back and watch in wonder and trepidation (which is pretty much what we do, too).

On the other hand, I really lucked out because from the very first night home, she has always slept through the night! Promising to do night duty with her turned out to be a promise I had no trouble keeping. Heh.

A lot has happened in those twelve years since we last had a pup. Our lives, work, and lifestyles have changed significantly. And we are twelve years older. German Shorthaired Pointers are not for the faint of heart of any age!

I really had forgotten in twelve years how much work a puppy is. (Roy had not. And he did try to tell me …). It’s a LOT. Every move has to take into account where the puppy is and what she needs to do and where she needs to be to do it. And she needs a lot. She is a lot. She is her own little personality.

We picked her, but we had no idea, really, who we were getting. She came to us as a bundle of genetics combined with thirteen weeks of happy puppyhood.

I told a friend who also recently lost her beloved dog that when you get a new one after losing one, it’s natural to fear you might be vainly trying to replace the old one and important to resist doing that. But here’s the thing: a new dog will never feel like a replacement. A new dog will never seem like the old one. No, a new dog feels like you have an alien in your home. All you can do is get to know this stranger and figure out how to live together.

Once in a while, when Hazel does something clumsy or stubborn, I say to Roy, “I sometimes wonder why she was the last female in the litter.” And Roy always says, “I know why.” And I—knowing exactly what he will say—ask, “Why?” And Roy always says, “Because God saved her for us.”

Hazel would be Hazel wherever she went. She came to us with the nature of Hazel and the nurture of the ones who brought her into the world.

She arrived at our home with a clear sense that the world and everything in it belongs to her.

So, I wonder if our Hazel had ended up somewhere else, if she had gone to someone else’s home and family, what would she be doing there? What world would have been hers? Would she have had more or less to discover and enjoy? More land or less? An easier life or a harder one? What would she have been like if she had been received by different people in a different place?

And here’s where I will pivot into what I really want to say in this essay.

As I’ve already said, I’ve had a lot of dogs in my life. Hazel is the eighth dog my husband and I have had together during our marriage. So, I’ve thought about dogs and their personalities and their lives and their deaths a lot. This isn’t my first rodeo.

I don’t know if it it’s just that I’m older now. Or that I’ve been through more. Or if I’ve just grown softer and more sentimental these days, or what. But this puppy is making me think about a lot of things that are tender and hard—not new things, but old things in a deeper way.

Hazel—like nearly all puppies—is filled with joy for life—for bees, for cushions full of stuffing, for empty plastic bottles, for stuffed toys with squeakers, for dried pig ears and rawhide chews, for moles dead or living, for jumping on furniture, for chewing on my glasses, for barking at the chickens, for stealing Roy’s hats, and going for walks.2

She came to us full of complete and innocent trust, without knowing whether we deserved that trust or not.

As I watch this marvelous miracle of created life, I marvel at the honor and privilege it is to give her a life of joy. To take joy in her joy. We have this beautiful little alien force in our lives, and we have taken on the task of caring for her, teaching her, protecting her, and enjoying her for as long as God gives us.

What a solemn, crazy, fun, hard, exhausting, and blessed thing that is.

And when I think about this, how true this is of all puppies, not just Hazel, I can’t help but also think about how all this is even more true of children. All children. All of us grown people, too. All human beings who are made in God’s image and given by God the responsibility to love and care for one another.

Who will we become because of the people and places that receive us?

Who will we help others become because of the world we make for them?

The joy of Hazel belongs to us all.

“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil3

BOOK NOTE:

Happy release day to Jennifer Marshall Bleakley as her newest, Thank You for Loving Me: And Other Things Your Pet Wants You to Know (Words of Comfort for a Pet Lover’s Grieving Heart is out today. Jennifer included a bit of Ruby’s story of being lost then found in her previous book, Paws in His Presence: 50 Inspirational Animal Stories to Help You Pray & Ponder the Psalms, and her beautiful work about God’s gift of animals has been dear to me ever since. Jennifer sent me a copy of this newest one shortly after we lost Ruby. When I opened the envelope that the book and her sweet card came in, I took one look at the title and had to put the book down. It was several days before I could open the book of the card. The title of the book says it all. It’s a message every animal lover who has lost a beloved animal needs to have. Thank you, Jennifer.

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