Yesterday, Kathy and I (and Mabel) piled into the car and drove four hours – the longest trip we have taken since the dark curtain of COVID-19 descended fourteen months ago. Just getting out on the road for a drive of that length (“getting out of Dodge” as Kathy likes to call it) was a tremendous pleasure….
but it was what was awaiting us at the end of that long drive that made yesterday the happiest day we have had in a long, long time. Kathy, Mabel and I were on our way to meet for the first time the newest addition to our family …. Mabel’s half-sister, who we have named Millie. Until yesterday, we had only seen Millie in photographs and videos that were shared with us by the breeders, Dennis and Mary Olsen. Yesterday was our first opportunity to see her in person and to hold her in our arms.
The occasion could be called to Selection Day, and under more normal circumstances we would have been going there to choose which puppy we wanted out of all of the females in the litter. (We were entitled to ‘first choice’ among the females.) But unexpectedly, this particular litter (which was born on April 20th) consisted of only six puppies …. five males and one female. That meant that the one and only female was ours. (We feel so badly for the folks who had reserved a female in this litter and were left with disappointment when only one female was born.) But even without any ‘selection’ for us to make, Kathy and I still wanted to seize the opportunity to meet Millie. And with the blessing of the Olsens, we decided to bring Mabel along.
Our first encounter with the Olsens was back in the spring of 2003, at the very beginning of their career as breeders. In fact, our beautiful Ellie came from the Olsen’s very first litter of golden retriever puppies. Three years ago, we returned to the Olsens and came away with our wonderful Mabel. It was clear from the very beginning that they were everything one could want in a dog breeder …. salt-of-the-earth, honest, loving, and fun people who were in the dog breeding business not to make a fast buck but rather to help bring beautiful, healthy dogs into the world and match them up with people who will love them as much as they do. (It was actually Mim Potter, the mom of our dear friend Kate Potter-Barrow, who found the Olsens and got us in touch with them when we were looking to bring a golden retriever into our lives for the first time. We’ll always be grateful to Mim for this.)
By the time we finally pulled up to the Olsens’ property around 12:45 in the afternoon, the people who had come to choose among the male puppies had come and gone, which meant that we had the Olsens and the new puppies all to ourselves and made it even easier for Mabel and Millie to meet and get to know each other. We let Mary initiate the introduction of Millie to Mabel, and Mabel could not have been gentler or sweeter with her tiny half-sister.
For a few minutes, it was just Mabel and Millie investigating each other while Minnie’s five brothers continued napping in their pen. (They had already quite an exciting and exhausting day thanks to all of the company.) Mabel seemed briefly intrigued by those quiet bundles of joy, but seemed happy to let them sleep.
I had not realized until we got there that Millie was old enough to run around freely – and she very quickly discovered the fun she could have with Mabel’s leash. In fact, there were several times during our visit when it looked for all the world like Millie was trying to walk her big sister.
Eventually, Millie went back into the pen with her brothers so we could head up the hill to visit Lightning, Millie and Mabel’s mom. In fact, the most spirited play of the whole afternoon was when Mary let out Lightning and her sister Thunder (who would be Mabel and Millie’s aunt) …. and Moose, Millie’s dad. Mabel had an absolute blast tearing around the yard with those three. (In the photo below, Mabel is in the purple collar – her mom is in the blue – her dad in the orange – and her aunt in the red.)
After a few minutes, it was time to head back to the puppies for dinner time – and it was such an amazing and even beautiful sight to see those six puppies being fed by their mom …. with our little Millie, in the pink collar, right in the middle of the joyous feeding frenzy.
All six puppies were out and about after that, but Millie was the only puppy who consistently returned to Mabel again and again for the duration of our visit. It’s as though that initial encounter had created some sort of bond between them that only strengthened over that subsequent hour. By the end, Millie was following Mabel wherever she went … like a tag-along little sister. (And big sister Mabel didn’t seem to mind one bit.)
But what was most wonderful of all was to see the two of them laying quietly together. That seemed to confirm once and for all what we were already pretty sure about – that Mabel was going to be a sweet and patient older sister. (Mabel is great with other dogs- and it’s one of the things that we love most about her.)
For as joyous as this day was, never far from our minds was the heartache that had been experienced just a couple of days before when my brother Steve, his partner Scott, and their son Henry had to bid farewell to their wonderful greyhound named Dexter. When we allow dogs into our lives and hearts, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that we will have to let them go when the time comes …. which can be a truly wrenching loss that people without dogs cannot begin to understand. But it’s more than that. Quite often, it is from our pets that children learn for the first time about the fragility of life – and that none of us live forever. So often, it is when we lose a truly beloved pet that we first learn what is feels like to lose someone we love. Of course, that is the inescapable risk involves in loving ….. that when we love someone or something, we must be prepared to lose them someday. So we are grieving for Steve and Scott and Henry even as we prepare to welcome our new bundle of joy into our home in early June. Their painful loss made what we experienced Saturday afternoon seem all the more precious- one more sign in these crazy times that life goes on- and that love is what makes life worth living, even love for a darling four-legged bundle of fur named Millie.
