My kids grew up with two Akitas that we had before any of them were born. The dogs tolerated the kids, but they weren’t the best kid-friendly dogs. After the dogs passed in 2009 and 2010, we didn’t replace them because my then husband, now ex, didn’t want one. But the kids did—the younger 2 anyway.
They started asking for a dog more often, starting in 2015 when they were 15 and 13. My answer was always, “We can’t right now, but pray for the right one to come to us. God knows what our family needs.” I had learned from a previous experience that we should never not ask for something just because it seemed impossible that we would get it, and I wanted my kids to learn that way earlier than I did.
The truth is, when they first starting asking, I couldn’t handle a dog. I was just coming out of the fog of denial and had realized that I was in an abusive marriage. I had also just started a new full time job and I was in Overwhelm on a variety of levels. Also, a new dog would add another personality to our family. We already had a difficult family member (my then husband, now ex) and I didn’t want to add an additional one. So I didn’t join them in prayer asking for a dog (yet, anyways). But each time they asked, I answered, “We can’t right now, but pray for the right one to come to us. God knows what our family needs.”
In 2016, the requests became more frequent. I then started answering, “Are you praying for one?” Sighs and rolling of the eyes were their responses. Finally, after asking again, and me answering, “Are you praying for one?” my son said, “MOM. You can’t expect a dog to just show up on our door step because we prayed for one.” To which I replied, “Well, won’t it be cool when he does!”
At some point in Fall 2016, I actually started thinking more about how having a dog would provide an emotional support for the kids. Walking on eggshells had become even more of a thing as we had an in-home separation going on with my now ex living in the basement. So, I actually fervently started praying for a dog as well. I reminded the kids that God knew what we needed and that he would bring the right one to us. My son still made jokes about the impossibility of one showing up on our doorstep, but I always answered, “Well, won’t it be cool when he does!”
After coming home from traveling over Thanksgiving week, we happened to see our next door neighbor in her back yard. Her yard wasn’t fenced and we could see that she had a puppy! Her college-aged daughter was home for Thanksgiving and had insisted that her mom needed a dog. They had got him from the Humane Society’s Black Friday sale as a rescue from Hurricane Irma in Louisiana. He was so cute! He was about 6 months old, looked like a German Shepherd and they had named him Pike. My neighbor wanted to socialize him as much as possible. The kids offered to walk and play with him, which they did a few times over the next week.
One morning at work, I received a text from this neighbor, who works from home, telling me that she was finding it difficult to get anything done with the dog and she had to walk him constantly because she didn’t have an enclosed yard. She didn’t think she would be able to keep him, and was considering returning him within the Humane Society’s return window. She knew we were looking for a dog and asked if the kids might like him for Christmas.
Ummm…What?!
My first reaction was, NO. I had already filed for a divorce at this point and I knew I would be moving to a rental at the beginning of the year. Most rental houses wouldn’t take larger dogs and I figured as a German Shepherd, he would be too big. So I texted her back “thanks, but no thanks”, noting the size issue. Also, personally, I was expecting an older rescue dog—not a puppy. I did not want to deal with a puppy.
She wrote back that she had just taken Pike for a checkup and the vet said he was actually part Aussie and was almost grown. He shouldn’t get much larger. Hmmmm…I told her I would think about it and talk to the kids.
Well, of course they were ecstatic, but I was still hesitant. I asked if we could borrow him for the afternoon. I should have known there would be no going back after that. We were so dog-starved and he was so cute—we were goners. He was so excited and kept running to each of us in turn for attention. We were in puppy heaven!
It was a done deal! My neighbor had already setup his neutering surgery and asked to keep him until after he recovered from that. It would be right before Christmas that we would get him.
It was touch and go there for the next 2 1/2 weeks as our neighbor became more attached to Pike and got used to having him around. I sensed her hesitation and just asked that she let me know so I could manage expectations with the kids. It was on December 22nd that she finally told me she was going to give him up and would have him ready for us the next day.
And sure enough, guess who not only showed up on the doorstep with a big red bow, but even rang the doorbell!
Isn’t it amazing how God answered our prayers? He was definitely our God dog. I couldn’t resist in pointing out (quite a few times!) to my son that because of our prayers, God really did bring a dog to our doorstep, O ye, of little faith!
We renamed him Henry and got him 2 years ago today. It has been an adventure for sure! If I’m honest, I did question, more than a few times (most of those times in frustration!), why in the world God would have thought a 7-month-old puppy was what our family needed. I’ll share His answer in another post. ?
