Canine Love on the Rebound

"Millie" Photo by Author

It started as the typical rebound relationship. I had been there before, so I should have recognized it, but I was drowning in grief, and to say my judgment was impaired would be an understatement. Tovi had died two weeks earlier, breeding a type of impulsivity no intervention could interrupt. I was sure adopting another dog would sedate my debilitating pain. As if attachments just transferred, as if he could be replaced.

The day after Tovi died, I frantically dragged my husband to three shelters in the snow and cried when no one came home with us. For reasons I’ll never understand, I think some part of me expected to find a doppelganger of him. If I were viewing a movie of my life, that dogless car ride home would be the moment my bubble of denial burst into a million sharp pieces. He was really gone. It was really over. 

You see, Tovi was the closest thing to a soulmate I’ve ever had, even more than my husband, whom I deeply love. I adopted him when I was 25, and he died a few days after my 37th birthday. He had the legs of a Corgi, the coloring of a German Shepherd, the velvety soft ears of a Golden Retriever, and a tail as thick as a Chow. Throughout our relationship, we lived in nine places. He was there for me during those tumultuous twenties, and having him as a stable presence forced me to grow up as I pulled my otherwise chaotic life together enough to care for another being. We took road trips and hiked countless trails. He traveled with me to my dad’s funeral and later attended Shiva, where he wandered around a crowded living room sympathetically greeting mourners. He walked me down the aisle and gave me away to a man I would later divorce. At my next wedding, in lieu of flowers, I walked down the aisle carrying a bully stick and gently handed it to the “Best Dog” as he lay beside my soon-to-be husband at the altar. He was the kindest, happiest soul I had ever known, and being his mom was the single greatest privilege of my life. I had no idea how to do life without him.

When he died, I found myself grieving not only him, but also for the life he had witnessed. His body held the most intimate moments of the past twelve years. He was the silent witness to every beautiful, tragic, and ordinary moment in between. He was the last remaining relic of a time long past; evidence of the younger versions of myself; a keepsake reminder of the people no longer in my life. I grieved everything about Before.

Only days later, once again convinced that the only remedy to my debilitating pain would be another dog, I went into the adoption process thoughtfully and deliberately. Instead of rushing to a shelter, I carefully curated a checklist and used it to search Petfinder for dogs exclusively in foster homes so I could gauge our compatibility. But I would fall in love with a profile, only to find out "That Dog" had already been adopted. Like a desperate buyer in a seller’s market, my heart sank over and over again at a time when I was quickly exceeding my capacity for loss.

Unable to tolerate the emotional ups and downs of waiting, I decided to take a chance on a dog at a shelter with an unknown history. At that point, I just wanted a dog, any dog. Before even entering the building, I spotted a volunteer in the parking lot carrying a five-month-old puppy. Terrified of losing out yet again — knowing absolutely nothing about this dog — it was as if I yelled, “DIBBS!” In the same way I convinced myself I could change my ex-husband, I assured myself I would make it work. Checkboxes blank, I went against every rational intent of making an informed decision when selecting the dog I would be spending the next decade-plus with. Grief can feel a lot like being intoxicated. 

As most rebounds do, Millie seemed good enough. She was a light brown medium-sized mix — as a DNA test later revealed — of Pit Bull, Chihuahua, and Cane Corso, with a smattering of other unlikely-to-mate breeds, with black spots on her tongue that reminded me of Tovi. Sure, she had that puppy hyperness (my checklist specified an adult dog), I knew I didn’t want, but when she jumped up on my lap and licked my face, I smiled. It was the first time since Tovi died that I felt a smile grace my face.

Almost immediately after leaving the shelter, my gut screamed that I was making a terrible mistake. And over the two days I had to wait to adopt her while she was being spayed, my mind continued to slow down. I felt like I was waking up with an emotional hangover, desperately trying to piece together what had happened the night before. 

But I was a people pleaser then. Instead of heeding to my most authentic, sober self and changing course, it felt safer to disappoint myself than anyone else — no matter how much havoc it wreaked on my life. I was too ashamed to call the shelter and admit I had changed my mind, so I dismissed that same voice that warned me not to get married two weeks before my first wedding. (This very thought should have sent me running back to Al-Anon**.) And once I adopted her, the thought of bringing her back to the shelter was not something I could even entertain. I was sure they would put me on some sort of “Do Not Adopt” list, and then I would never get a dog.

Maybe with another dog, things would have been different. With Millie, my gut proved right, and taunted me with “I told you so’s.” She was not the comforting presence I’d hoped for. From the moment I brought her home, she exhibited behaviors that made me wonder if I had been given the wrong dog. She seemed like some sort of imposter of the dog I had met only days earlier.

The thing is, Millie would have been a challenging dog for even the most experienced dog owner, so she just about broke me. I was an emotional disaster. I needed support. I had nothing to give. Yet here I was, still in deep mourning for Tovi, and now I had the added responsibility of caring for a dog I frankly didn’t like. I’m not sure what part of my grief was worse.

Millie’s presence in our home felt like that of an unwelcome intruder I had no legal standing to evict. Within the walls of our home, she had her loving moments, but overall, she was fearful, aggressive, destructive, and hardest for me to reconcile, had a noise phobia that quickly ended the walks that were at the top of my checklist. The blank checkboxes haunted me like a humming fly that wouldn’t die.

On walks, fearful of anyone she didn’t know and unsure of how she would react, I introduced her from a distance as my "New Dog" and wouldn’t let anyone near her. I would emotionally vomit on strangers about how I had the most incredible dog before her. As if to prove I once had "That Dog.” The dog I couldn’t move on from.

Over the course of the therapy I would eventually seek, I came to understand that Millie was a constant reminder of the impulsive part of myself I preferred to pretend didn’t exist. There was something so comforting about finally understanding why her mere presence triggered such big feelings in me. I resented myself for making an impulsive decision. I resented her for not being Tovi. I hated myself for not knowing how to love this innocent dog. Don’t think I don’t know how terrible this sounds. I finally returned to Al-Anon.

And yet, this truth lived mostly in my head. While I was falling apart on the inside, I went through the motions of being the quintessential dog mom. I did the things I saw loving dog moms do. Our house was peppered with dog beds and overflowing baskets of toys. I fed her bougie dog food and gave her daily bully sticks. At night, I dressed her in pajamas and read her children’s books about brave dogs. I told her stories about Tovi. We took plenty of walks (on her terms) and enrolled in agility classes to boost her confidence. I even started therapy in hopes of breaking through the invisible fence that kept me at an emotional distance from her. 

If we were in a romantic relationship, I would have ended things after realizing we weren’t a good fit. I would tell her, “It’s not you — it’s me,” and mean it with all my heart. I would move on from my rebound, and she would be devastated. And in any other circumstances, this would have been considered a healthy decision. But we weren’t in that kind of relationship.

While life with Millie remained heavy, eventually, we fell into a rhythm. The combination of the passing of time, support of behaviorists, insight I gained through therapy, and the initiation of psychiatric medications brought both of our anxious temperaments down a level of intensity. 

I learned that Fearful Dogs were a “thing.” I joined a support group for pet parents of Fearful Dogs and found comfort in realizing I wasn’t alone. I became savvy at recognizing her triggers and mastered phrases like “trigger-stacking,” “decompression,” and “exposure therapy.” I became that helicopter mom fixated on keeping her safe, and provided her with a sense of emotional security she couldn’t return. The wounds her unpredictability left on my heart were torn open less frequently — maybe even starting to heal. We even borrowed Prozac from each other if one of us was late on a refill. 

It took me longer than it ever should have to realize that every time we fall in love, it’s a different experience. They say you’re lucky if you have one great love in your lifetime. I had “That Love.” While heartbreaking, there was something beautiful about accepting that I would never have “That Love” again. “That Love” was reserved for Tovi. With that understanding came so much peace. I was putting an insane amount of pressure on Millie to replicate a love that was never meant to be replicated.

Just short of five years into our relationship, Millie was diagnosed with Lymphoma. Initial reaction: Ecstatic!!! I immediately began fantasizing about the “New Dog” I would ever so carefully choose this time, and how peaceful life would be with “That Dog.” Laden with remorse, the thought passed as quickly as it arrived. 

Millie’s diagnosis shifted something in me. I finally saw her as my dog, not the Broken Dog my Broken Younger Self had impulsively adopted all those years ago. While life with Millie was heavier than my baseline anxious self would have liked, I learned to carry it, and that heaviness had become a part of me. She became a part of me.

She was the dog I couldn’t sleep without. She was a solid hiking partner, even if I was preoccupied with keeping her away from triggers. She was the dog who wagged her entire body when I came home and whimpered in excitement. She was the endearingly shy dog who allowed those she trusted to touch her and hadn’t had an outburst in years. She was a tender dog who would never hurt me, even when I struggled to shove pills down her throat toward the end.

I held her tightly in my arms the day after my long-overdue realization. I gently petted her face, massaged her warm body, and scratched her belly as she rolled over, legs high in the air. I told her how sorry I was. I told her how much I had loved her. I thanked her for the gifts of patience and flexibility. For unconditionally loving me. For showing me that I could do life even when it was hard — and that I could do it without Tovi.

Despite chemotherapy, Millie died six weeks after her diagnosis. I alternated between feeling

both sad and relieved. I grieved differently because I loved differently. Life felt lighter. I no longer carried the fear of liabilities, the foregoing of vacations, and the countless “what-ifs” that fueled my anxiety. In time, and with intention, I will adopt another dog and fall in love in yet another distinct way. For now, the words, “Millie owes Liz 8 Prozac,” remain scribbled on the whiteboard in our kitchen, and perhaps, always will.

A condensed version of this essay was originally published in the Chicago Tribune

** Al-Anon is a support group for people who have been affected by someone else’s addiction. A major principle of Al-Anon is to focus on your own peace rather than trying to fix, change, or manage other people’s lives. It’s knowing that can support a loved one’s recovery, but you can’t control the outcome. Of course, Millie wasn’t an alcoholic, but the same behavior pattern can show up in other non-addict relationships because this is how we learned to cope (ME!), and it’s easy to fall back into.

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Visit my website, Pet Therapy Notes, for resources and more insights on pet love and loss.

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When You Regret Adopting Your Dog: Don't Worry, It Gets Better.

How Will I Know If I Am Ready To Adopt (Or Not) After Loss - Know Your Intentions.