![\"\"](\"http:\/\/katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/1\/emily.jpg\" "\\"Emily\\"")
My Girl<\/p><\/div>\n
Emily had only been gone for two days, and I was hoping to get a little sleep without the assistance of my good friend Ambien, when Paul climbs into bed and says he\u2019s been to the pet shelter site and seen a lab-mix that is \u201cgood with children.\u201d What what?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been known to battle insomnia from time to time and I have a rule that there is no talk of taxes or attorneys in bed. Paul seems to need to unpack things at the end of a long day or he needs to tell me before he forgets. I need to push things aside and hope they go away. I\u2019d never thought to add dog acquisition to the list.<\/p>\n
I say (or perhaps screech so loud that only dogs can hear) something like \u2013 we can\u2019t have a dog for like five years because I can\u2019t deal with a puppy and a toddler and we can\u2019t train another shelter dog!<\/em> Have you lost your mind? <\/em><\/p>\n He says something like, sorry babe, but that\u2019s not going to work for me. I\u2019m a dog person. I need a dog.<\/p>\n Goodbye night\u2019s sleep…<\/p>\n A few days later, my mother, sister and I are sitting on the deck and when I tell them this story my mother says she knows just what I need. A breeder\u2019s dog! A 2 to 4 year-old, trained, nice, momma dog that\u2019s done having puppies.<\/p>\n I wave my hands and shake my head, no, see, in fact, I don\u2019t need any dog at all. I love dogs but with the kid, there are days when I just don\u2019t feel I have any more love to give. A few minutes later, amid the chaos of three toddlers preparing for dinner, my mother slips away to email her dog breeder\/friend.<\/p>\n I have an email from the breeder and photos of the perfect dog by the next morning. Do you see where this is going?<\/p>\n A few nights later, Paul and I have a date night. Really? I ask. A dog? What about Emily? Won\u2019t you think about her every time you see this dog? Won\u2019t you be comparing her to Emily?<\/p>\n He says it\u2019s not about replacing Emily. It\u2019s about getting another dog. Our grief will be the same.<\/p>\n Silence.<\/p>\n My life is better with a dog in it, he says. I want a dog.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve got nothing. I can\u2019t argue with that. The truth is that Paul rarely makes proclamations or mandates. Our marriage is more of a\u2026 collaboration (perhaps that\u2019s code for: I\u2019m a controlling bitch). This time he\u2019s really insisting. Two weeks later we agree to watch Norah for the weekend. Of course she\u2019s great.<\/p>\n I mean she\u2019s fine. Norah\u2019s a fine dog. Not many bad habits. Sweet. Small for a golden. Great with Josie. She doesn\u2019t bite people. She doesn\u2019t eat bananas (peel and all) off the counter. She doesn\u2019t steal soap from the shower. She doesn\u2019t leap over six foot fences to eat the sandwich sitting in the new neighbor\u2019s moving truck and then drink all the water from their bird bath. She doesn\u2019t steal tortilla chips from my hand while they\u2019re on their way to my mouth.<\/p>\n Instead of a big brown mutt, there is this ethereal, waifish, golden dog who ghosts around the house. I hardly hear her but every time I turn around she\u2019s there (boo!) with her paw under my foot or her nose hovering centimeters from my leg. I do not really know her but I do know that she\u2019s no Emily and in 2010, I\u2019ll try to forgive her for that and maybe love her just a little because of it.<\/p>\n Norah and Her Evil Twin, Ruby<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, we\u2019re nearly three weeks into 2010 and I\u2019ve finally made a resolution. I\u2019m going to be nicer to the dog, Norah. It seems like that should be easy. She is a golden retriever, after all. But you see, Emily was the dog-love of my life. She was a beautiful, bold, mean, brown, shelter-dog that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/1\/norahandruby.jpg\" "\\"Norah")