Have you ever made a spontaneous decision that you later regretted? It’s one thing if we buy a pair of jeans that don’t quite look as good at home as they did in the store. Or if we purchase a piece of exercise equipment that sits in the garage month after month collecting dust.
When those spontaneous decisions affect a living being, there is a whole lot more than a twinge of regret—there is a sense of shame added to the mix.
This is what happened several years ago when my sister-in-law was knee-deep into her local German Shepherd rescue society. She fostered dogs that had been abandoned by their owners. One such dog landed on her doorstep. She wasn’t yet a year old and delivered several puppies.
Two of those puppies had the blue merle markings of Australian shepherds—and I wanted one of them. We had two small indoor dogs—Einstein (a Bichon Frise) and Gracie (a Maltese). Sky, our golden retriever, was an outdoor dog who’d recently lost his buddy, Max. I felt bad for Sky, and I wanted him to have a companion.
I knew from the first that we’d made a mistake. Chris had said, “No,” when I asked for the puppy, but after I wheedled and Diane (his sister) sent pictures and videos, he caved.
We named her Cheyenne, and it was clear early on that she was a dominant dog who was better off being an only child. She didn’t like to share the attention, and she thought Gracie was made exclusively as her fetch toy. Einstein, although a small dog himself, was Gracie’s protector. Every time Cheyenne went after Gracie, Einstein went after Cheyenne—and it wasn’t pretty. My little guy was more grit than sense and walked away bloodied after every encounter.
It was around this time that I started working in Chris’s office full time. What was supposed to be a few weeks ended up being indefinitely. Cheyenne didn’t get the attention she needed and took it out on Sky.
Everyone was miserable.
I wrote about it in the short story Canine Redemption, which was later published in the anthology Inspire Joy. Because I had a limited word count, I used creative license and cut out all the extraneous information (which is what I shared above).
This previously published story of how this was resolved is my gift to you. All you need to do is click on the title above to receive your pdf copy.
Fortunately for Charlotte Van Cleave in Night Songs, Dog was better behaved than Cheyenne and had himself a higher purpose for her life. Not all spontaneous decisions are wrong, although it helps a whole lot if we bring God into the story.
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