2 years ago my in-laws stepped out of their car, looked at my dog Sable, and announced she was pregnant.

“Say what?”  I replied, “No no way, Sable is just chunky, you know she has always had a weight problem…”

2 weeks later she had 9 puppies, in a kiddie pool, in my tiny laundry room. It was June in Eastern NC which meant it was hot, humid, and buggy outside so of course I had to keep them inside, rather than in a pen outside.

Now before anyone gets all “up in arms” about my dogs being outside dogs let me explain. My dogs were farm dogs. They loved outside, they tended to get antsy inside, and were like bulls in a china shop. They had the proper housing, thanks to the wood shop class at my husband’s last school, and were brought inside when needed for extreme weather. They had an invisible fence that had nearly 2 acres outside and freedom to roam and run to their heart’s content. Did they get played with as much as they should have? I am going to be honest after having kids, no they did not but they were loved.  

Back to the puppies. All 9 of them. Sure, they were cute, soft, and lovable but no one can really explain to someone all the work that a litter of puppies entails. I am not a breeder and I was not ready for all of it in my house on top of the normal daily life of being a working mom of a 3 and 5 year old at the time. No one prepared me for the fact that we would loose 4 of them in the first week and a half. Sable was only able to effectively feed 4 at a time come to find out and if you do the math on that 9 puppies with 4 food sources just didn’t work out for a couple of them. To my horror Sable actually laid on and smothered the other 2 leaving one lifeless and the other one with me literally attempting mouth to mouth to no avail. Yes that happened. No one prepared us to have to dig 4 holes and burry 4 little puppies one of which the kids had already picked out as theirs.

It wasn’t all bad though, they were super cute and watching them grow over the next few weeks was pretty neat. Did you know that the mother dog actually “cleans up” after them while they are only drinking milk? That was pretty neat. Once food was introduced though that quit and life was a bit messier. I had those puppies ready to go off to their owners pretty quick and I was not too sad to say goodbye and reclaim my laundry room and I hoped my sanity. We however kept one puppy.

1 little chocolate puppy we mistakenly named, “Chewie.” We named him this because we anticipated him looking like Chewbacca from Star Wars however he felt he should live up to it for other reasons. HE ATE MY WALL. HE ATE THEIR TOYS, SHOES, and whatever else he could find. Now Sable also took part in this as well I am sure but still Chewie was in the puppy phase full swing.

Rewind to when we got Sable and her sister, Bella, 9 years ago. We were at a different season in life. The season with no kids, more free time, and a whole lot more tolerance. I am sad to say that my fuse with Chewie was much shorter and I am going to be honest again, I threatened to give him away more times than I could count and totally would have except for our son Caden. See Chewie was his dog and he was attached. Scarlett, however, being about the same height to put Chewie right at her face and having a less patience by nature would not have minded if he went to live with another family either… or so we thought.

In 2 years though I will admit Chewie had grown up a lot. He was much better and even learned to listen most of the time. He was pretty loving actually though still very annoying at times BUT I had decided that we were going to be great friends in about 8 more years. See at that point Caden would be off being a teenager, Chewie would be older, calmer, and we would be finding solace in each other both wondering where our little boy had gone.

But our time together ended much sooner. Chewie and Sable had started to leave the yard in the last few weeks. Hurricane Florence had uprooted many trees in our yard and the roots had pulled up the underground fence. They always came back until the 1 time he didn’t. We had been calling the fence company for about 2 weeks to come fix it but it was near Thanksgiving and they were from out of town. Unfortunately, they showed up about 12 hours after Sable came home alone. The fence was fixed but now Chewie was gone.

We held out hope that maybe he was off galivanting after a female in heat even though he had never done that before. We searched the area several times and I made a post asking for help keeping an eye out which was shared over 1.1 K times on Facebook. WOW, thank you social media. I had several people send me messages with pictures of dogs that looked similar to Chewie. One photo posted on a humane society page was similar enough to make us head down there to make sure it was not him. Chewie only had 3 toes on 1 foot, yep 1 just fell off in the first week, they did not prepare me for that either and this dog reportedly had all of his toes. We still made the trip out just to be certain and I went inside to see if it was him. As I waited for them to bring the dog to the front, I was actually drilled about why my dog was not neutered rather rudely. I get it I guess; this worker was up on their soap box and I listened however we still did not know if this was even my dog and at this point and come to find out it wasn’t so a bit of salt was added to the wound there. I digress but it was a very good thing that I had been on the receiving end of the speech rather than my husband who was waiting with our napping kids in the truck outside, just saying.

It has now been nearly a month. Chewie will likely not return to his home. We have searched, wondered, prayed, cried, and accepted it. We like to think that Chewie got separated from Sable somehow, his collar fell off, and that someone who was very lonely found him and took him home. We are hoping that he is living his best life laying inside in front of a fireplace with his new family giving him so much attention he doesn’t know what to do. We like to think he has a big bone wrapped up under the tree, that is if he has not knocked the tree down by now. We like to think that he is being given all the things we should have given him more.

We have given ourselves forgiveness for not being more tolerant at times, not playing with him enough, and all the other things we have had time to regret in the last 3 weeks. I know that the above scenario is likely not the fate that he met but it helps to hope. When you are in the season of not knowing and facing the season of likely never knowing it doesn’t help to speculate the worst-case scenarios over and over, you choose to hope for the better one.

As for Sable? In an effort to prevent her from going into a depression like she did when her sister Bella died a few years ago, we brought her inside. She is now living her best life under our Christmas tree. She does however follow me from room to room and I am not sure if she is sad or if it just her droopy brown eyes.

For those who have had a “Chewie- type” dog know my heart goes out to you. I get it. I get loving and being totally aggravated by him. I get wanting to give him away nearly every day and then being upset when he is gone. The season named “Chewie” is hard to walk in but I supposed the purpose in it is finding grace, forgiveness, and hope.