When they arrived at the animal shelter, they were tired, having walked a mile or so in peak traffic and high heat. The manager greeted them and suggested they all sit down for a Q&A. The man asked to stand since his spine was collapsing. Standing was less painful.
The manager wondered why they wanted a dog despite already having two cats and a small dog. They told her about the death of their dog Missa Him and how a hole in their hearts was spreading across their bed. They fell into it every night and sleep did not follow. Simply put, they were sad and wanted another large dog to love in these days of seemingly uncaring people.
They didn’t say so, but inside they felt very close to animals. The man determined, in his contemplations, that he might have significant canine genetically coded cells in his body. His wife seemed to be more attracted to cats as if in a sleepwalking trance. All of which raised the question: Could imperceptibly tiny pieces of dog and cat DNA be intertwined somewhere in the memory and flesh of their prehistoric past?
Was this the cause of how they felt in this place and time?
They went into the facility where the thirty or so dogs and cats were kept. Upon entering, all the dogs immediately began to bark, howl, whimper, and scratch on the chain-link fence of each small holding cell. They wanted out. They wanted someone to save them. That is what the man heard.
As he walked along the line, he decided that this was a dog refugee camp. Like human refugees, they had been spurned and mistreated, and they had made their way through poison, starvation, disease, and men with guns. They had run from packs of dogs and dodged cars and rocks only to find a few square meters of concrete and fence. Confused about where they were, they howled and moaned for something else. Perhaps not exactly a lost home, since sometimes homes were difficult, but certainly something better than this. That was the immediate problem at hand.
Of course, they had it better than being on the street, but still, some of the dogs would never leave the shelter and would slowly die. In other pounds or shelters they might be euthanized if no one took them.
The man and woman were both happy this was not a kill pound.
They asked to see María. She was a black and white collie of some sort. Her hair was long and silky, and when she came into the small outdoor enclosure where they sat, she immediately jumped into the arms of the woman.
María was evidently overjoyed to make contact with a human. She was an exuberant, playful dog which normally was a very good thing, but there was the worry that Maria might jump and knock the man with the bad spine to the ground. It wouldn’t be her fault, but it could happen and so they said they would pass on María. The man held María’s face in his hands and stroked her chin and said he was so sorry, but they could not take her home.
They were leaving when the man noticed a separate small group of cages far away from the main group of dogs. Hidden in the shadows was a dog named Snickers. She was smaller than María and terribly thin. A classic Mexican street dog. Her facial features were a little like Missa Him’s and she was exceedingly traumatized. Without thinking too much about it, they agreed to take her. The manager was very happy, since Snickers was unlikely to ever be adopted.
And so, the love story began with Snickers, who took the aspirational name of Happy. The man and the woman had to adapt to her ways of paralysis and unreasonable requests and impenetrable, fearful moods: the bedroom night visits to wake them for no apparent reason, clawing her way up to take a place at their feet. Her personality was like small, interior lightning strikes which could hit at any moment, in any place.
She was a house of emotional mirrors.
Over two years their family of cats and dogs grew closer, but sometimes they would discuss María. They wondered what had happened to the dog with overflowing life but were afraid to contact the shelter to find out. They couldn’t bear the idea of bad news about María. Yet, the man would sometimes recall holding her head in his hands and how he had looked deeply into her pupils, searching for himself hidden at the bottom of her eyes, there, where her soul swirled.