Personal Essays

I know next to nothing about Sweet Pea’s life before she arrived at the shelter. In fact, the only thing I do know is that she arrived there as a stray and was in poor health. She’d been there a little more than a month when I adopted her and her health had started to improve, though we still had a way to go when I brought her home. Over the years, she has grown stronger, and these days she is a gorgeous, robust athlete. She goes at everything full-tilt, and watching her approach everything with all her heart has been a constant source of amazement. I don’t believe in fate, and I don’t even know if I believe that there’s a reason behind every happening in the world, but I do know that it was marvelous good timing for me to meet such a passionate creature at a time in my life when I couldn’t summon much passion for anything. Whether she is playing ball, running loops around trees, sniffing every blade of grass in her known universe, stalking bugs in the yard, working on figuring out what the deal is with the neighbors’ cats, or trying to Jedi-mind-trick me into giving her my dinner, she doesn’t do anything in half measures, and this has challenged me to look at the world with wonder and to go after it again.