I don’t know when or where I first heard those three words, but it’s a mantra lodged somewhere in the recesses of my brain. Whenever I say the word ‘never’ combined with a variety of other words:
I will never speak to that person again.
I will never go to that restaurant again.
I will never get fat.
I will never get a puppy…
Invariably that person becomes my best friend, I go to that restaurant too many times, I gain weight, and I get the puppy.
Clyde. He’s curled up under my feet as I type. Scrunched into my 17-year old Italian Greyhound’s round little zebra bed. A three-month mass of black hair, with sprinklings of fawn and white, a square face with white tufts, and eyes which challenge the world, unaware of all the promise it holds.
I know exactly what the impetuous was to choose this puppy.
I’d founded Greyhound Gang in 1995. In the ensuing years, hundreds of greyhounds passed through my home to their forever homes. A few stayed with me. Then in 2004, one after another, in the waning days of fall as the flowers were shocked by the cold in the air, and the nights became brisk and chilling and one year passed into the next, each one left me. Beauty, Winslow, Lady, Regis. Loves of my life. I was without my Gang.
Over Thanksgiving, I was helping out at Almost Home for Hounds. Greyhound Gang had financially supported the creation of this facility, to house unwanted greyhounds waiting for their forever homes. Painting, pooper scooping, petting, and playing with over fifty greyhounds all with hope and joy in their hearts that homes were waiting for them. A few would come to Greyhound Gang, on their way to forever homes. I was also looking for a sign about the rebuilding of my own gang. But I saw no signs, and my heart did no leaps.
During that time, the facility got a call. Greyhound puppies, bred in Kansas to kill coyotes, were going to be killed. Almost Home for Hounds agreed to take them. When the puppies arrived and the car door opened, Bonnie and Clyde tumbled out.
Brother and sister, they immediately called AHH home without missing a beat. Nothing was sacred. Couches were their launching pads, other dogs their chew toys.
Greyhound mixes, she was the leader and he the follower; She the terror, he the wuss. Within her first few days she had burrowed her way under the fence and was expanding her universe. And he followed, diligently, already knowing his sister was in charge.
I left in December sans greyhounds. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Clyde. My inner thoughts: “What are you crazy!? A puppy?! You don’t do puppies. The energy, the destruction, the lack of brains. There are so many other greyhounds needing homes. You love those old gals, those shy ones. Don’t be crazy!”
Then the other voice—”But his name is Clyde, and isn’t it a sign because that was my nickname from my cheerleader buddies in high school. And he’s black, and I’ve always had a weakness for the black boys. And he seems so well behaved. …And I’m so alone…”
I returned to Almost Home for Hounds in early January.
I left a month later with Clyde in the driver’s seat.
Never say “Never” © 2005
Clyde left me 3/31/2018. My tribute to him at Loved Hound. Last Poems.