Three years after she sneaked in, World’s Happiest Dog® is queen

By David McElroy · January 25, 2019

The first time I ever heard of Lucy, it was just a message from someone wanting me to help her find a home for a dog. That was all.

I absolutely, positively had no interest in adopting her. I was away from the house too much of the time and I was also just settling into a new house with the cats. There were too many things up in the air. The last thing I needed was another responsibility.

But I didn’t have any choice in the matter. Lucy adopted me.

A week or so before she came to my house, I went over to the apartment where she was living to take a couple of pictures of her. She was terrified of people. She was terribly unsure of herself.

The people who had rescued her from a chain when she was a puppy had too many animals and they were moving to a smaller place. She was the only one who didn’t make the cut to go to the new place. She was expendable.

I was told that she would always be a “special needs dog.” She had to have a home that would tolerate her inability to spend much time with people because of her timidity — her outright fear of everything and everybody.

When they day arrived that these people had to move, they were leaving her behind one way or the other. She had nowhere else to go. I agreed to bring her to my house — temporarily — until I could find a home for her.

As I drove her home, I knew she was never leaving me. I didn’t want to admit that I had been suckered that easily, but I knew she was mine — and I was her only human.

Over the next few weeks and months, she blossomed into something I couldn’t foresee. She got over most of her timidity. As she felt loved — and felt that she had a stable place with the cats and me — she grew confident.

She soon didn’t cower at the sound of trains or look terrified if she heard a voice other than mine. She became something very different than the agitated girl who had been so scared on the car ride home that she pooped in the car.

It’s hard to imagine life without her now.

I’m not the first person to feel this way about rescued dogs and cats, of course, but I definitely don’t feel as though I rescued her. I feel as though she came along when I needed her — when I didn’t even known I needed her — and she provided an element of life that made a difference for me. As has been the case with so many of the cats and dogs who I’ve taken in, she rescued me, too.

So Happy Adoptiversary, Lucy. After three years here, you’re the queen. You have me trained. I’m lucky you adopted me.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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