David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

pets

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

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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.

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When times turn too dark in my life, I’m grateful for furry antidepressant

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After having a terrible day Monday that left me in a dark place, I’ve spent all morning with antidepressants.

By the middle of the day, I feel much better — almost ready to deal with the world — and these antidepressants don’t have any side effects. They don’t come from a pharmaceutical company. My antidepressants have fur.

See that face at the top? That’s the face Lucy uses to greet me every time I return home to her. That photo showed her happiness in the back yard Monday evening right after I got home. How can it fail to make you feel better when a living creature is this happy to see you?

Some of my antidepressants are more subtle. The cats don’t rush to see me and act happy unless it’s dinner time and they’re loudly demanding what they want. But some of them have their own ways of making me feel better, too.

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My love of ‘fur friends’ stems from the callousness I saw in my father

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Boots was the only dog I had as a child. He was mostly black, but he had white around his feet — hence the name — and on his chest.

Boots lived with us for only about a year when I was 9 or 10 years old. I loved him dearly and spent a lot of time outside with him, but when we moved — only about 10 miles — Boots didn’t make the trip with us. I will never know why. I will never know what happened to him.

When we were about to move, I asked my father where Boots would stay at the new house. The yard wasn’t fenced and it was in a subdivision, not like the house in the country where we had been living. My father didn’t answer my question — and I knew better than to ever again ask a question which my father ignored.

I never saw Boots again, which hurts me and angers me to this day. Years later — when I was safely into my adult years — I asked my father why Boots didn’t move with us and what happened to him. He claimed not to even remember. He seemed unconcerned that the child in me still needed to know what happened.

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