What My Dog is Teaching Me About Grace

These first two months with our rescue dog, Eddie, have taught me more about grace, about unconditional love and acceptance of others as they are, than even twelve years of being a mother to three children.

I’m a little embarrassed to write that, and surprised that it is true. I’ve always struggled a bit with how pets fit into the spiritual life. When the Feast of St. Francis rolls around every year, I think it is sweet, this idea of bringing our pets to church for a blessing. But nothing more than sweet. Aren’t pets, after all, a first-world luxury? Isn’t there something a little misguided about spending our money feeding and grooming and outfitting these non-working animals, when families the world over dream of having a scraggly goat or a few skinny chickens in their dirt yards to provide milk and eggs worth a few cents from their neighbors?

Eddie, our white pointer/lab mix who is right now snoring away on his red monogrammed dog bed next to me, is certainly a first-world luxury. But he is something more too.

We know only bits and pieces of Eddie’s story. He was born in Mississippi and meant to be a hunting dog. Apparently, he wasn’t a very good one. He is timid, and especially scared of loud noises. So I imagine gunshots made him skittish. Or maybe his fears aren’t innate. Maybe he was abused by those original owners, and came to associate loud noises with pain. We have some evidence of neglect at least—a poorly healed foot fracture, a missing canine tooth, which my vet says is almost always the result of trauma.

Once his Mississippi owners gave him up, Eddie traveled up north, and was adopted by a family with teenagers and an extended network of relatives. Constant comings and goings kept Eddie, who thrives on routine and is shy around new people, on edge. His new family didn’t have a yard in which he could freely roam. They handed him over to a relative who owns several dogs and regularly fosters rescue dogs. She took Eddie to adoption fairs, knowing that white dogs like him often get lots of attention. But he was so shy, so timid, that adoptive families overlooked him.

I thought he was the perfect dog for us. We wanted a larger dog, but with a fundamentally calm temperament, rather than a ball of boundless energy. I thought adopting an older dog (Eddie is four) would be much less disrupting to family life than getting a puppy.

I was wrong.

Those first few weeks with Eddie are a bit of a blur. About two weeks after we got him, most of the state shut down after a freak October snowstorm that left 96 percent of my town’s residents out of power. For ten days (six of which my husband was in sunny Charleston, S.C. for a conference, I might add) I was stuck at home with a dog, a cat, and three children (school was cancelled for days) in a dark, cold house. Several times a day, Eddie and I would take a walk, plucking out a safe path through downed wires and tree limbs, because the electric fence in our yard that Eddie had just learned to use was, of course, not working. One day, I clearly did not walk him enough, because we awoke the next morning to find he had done his business—all of it—on the living room rug.

Those weeks were also a blur because it was not unlike having a newborn baby at home. We were trying to go about our usual routines while also accommodating a new family member whose wants and needs were not always easy to decipher. In fact, the first few weeks with Eddie were much harder for me than the first few weeks of having a new baby. My babies were all pretty easy little things. They nursed and slept and pooped. They didn’t screech for hours or have trouble gaining weight. While of course I was sore and sleep-deprived, it wasn’t really hard. I could usually tell what they needed, and provide it.

But with Eddie? I didn’t know what he needed, and often felt like I was failing to provide it. For example, I knew from taking Eddie to my parents’ fenced yard to frolic with their golden retriever that, when freed from any kind of tie-out, Eddie becomes a different dog. When he can run free, his tail leaves its usual tense between-the-legs position to become upright as he runs, the muscles of his chest rippling under his white coat. But when we installed the electric fence to give him that freedom in our own yard, he was terrified of the “beep” it gave out when he got too close. For several days, he would only go outside if Daniel put him in the car, drove him to the top of our driveway, and then took him for a walk.

Plus our cat, Stormy, kind of hated him. Eddie paid her very little mind, but she avoided him at all costs, and wouldn’t come in from outside if Eddie was anywhere near our kitchen door.

For the first time, I understood what other moms mean when they talk about being at home with a new baby and feeling like you have no idea what to do with this little creature, because you can’t figure out what it wants and when you try to do something you know it needs, like feed it, all it does is scream and flail.  And your other kids are confused and jealous. And you feel powerless to make any of them happy.

While the newborn period wasn’t especially hard for me, there have, of course, been plenty of hard times as a mom to three beautiful, exasperating, complicated children. Caring for Leah through eleven broken bones caused by the genetic bone disorder we share. Negotiating Meg’s volatile emotions.  Encouraging Ben to be himself, while also protecting him from those who would tease him about his preferences for things like the color pink and dolls and dress-up clothes. Being present to three chatty, extroverted children when my soul often craves silence and solitude.

But through even the hardest moments—when Leah is in physical and emotional agony after yet another broken bone, when Meg tells me I have broken her heart by punishing her for some angry outburst, when I overhear two moms in the pool locker room talking about how I shouldn’t let Ben wear “girl” (as in, pink) swim goggles—even then, there is no question that these children are mine forever. While I might occasionally retreat from them, to my bedroom or a book, I will never, ever give them up.

That’s the difference with Eddie. At any time, in those first few weeks and even now, I could choose to give him up. The foster mom said that she would gladly take him back if we decided it wasn’t working out, and find him another home. We could find another dog, one more easygoing, less timid, less damaged by a past that we will never really understand.

There were times in those first weeks that I was so baffled by this animal and so certain I could not ever understand what he needs, much less provide it, that the foster mom’s offer was tempting.

But we are not giving Eddie up. Not even after he snapped, teeth bared, at Ben last week when Ben startled him by coming too close as Eddie slept in his bed. Instead, we told the kids that Eddie needs a safe place, and that when he’s in his bed, they are to imagine him in a protective bubble that we are not allowed to penetrate. I figure that, whatever Eddie has been through, he deserves a safe place, along with a family that will not give him up, despite his quirks and fears and even his ability to lash out at us when we unknowingly remind him of how it feels to be unsafe.

It is loving Eddie—not only Leah or Meg or Ben—that has helped me to see how radical is God’s acceptance of us as we are, with all our quirks and fears and ability to lash out at others with teeth bared when they cross into our hurt places, even unintentionally. It is loving Eddie that has made me stop seeing pets as merely a first-world luxury, and instead as family members capable of both breaking and mending our hearts, just as our spouses and children and parents do. It is loving Eddie—no, keeping Eddie— that has reminded me that God dwells in that place where vulnerability and woundedness meet acceptance and love, where we promise never to give up on each other, no matter how scary or confusing or messy things get.