We waited (and waited and WAITED) for the right time to find a dog friend.

Our old black lab still lives largely in our hearts. We wanted to give some time for grieving to be. Truthfully, Cooper was much more attentive to the wait business than I was.

So we began to look. We fell truly in love with a black lab/great Dane mix at the Animal Humane society in Minneapolis. We were at the sign the contract stage when we discovered that she already had been claimed by another family. That was hard.

We waded through the considerable angst of Jameson’s illness, found ourselves with a week at the cabin and decided that we would check out the local dog scene.

There was a lab/great Dane mix in Cloquet, so we drove there and were ready to fall in love.

We did fall in love, but not with the dog we expected. That dog was HUGE and not too interested in anything but jumping.

We walked through the shelter. There were many dogs. But the one that caught my tender husband’s heart was a flat-out mutt with the most soulful eyes in dogdom. His name was “Carl”. He looked the part (no offense to any Carls out there!).

He is a mix of Pit Bull and Retriever and Cooper swears Foxhound (ask him why that is so. His imagination is boundless). He is a little over a year, has known two different owners and was, from the behavioral signs, mightily abused.

During our discernment time we were able to spend time with him out of his cage. He crawled on his belly to meet us, his eyes full of love and his body not sure that anything but misery was coming his way.

Of course he went home with us.

We spent the night trying to convince him he could not move into our skin. He is huge of heart, needful of training, and our dog.

What is it about being a dog household? Somehow heart is expanded exponentially and hearth is furred and grounded in ways mysterious and real.

Mickey is home. We have much to learn together but this I know:

Mickey is home.