(photo by Joe)

Today Opal would have been one year old.

Two weeks ago, early morning in the midst of our stream-fest, Joe came through the living room and saw me staring at the computer, frozen. I was weeping; I had impulsively gone to a shelter site, saw a puppy and froze. I hadn't meant to go to a shelter site - it was like I was possessed. "Close the window," he said. I couldn't. He came over and gently closed the window and the puppy disappeared.

A few minutes later I went into the kitchen to find a snack and there he was scrambling to close his laptop. On the screen was a dog. "I saw that!" I yelled. For the next week we went down the rabbit hole of shelter dog sites, then at almost the exact same moment we realized that though we missed having a dog, what we really missed was our dog.

We quit looking, then Joe found how to access the website for the local kill shelter's 'At Risk' list. Two legs, three eyes and deaf and blind? We have to go get him, I pleaded. 12 years old, incontinent, bites kids? We can make that work. We watched dogs get adopted off the list, saw new dogs move on to the list. Then we saw a puppy we had our eye on get marked 'Adopted!' I knew it was for the best, until it showed up for adoption on a no-kill shelter's website. Were we ready to get another dog?

We got out a pint and as we dug our way to the bottom we realized that any dog we got right now would be a rebound dog. Let's get through her birthday, get through the holidays. We've definitely entered the food phase of mourning - we talk about what we'll eat for dinner as we're eating breakfast. For now we'll see how life goes.