Pomimo

A year ago, but only twenty entries or so as the blog goes, my family and I lost a little puppy. A vet gave her too much vaccine; she died a couple days later after clinging to life on an IV drip. We never sued the vet. We probably should have.

On the scale of things, I know losing a puppy is not a big deal. People die, some violently, many prematurely, every day. Every minute, really. Once, in China, I saw a man with a crushed skull sprawled on the side of the freeway, near a motorcycle. And another time, I stood over the corpse of my sister's boyfriend at a hospital while his mother screamed.

That was tragedy. A lost puppy may be a loss, but, surely, not a tragedy. Even when the call comes in at 3 am.

Yet even a non-tragic loss has its impact. I tasted salt. And when the breeder was kind enough to send a replacement puppy, I found her adorable too--but I didn't adore her in quite the same way. I was still grieving that non-tragic loss. That first puppy had been remarkable: spunky and at ease from the moment I picked her up at a plantation in Louisiana.

In a way, that made my summer easier. I didn't mind leaving the house as much as I would have, had that first puppy lived.

I wish my summer had been harder.

Then, one day in Xi'an, I encountered a mischievous little white dog that looked like a mixture of a Pomeranian and an American Eskimo. A crowd gathered to watch me play with it. (They were also upset that I had put my China Lonely Planet guide on the ground.) I watched that puppy leave with its owner thinking I would have taken it with me if I could.

That night, I realized I was--for lack of a better term--ready again. A google search revealed it had probably been half American Eskimo, half Pomeranian--a mixture called a "pomimo." I e-mailed a breeder. She had two small white ones available. Both had a mischievous-looking father, one a more cheerful mother. I chose her.

Last week, she arrived from Nebraska, and I brought her home to my parents. Wrapped in a blue blanket. And this puppy is not--a replacement. Either she doesn't have to keep measuring up to a puppy just lost, or maybe she just measures up very very well. She has that same spunk and ease. Whatever the opposite of a non-tragic loss is, she has become.

And yes, my family and I are a little crazy about our pets. But surely you knew that already. Just wait till I have an alpaca.