The Curious Case of the Dog and the Hair Tie
a love story, with cute dog pics.
I won’t bury the lede: I love my dog. But it didn’t come easily.
This surprised me. I have been known to coo over every dog I pass and fall in deep infatuation with any animal that breezes through my feed.
What is wrong with me? I’d think, witnessing her freakish displays of cuteness. Gnocchi looks like a cross between a fox cub and a baby hyena and an affable quokka, with a dash of Wile E. Coyote thrown in. She is, in a word, lovable.
Don’t get me wrong, I have always adored her. Cherished her. Cared deeply about her well-being. But I did not love her.
And I knew why.
*
For my twenty-fourth birthday, my then-boyfriend gave me a puppy. While I gather how much is wrong with that sentence, it doesn’t change the part where that dog was (and remains) the best gift I’d ever received.
For sixteen years (far longer than the relationship she stemmed from), Mia was my constant companion. She followed me from room to room, intuiting my moods. Napped next to me while I wrote. Spent every night curled beside me, like a tiny shell, so close that her breath mingled with my own.
When people referenced her eventual death, I was offended. Even as she grew old and frail — beyond her life expectancy, as the vet reminded me – I saw it in terms of if. I’d never known adulthood — personhood — without her, and the idea of it was unfathomable. If Mia dies, I’d think, which she won’t. Until she did.
*
I didn’t plan to get another dog. At least, not for a long while. Before Mia passed, I’d study the Instagram posts of people who’d lost pets and seemingly instantly replaced them, noting how often the new one looked curiously similar — same size, breed, color — to the last. This seemed as unfathomable as death itself.
But a few days after Mia died, my mother was admitted to the hospital, and a couple weeks later, she too was gone. The silence of my home felt all-encompassing, the warmth of the morning sun too much for only me. I wanted something to nurture, someone to not quite fill the void — I knew this was impossible — but to explore it alongside me. Someone to go about living, so that I might, too.
After some searching, I fell in love with a sweet low rider I planned to name Rigatoni. But as these things go, she was adopted by someone else. And then I found Gnocchi.
She looked like an enchanted bunny, with enormous ears and a face like three well-placed blueberries. I worried she was too much like Mia — similar size, shared part-Yorkie genes. Would she be a constant reminder of the love I’d lost? Would it invite obvious comparison?
The answer is yes. But not in the ways I’d expected.
Where Mia was sweet and stoic, Gnocchi is dog-shaped drama. She shrieks. She moans. She whines. She takes to her bed like a Victorian. She spends an inordinate amount of time hopping on her back feet, like a tap-dancing lemur, because she’s that thrilled to be alive.
A born hunter, she’ll pounce on anything that moves, which in our city apartment, is typically me. She’ll take to the highest perch, spring several feet into the air, and land on her target with extreme precision. This is especially fun when the target is my sleeping face.
Mia would never do that, I’d think, several thousand times a day, like a jilted lover pining for her ex. A few months into our life together, I found myself searching things like “adolescent dog evil” and “puppy asshole forever?” The good people of the internet assured me it was likely just a phase.
One late August night, Gnocchi jumped up behind me and started chewing on my braid. As she scrambled away, I realized she’d managed to pull off my hair tie and was happily munching the contraband.
“Drop it!” my husband Teddy and I repeated, brandishing a reward like the training videos had instructed. “Gnocchi, drop it.” She had zero intention of doing so.
“We should maybe give her some space,” I called, as he pursued her.
“Trust me,” he said, chasing her down the hall. “I just did this the other day.”
He picked her up. She flashed a look of defiance before making an audible gulp.
“Did she just swallow it?” I yelped. Mia would never.
He fished around her mouth. “Yeah, there’s definitely nothing in there.”
“FUCK!” My tone bordered on hyena. The hair tie in question was thick, fabricky, halfway down the road to scrunchie-hood. This was not good.
“She’ll poop it out,” he said, with a casual wave of his hand.
“No, this is serious. This isn’t, like, when a lab eats a hair tie. She’s six pounds.”
As is often the nature of emergencies, it was 9pm on a weekend and her usual vet was closed. I phoned the emergency vet, where they charge you the price of a luxury handbag simply for entering the building.
“Hi, my six-pound-dog just swallowed a hair tie. Is this the kind of thing where we need to bring her in, or—” I didn’t have a chance to finish my sentence.
“Now,” said the receptionist. “Sorry to say it, but time is of the essence. Bring her now.”
*
We raced to the hospital, Gnocchi shrieking the whole way. Not because of the hair tie, mind you, but because she hated the stairs, hated the car, hated her carrier. Would rather have gone for a nice walk, during which she would greet every single person on the street with a leap and a dance, whether they acknowledged her or not.
They induced vomiting. No hair tie. They took an Xray of her tiny canine abdomen. No hair tie.
“I just don’t think it’s a big deal,” Teddy kept muttering. “She’s going to poop it out.”
Five hours and a bill the size of several luxury handbags later, the vet informed us that we were, in fact, incorrect. The dog did not eat a hair tie.
“I pronounce her innocent!” she said, in a sing-song voice.
“But we saw it,” I told her. “We heard the gulp.”
Apparently, the evidence said otherwise. The vet told us to go home and search around the apartment, wherever we think she may have hidden it.
I know where she hid it, I thought. In her GI tract.
We turned the place upside down, but the hair tie was nowhere to be found.
*
I consulted her regular vet the next day. “I know it’s probably frustrating to hear, but it doesn’t sound like she swallowed it,” she shrugged. “And by this point, until it becomes an obstruction, there is nothing more we can do.” She told me to monitor her for the foreseeable future. She also shared that she once saw a Rottweiler pass a dishtowel, evidence that “remarkable things can happen.”
So, I monitored the little monster. I followed her around our home. I woke in the night and checked on her. I regarded her poop like a curious biology student.
As I worried for her safety, I noticed I was steeling myself for some eventual loss. As I watched her living, I found I begrudgingly let myself do the same. And that’s when it hit me. I really love her.
*
Last week marked the one-year anniversary of Mia’s death. The October air felt the same as it did then, the leaves tinged with the same shades of orange. I woke that morning prepared to be gentle with myself, willing to greet whatever arose.
Gnocchi, perhaps sensing the gravity of the moment, left me a special overnight gift.
There, at the foot of the bed, was a very strange poop. Easily the oddest I had ever seen. It looked less like a shit than a magpie’s nest or some gnarled weapon straight out of Middle Earth.
“Seriously?” I mumbled, as I crouched to clean it up. “This dog…”
I squinted. Could it be?
Embroiled in this strange excretion was the hair tie. Eight weeks later.
“Kiki!” At the sound of her nickname, she bounded in from the next room and commenced her two-footed hopping. I was nothing short of elated. My husband took a photo of it, which I shall spare you. The day was now momentous for two (very different) reasons.
As I have been reminded over again through many bittersweet seasons, it is possible to hold two conflicting feelings simultaneously. Just as it is possible to hold two simultaneous loves. As Mariah sang it, loves takes time. As do bonding, healing, and acceptance.
My love for Gnocchi has a different shape than my love for Mia. As it should. She is her own dog, her own being, her own brand of very excellent companion. She is her own distinct bundle of light. As are we all.
Thank you so much for your enthusiasm about the embarrassing book club! I’ll be back to you with more details soon. ❤️
Card of the Week
Here is this week’s card for the collective, as well as some thoughts to carry into the days ahead. As most modern readers will tell you, the tarot is not about fortunetelling, nor is it about neat, definitive answers. The cards are simply one path to reflection, a way of better knowing ourselves and others through universal themes. If this reading resonates with you, great! And if not, no worries. Take whatever may be helpful and leave the rest.
Beginnings come in many forms. They happen every day, every hour, every moment. There are the big, pronounced rebrands and the unacknowledged glimmers of renewal. There are also the beginnings we do not yet recognize as such. Sometimes we call them endings.
New Beginnings™️ are often marketed as shiny, optimistic affairs. The terrain of clean slates and second chances, makeovers and relaunches. Let’s try this again with more knowledge, shall we? Let’s do better, fare better, be better.
As much as I appreciate a fresh start, that sounds like a lot of pressure.
The Ace of Cups carries all the hope and promise of new beginnings, but in a soothing, low stakes tone. That doesn’t mean the outcome can’t be meaningful, just that change can take place slowly, gently, in whatever shape we wish.
Traditionally, the Ace of Cups depicts a chalice with five streams of water pouring out of it, symbolizing the five senses. This card asks us to use our senses to the best of our abilities. Stay open. Pay attention. Take note. Seek information internally, instead of heeding the din of external noise. Gather, process, hold.
Can you gaze across a room you’ve seen a thousand times before and notice something new about it? Can you regard the same scene you’ve passed a hundred times and observe it as though you’re taking it in for the very first time? This, too, is a beginning.
A new beginning might mean a new job, home, or relationship. But it can also mean the first step of a meandering journey, or the first page of a book. It might mean the next page (literal or figurative) of the book you’re already reading, or have read many times before.
This week's card would like to remind us that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel (though you can if it moves you). Nor must you reinvent yourself, your world, or your life. Not all at once, at least.
Like each sunrise, we have the ability to begin again as long as we live. To try again. To dare. To speak or write or ponder. To start anew. To the outside observer, it may look just like every other sunrise that came before it. And that’s just fine.
Renewal is a natural, inevitable part of life. We are all reborn each day. And while there are some limits on what we may accomplish, we can always refine our approach, our beliefs, our thinking. We can always see the same old things in a new and different way.
In the days ahead, let your senses drink up what the world has to offer, allowing yourself to find the awe in simple moments. Awe, like its cousin wonder, keeps us open to possibilities. Awe helps ground us in the present moment. Awe shows us how the mundane can hold a hint of magic.
The world around us, and our capacity to perceive it, is nothing less than a wonder. As Walt Whitman wrote, “As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.” Sometimes, it’s the simplest, most basic things that are the most miraculous. Sometimes, the greatest change we can make isn’t about improvement at all, but about small shifts in perception.
Thank you, as always, for reading. x
“Gnocchi is dog-shaped drama. She shrieks. She moans. She whines. She takes to her bed like a Victorian. She spends an inordinate amount of time hopping on her back feet, like a tap-dancing lemur, because she’s that thrilled to be alive.” I love this very vivid description of your boisterous girl!! 😍
Caroline, in addition to making me laugh––"A few months into our life together, I found myself searching things like 'adolescent dog evil' and 'puppy asshole forever'?”–––I will keep this post in mind.
I avoid posts about dogs passing away because I don't want to think about it in relation to my Sophie who is seven. I just can't imagine the grief.
But your experience with Gnocchi gives me great hope. Thank you for that.