old tricks and new dogs

A day after Toby passed, I could still see the shape of him everywhere in my apartment. I felt the silence in every room.

After five years, I kept hearing him. At my desk, I’d catch the faint sniffle from the corner where his bed used to be, or the deep sigh he made settling into a nap. During a movie, I’d feel his weight on my feet. The worst was his paws on the hardwood, that slow, deliberate pitter-patter of an old dog moving between comfortable spots. I kept listening for it long after it was gone.

A week later it was unbearable.

eight pounds of paws and long legs

A week is probably too soon to get another dog. I knew that, and I still couldn’t keep living in a house full of ghosts.

He’s an eight-pound jumble of paws and comically long legs, barely four months old.

I love him. That made everything else harder to explain. I kept reaching for the warmth and joy I expected to feel around this tiny, perfect creature, and finding something scrambled underneath it.

Everything with him felt good and wrong at the same time. Eventually I understood why.

the training metaphor

I kept coming back to the difference between training and context. During training, engineers change the model itself. When you upload a file, its contents become available in the chat. I saw myself doing the same thing with Pixel, taking in each new moment without letting it change what I already knew about love.

The Toby years were my training. For five years, love meant sitting near him without reaching and letting him come to me. Eventually he learned that my hands were safe. That is still what love feels like to me.

Pixel kept handing me facts my training couldn’t use. Puppy learned to sit in five minutes. Puppy trusted me immediately. Puppy loved everyone. Puppy had never needed to learn that the world was safe. I understood every fact and couldn’t fit any of them into what Toby had taught me about love.

five minutes to sit

The other day I taught Pixel to sit. He’s a smart little guy, and it took maybe five minutes. He plopped his butt on the floor and looked up at me with his big, trusting eyes. For a second I felt something. Pride? Joy? It was gone before I could name it.

My brain went straight to my first real win with Toby. Months after I brought him home, he walked up to me on his own. He nudged my hand and asked for pets. I’d waited months for that.

Pixel sat after five minutes. Toby needed months before he asked me to touch him. I knew the moments couldn’t be compared, and I compared them anyway. It felt like a betrayal.

I loved Pixel easily, and I felt guilty about the ease. I knew two dogs could ask for completely different kinds of love. I kept feeling as if loving Pixel this easily betrayed Toby.

a broken deal and an easy life

I keep hearing that I’ll miss the puppy days, and I’m not sure I will. I can feel Pixel’s easy, immediate joy and still can’t connect it to anything Toby taught me.

I’d made myself a deal. Get a small dog and follow the rules, and you get twelve or maybe fifteen years. Toby got five. Lymphoma doesn’t give a flying fuck about deals, and I had nowhere to put the anger.

I’ve tried carrying Toby’s story into Pixel’s on purpose. I can tell myself that loving Pixel changes nothing about Toby. I understand the words and can’t make myself believe them yet.

And then there’s the guilt. I think about everything Toby went through before he got to me, and the five years I had to show him he was safe. Pixel arrived already knowing that. Every time I put those lives side by side, I feel as if I’ve betrayed Toby.

what Pixel gets

Pixel deserves a life built around who he is. I have to learn him as himself, even while everything Toby taught me is still running in the background.

I have to learn how Pixel needs to be loved. I don’t know how yet. I know I have to try.

I’m hoping I’ll eventually recognize the Pixel moments as mine. I want to remember Toby without using him to measure every good moment with Pixel.

I’m not there yet. I still keep waiting for my life with Pixel to vanish the moment I relax.

For now, Pixel sits and looks up at me. I think of Toby, and I reach down to pet Pixel anyway.