The Dog Park. Laura Caldwell

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      After Sebastian left, I put Bax in the gold-starred blue collar, clipped on the matching leash, and Baxter and I took a come-to-Jesus walk. It was the kind of walk we needed in order to get reacquainted after a week apart, in order to become Jess and Baxter again. Such walks were usually long and meandering, often around favorite places like the Lincoln Park Lagoon or the beach, but always landing at the dog park. Once we came back from such a walk, Bax and I always returned to normal. To get Baxter acquainted to the neighborhood again, I first walked Baxter down State Street, cutting up and around Goethe, Burton and Astor, letting him stop and sniff every wrought iron fence and bountiful bush that he wanted. It was a gorgeous summer day, one that was warm but not unbearable as the previous three weeks had been. Instead of huddling in air-conditioned rooms (or coffee shops or bars) everyone was outside. This was the same route Sebastian and I used to take when we first got Baxter. It was hard not to think of that time.

      The decision to get a puppy had been carefully debated, test-driven. We had long thought we’d get a shelter dog. We had volunteered at rescues, had run 5K races to raise money for no-kill facilities. We regularly visited adoption places in Chicago. We dogsat and read dog books and frequented dog parks. In the end, we fell in love with the idea of a goldendoodle (no shed, hypoallergenic) and a mini one. Sebastian pointed out that a dog under twenty pounds could travel with us. We could travel. That’s what he’d said. We. And we decided we wanted a puppy, a brand-new being in the brand-new world we were creating. Or trying to create.

      So we investigated every breeder. We visited many. We called people who’d gotten puppies from them before. It felt, joyously, like Sebastian and I were working together on one of his stories.

      The day we got him felt so alive in my memory, I could almost touch it when I closed my eyes. A responsibility never felt so good before—the responsibility of deciding to take custody of a new creature, a new ball of life energy, and pledging to care for it.

      We decided I would take the wheel during the three-hour drive to Indiana. Sebastian would drive the return trip while I rode with the puppy in the back, which the breeder had recommended for bonding.

      We’d already been once to the breeder’s farm, run by a young family, with a red barn behind the house. So it wasn’t a surprise to walk in that house in the middle of winter and see two litters of squirming golden fluff. But what was different was that one would be ours. Ours. I loved that word.

      Sebastian and I clasped hands tight as the breeder led us to the eight-week-old litter in the back—six dogs, four females and two males, one of whom was soon to be (that word again) ours.

      The breeder was in her late thirties with curly copper hair that matched some of the dogs in her barn. She smiled over her shoulder at us. “Ready?”

      She opened an octagon-shaped enclosure that held the litter and quickly waved a hand. “Get in before one gets out.”

      We were rushed by puppies—scraps of panting aliveness crawling over us, their faces peering up at ours, pink tongues darting at our chins.

      “How are we going to decide?” Sebastian asked. He laughed then, as a red-goldish puppy climbed up and stuck her tongue in Sebastian’s nose.

      The hour we spent in that pen was a different world in a different time. We were suspended in between our old lives and our new, and we both knew it.

      While all the pups scrambled and licked and nibbled, one boy was a ferocious biter and a jumper. I kissed him on the head. “I feel bad but we’ve ruled him out,” I told Sebastian.

      “What about this one?” He held out a two-and-a-half-pound little girl, already sleeping in the palm of his hand. I took her and cuddled her to me, letting her siblings squirm around Sebastian and me, both cross-legged in the pen.

      She burrowed into the crook of my neck as I held her up. “She’s one of the front-runners,” I said.

      We played with each of them, trying to be systematic, which was impossible. We came up with names for them to try and keep them separate—Cutie for the sweet, sleepy girl, Biter for the ruled-out boy.

      Big Eyes was what we called the other boy. He had an interesting way of observing the group, happy to sit back for a moment when it wasn’t his turn and watching the other pups and us before deciding to get back into the fray with a paw to the head of one of his sisters. He was a lover, too, kept burrowing his snout in the crook of Sebastian’s knee or under my sweater. Pretty soon, we loved him back. And Big Eyes became Baxter.

      But even though Baxter was the best of dogs, beloved by us both, Sebastian and I didn’t stay together, and now we shared that soul that we’d adopted.

      Baxter pulled hard on the leash, maybe sensing I was lost in my thoughts. As we made our way to North Avenue and he realized we were headed for the park, he tugged even harder, his little golden legs churning.

      “Take it easy, buddy,” I said, but I smiled. As Baxter’s legs churned faster, I could see the images flying through his head—the dog friends he might see, the birds he might chase.

      I looked at my watch, hoping the other dog owners we knew would be there. We were people who probably wouldn’t know each other otherwise. But our dogs were friends. Odd and simple as that. And so we had roughly learned each other’s schedules. And we shot to meet up in the late morning like now.

      At this hour, during the weeks Sebastian had Baxter at his place, I really didn’t know what to do with myself. Sometimes, I would still go to the park and chat with the others, but I always felt forlorn, rubbing the mini tennis ball inside my pocket, no dog to throw to, always missing Baxter. Sometimes Sebastian.

      Although any missing of the ex would stop now, I reminded myself, since I planned to come alive without Sebastian.

      We reached the park and, as hoped, some of Baxter’s pals and their owners were there. Among the dogs was Comiskey—a border collie named after former White Sox Comiskey Park, but called Miskie for short—and a pug named Miss Puggles. The pug had a historical air about her, one of a heavy, corseted woman who talked in a high voice, always held an aperitif in hand, but Miss Puggles was always social and friendly. Rounding out Baxter’s pals in attendance was a tiny scrap of white fluff named Daisy. Daisy must have weighed all of eight pounds, but she had the heart of a German shepherd. She chased after the other dogs, her little legs racing doubly fast.

      As we entered the park, Daisy skidded into the sandy baseball pitch after a ball. Then Baxter and Daisy saw each other, and, as always, it was all Romeo and Juliet. Daisy’s head raised, the ball dropped, and as she churned her little legs toward Baxter, he did, too—two lovers racing across a green lawn to tangle and nip at each other.

      Bax jumped and picked up the pace, making Daisy speed after him in pursuit. I stopped momentarily, thinking how similar their relationship was to Sebastian’s and mine—an awful lot of chasing on my part. But that was all done. I reminded myself I would thrive on my own. With my dog. (Whenever I got to have him.)

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