Beckett - Year One.

My first glimpse of Beckett on petfinder.com

A year ago today, I did one of the craziest, most anxiety-provoking, most uncharacteristically spontaneous things I’ve ever done -- perhaps that is why it has turned out to be the most rewarding. I adopted my beautiful, brilliant Beckett.  Known to some as “the Wonder Schnoodle” and to some as “The Beckett Man,” this little guy landed in my life and filled it with a level of need I never thought myself capable of meeting, and filled me with a range of emotions I never thought myself capable of feeling.  He was a seven-pound runt with chronic giardia, severe anxiety, and a shoe addiction that would put Amelda Marcos to shame (mainly because Beckett’s addiction revolved around EATING the shoes, rather than just collecting them). And yet, I loved him from the moment I first saw him on petfinder.com.  Then, of course, once I met and held and talked to him, I was hooked.  He was mine.  And nothing  - absolutely nothing – makes me happier than the knowledge that he still is.  What’s more, I am his, it seems, and that is the most wonderful feeling in the world.

This was the day "neuter" became a 4-letter word. 

While this year’s Beckett journey has been bumpy at times and filled with potholes and detours and roadblocks at others, I can’t imagine my life without him at its center.  And I wouldn’t ever want to.  Yes, I thought I was going to lighten up with Beckett, that we were going to share a life of running through fields and chilling in front of the fireplace and basically create our own Norman Rockwell life without a single stressful moment or health crisis or potty training “accident” (because, after all, I had read all the books, so what could go wrong?). But Beckett quickly became my teacher as well as my closest companion, always reminding me that there are simply some things that I cannot control … and that losing control is not the end of the world.  It’s just a mess on the floor.  Or one more antibiotic.  Or a lost shoe or two.  

Despite my best efforts, Giardia won this round too.

So in the end, I have lightened up - so subtly and slowly (and often with such resistance) that it has taken all this time for me to be able to look back at myself  a year ago today and admit that yes, I am a lighter, happier, more peaceful, more content version of the tightly wound, isolated, singularly focused control freak I used to be.   

So thank you, to my beautiful little boy, for having faith in me when I had none in myself, for sitting on my lap while I cried over my perceived puppy parenting failures, and for jumping at my feet when I celebrated the small victories we have shared together.  I have no idea where we will be a year from now, but I know one thing for sure:  We will be together, moving forward, open to whatever awaits us on this path we share.  I’m your person, after all, and you are the little guy who made opening my heart so worth it. 

Until next time,
~ Hasky