If I sit down to read, play with the baby or watch TV, Rory will appear. She will lick my face, breathe on me, do anything she can to make it clear that she really really loves me, really really wants to be petted and oh-my-gosh, got so excited that she forgot the third thing, and ran over to bark at the dog three blocks away instead. (Usually she remembers to run around the baby on these occasions, but not always.)
We fostered dogs for four years. Rory was our 15th, give or take a few.
She was an amazingly beautiful puppy, sort of shy and very friendly. I figured we'd have her for a week, tops.
A year-and-a-half later, she was still here. She had made friends with our other two. She regularly stole things and ate them - our dinner, toothbrushes, five pairs of glasses.
But it was hard to let her go. I was eight months pregnant with Christopher when it came to a head for some reason. I realized I couldn't send her back to the fostering organization.
Rory had run over, panting and happy, as soon as she got back from a friend's house where she had stayed while I recovered from a late miscarriage. She licked my face, and for a moment, I felt better. She was there, panting, happy and always ready for a good, disgusting, slurpy lick through another miscarriage and what seemed like a year of unending grief. Her happiness never changed, even when we moved to a new house and upended her life, or lost our tempers and crated her for stealing vegetables.
Somehow, when it came right down to it, she had become part of our family - not something we planned for (three dogs is a lot of dog) or wanted, really, but there she was. Unplanned and part of our family.
Our little accident.
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