The whole drive home he didn’t look at me. He sat erect in the passenger seat next to me and stared out the window. I wasn’t sure if he was sad. Or bored. Or he just didn’t trust me.
A couple hours later, he was sitting in my lap.
“I’m pretty sure I love you, Louie,” I told the black-and-white pooch who was up for adoption through the Belleville Area Humane Society. “I didn’t expect to feel so strongly so soon.”
But the heart wants what the heart wants. And my heart wanted this dog. Alas, it also wanted to stay married to my husband, Mark. And that’s where things got complicated.
“Louie will only be with us a week,” I’d promised Mark the night before. “His regular foster needs a little break.”
That foster – my pal Michele Donovan – is not just an amazing animal shelter volunteer , she is also one heck of a matchmaker. I’m sure she knew what she was doing when she asked me to take Louie home for a while. I’m also sure my husband did too.
“Every pet you bring home should be named ‘Foster,’” he told me, “because they all start out that way. You’re not keeping this one. I just want you to know that.”
Fast forward two months. As I write this column, Louie Schrader is sitting alongside me. I may have fallen in love with him first, but Mark fell for him soon after.
The dog who refused to look at me when we met had no problem looking at my husband. He ran across the room, leapt into Mark’s lap and gazed into his eyes. For the first time in our 32 years of marriage, I did not have to beg Mark to let me adopt another pet.
The official papers were signed a couple days later. But Louie was a Schrader from Day 1.
A 36-pound lap dog, he sits on his family like we are furniture. He is cute. He is funny. He isn’t brilliant, but he’s pretty darned smart. He also doesn’t shed and he’s totally housebroken. If that’s not cause for celebration, what is?
Of course, the queen of our house – an opinionated 15-year-old Chihuahua named Lola – is not convinced Louie is a keeper. Nor are our two black cats, Sprite and Sylvie, who wish he was mouse-sized so they could eat him.
“He just wants to play with you,” I tell them, when they hiss and roll their eyes. To them, Louie is a giant, floppy-pawed Muppet that could smash them.
The good news: They’re so busy avoiding his slobbery kisses that they’ve stopped stalking the Chihuahua. Come Christmas, they can climb the tree to get away from him. But then, they would anyway.
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