Biggest mistake of my life. That’s how I thought of the little cockapoo barking her head off in my kitchen long past midnight. I trudged downstairs, wrapping my robe around me against the January cold, resigning myself to being exhausted at work tomorrow again.
“Hunny, shh!” I said. “Shh!”
Hunny snarled at me and pressed herself into the corner. Would this dog ever change?
I wistfully remembered our previous pet, Mittens, a hamster. The only sound out of Mittens was the squeak of the running wheel in her cage. When Mittens died my 10-year-old daughter, Kirsten, and my husband, Eric, went to the pet shop for a replacement.
I expected them to come home with a furry little creature in a cardboard box. Instead they’d returned with stories about a cockapoo they’d met at the store.
“Half cocker, half poodle!” Kirsten said. “Her name’s Hunny. She’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.”
“Kirsten, we don’t have any place for a dog,” I said. I looked over at Eric for support.
We were currently in the middle of building a new house. We lived in a temporary rental while looking for a bigger, longer-term rental. Everything felt completely up in the air. This was no time to get a dog.
Instead of agreeing with me, Eric sided with Kirsten. “The dog’s a rescue,” he said. “She was badly abused and needs a good home.”
“Right,” I said, “a good home is exactly what we don’t have at the moment. She needs to be with someone who can take care of her.” Somehow, even then, I knew that person would wind up being me.
I slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. Hunny growled from her corner. Eric and Kirsten had continued to lobby hard for her.
I heard endless descriptions of her big brown eyes; her shiny, multi-colored fur; the way she pressed her black nose up against the crate at the pet store.
Eric informed me that because of their poodle blood, cockapoos didn’t shed. Kirsten offered to give up Skittles for a month to prove her commitment.
I held firm. I had other things to think about. Like where we might get comfortable with a little more space until our house was built. A good deal on a temporary house was hard to come by.
And then, bingo! The perfect place became available. But when we surveyed the fenced-in yard I knew I was in for trouble.
“The yard just calls out for a dog to scamper around in,” Eric said.
I rolled my eyes. He was laying it on pretty thick. But it was Kirsten who put it over the top.
“With a yard like this,” she said, “it’s obvious that God wants us to have Hunny.”
I could stand against my husband and my daughter, but God? I knew when I was beaten. We hadn’t unpacked our last box before Hunny arrived at our house.
And now here we are, I thought, looking down at the anxious, angry, growling dog in my kitchen in the middle of the night. Hunny was a mistake. The first time Eric tried to pet her, she snapped at him.
“She’s just scared,” Kirsten said. “It’s okay, Hunny.”
She took a cautious step forward. Hunny curled her lip and snarled.
“Don’t get any closer,” I ordered.
Kirsten had wanted a dog so much. Now she finally had one and she couldn’t even touch her. None of us could.
Hunny ate the food I laid out for her happily enough, but any attempt to get close was met with snarls and snaps. She barked all night and shredded the kitchen door with her claws. This had been going on for weeks.
“And you’re not getting any better, are you?” I said. Hunny eyed me warily, her big doe-eyes darting this way and that.
I gave a half-hearted press to the expensive plug-in scent dispenser on the wall. The odorless vapor was supposed to contain calming pheromones. As far as Hunny was concerned, I might as well have been spraying the room with Febreeze.
I’d tried conventional methods of training, like exercise, and the unconventional, like herbal supplements. Nothing helped.
How could I have mistakenly thought God was lobbying for us to take this dog in was beyond me. As far as I could see we had nothing to offer her. Nor she to us. “Oh, Hunny,” I said. “What are we going to do with you?”
Hunny looked back at me, uncomprehending. Then her gaze shifted over my shoulder to the window. A shaft of moonlight streamed through the glass. I walked over for a closer look.
A full moon hung in the sky, bigger than I’d ever seen. Its pure white light on the frosty ground made the whole world shimmer. It was almost worth being awake at this hour to see such a glorious sight. “Lord, how wondrous is your creation,” I whispered.
My prayer of thanksgiving was instinctive, like most of my prayers. I prayed when I got up and before I went to sleep. I prayed for Eric and Kirsten, for my friends and my family.
But I’ve never prayed for Hunny, I thought suddenly. I’d never asked God for help with her. But what would I ask for? For a good night’s sleep? For an obedient dog? No, I thought. Pray for what Hunny needs.
I sat down on the linoleum floor and looked at the trembling creature in the corner. For the first time I saw things from Hunny’s point of view: She was scared and confused, sure we were going to hurt her.
“Lord, only you can heal the broken heart of this dog. Please show me how to love and care for her. Amen.”
I looked back at Hunny. She was quiet. Her fur showed all its colors in the bright moonlight. Her little black nose was wet and shiny, a healthy sign. And those big brown eyes… Had something changed in them?
I couldn’t be sure, but for the first time she looked less afraid, less angry. How could I encourage her to feel safe? When Kirsten was a baby I sang her to sleep with a little song I made up. It was the only idea I had, so I gave it a try.
“I love you, Hunny, O yes I do,” I sang softly. “I don’t love any dog as much as you. You are so dear to me, that’s true. O Hunny, I love you.”
Hunny cocked her head, let out a noisy sigh, and got up. She took a hesitant step toward me, then another. She was closer than she’d ever been to me without growling. Then she laid her head in my lap and closed her eyes.
I stared down at her in disbelief. The dog who snapped when anyone got within two feet of her was cuddled against me in the moonlight. God had melted Hunny’s distrustful heart. We sat that way into the wee hours of the morning.
At breakfast Eric and Kirsten were shocked at the change in our “problem” dog who no longer barked or snapped, but followed me from room to room and licked my hand. “How did it happen?” Eric asked.
I told him it was a miracle. What else could it be called? God had helped me to see Hunny the way he saw her. He opened my heart as surely as he opened Hunny’s.
And if home is where the heart is, God had made sure Hunny was put in just the right place. In the big fenced-in yard of the temporary house of a family who would love her always.
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