Fate

On our first date, my husband took me to lunch at Lone Star, located in a strip mall not far from the printing company where we both worked. Over Bubba Burgers and peanuts, we talked about animals--how he used to get attacked by bloodthirsty chickens on his aunt and uncle's farm, the cats I had growing up, his brothers' many dogs.

The mention of dogs reminded me of something. "The other day," I said, "I was killing time in the pet store and saw the prettiest little puppy. It was all gray, with floppy ears, and it had bright blue eyes."

"Oh, sure," Kurt said. "That's a weimaraner."

"A weima-what?"

"A weimaraner. A German hunting dog."

To me, the name sounded like some sort of disgusting sausage that I would never consume, and when the waitress asked us if we wanted dessert, I forgot all about the little puppy with bright blue eyes.

Three years later, Kurt and I were living in a ramshackle four-bedroom house in a suburb 13 miles west of Chicago. My life was about to drastically change; I was quitting my seven-year- long job as a receptionist at the printing company in favor of teaching and finishing grad school. We were the proud owners of two Cornish Rex cats named Lola and Piper (more on them later). I had only a few weeks before my tenure with the printing company was over. My evenings should have been spent reading, writing, preparing to teach my very first college class. So what did I do instead?

I went to the pet store one afternoon on my lunch hour. There, in the bottom left-hand glass-fronted cage, was a little gray puppy with floppy ears. I moved closer and squatted down. The puppy lifted its head from its front paws and surveyed me with serious, sad, bright blue eyes. My gaze traveled to the handprinted sign taped next to the cage: "Weimaraner, female, $750."

"Would you like to hold her?" asked a teenaged worker, and I found myself nodding yes.

Within seconds I had this stinky little puppy in my arms. I walked over to the walled-in "play" area and set her on the ground. She looked at me with those sad eyes and sighed. That's odd, I thought. Having been raised with cats all my life, I knew nothing about the habits and mannerisms of the canine, but it seemed to me a ten-week-old puppy should be leaping around, running wild, peeing on everything and chewing its baby teeth off.

This puppy was content to sit in my lap and hide her long nose in between her paws.

I knew my lunch hour was nearly up, so I stood with the puppy and tried to hand her back to the pet store worker.

The puppy made a strange sound, a cross between a whine and a squeak through her nose. That sound pierced my heart. Suddenly I knew there was no way I could let this sad little creature get stuffed back up into a glass cage, where she was forced to poop and sleep in the same place.

I called Kurt.

When he walked into the store, I thrust the puppy (that I refused to put down for a half an hour) into his arms. I could tell instantly by the soft look in his eyes that he was smitten. We spent a few minutes asking each other, "Should we get her?" "I don't know, should we?" Everything happened at the speed of light, and the next thing we knew (and a boatload of money later), we were the new owners of a ten-week old weimaraner puppy.

She made no noise the whole ride home, which she spent on Kurt's lap. We set her down on the carpet in the living room, and the first thing she did was run up to our male cat, Piper. (This was the one and only time I've ever seen Piper hiss.) Lola went to high ground and watched this new thing with her body lowered and her eyes narrowed. The puppy, unconcerned by the cats' reactions, fell to chewing the wooden handle of the recliner.

She was a supremely quiet puppy. In fact, she didn't make a sound that whole night until I was washing her bowls at the kitchen sink. Then she waddled over to me, looked up, and made that strange sound again, the whine-squeak that seemed to emanate from her nose. I gave her a bowl of water which she lapped up, and then we began the serious business of naming her.

We thought about "Libby." I wanted "Daphne." Kurt wanted Bette Page or some other sort of nonsense. How we landed on "Cassie" I will never know, but the name instantly embodied everything about her.

Looking back, we now know Cassie most likely came from a puppy mill, or a disreputable breeder who sold her to a pet store for some unknown reason. Would we purchase an animal from a pet store again? Not on your life. Are we glad we purchased Cassie from a pet store, and saved her from some sort of unimaginable fate? You bet.

That night, we set Cassie's little crate up in the kitchen with a pillow and blanket. We snapped on a night light. We said goodnight, shut off the lights, and headed upstairs to our bedroom. That's when our quiet, serious little puppy let out an ungodly shriek the likes of which I'd never heard. The shrieking and howling and screaming went on and on, until I was sure my brain would melt.

I had no idea what to do.

Kurt, being more schooled in dogs than I, brought Cassie's crate into the living room, beside the couch, and opened up the top so he could reach a hand inside to touch her. She quieted. He stayed on the couch all night, one arm shoved into the cage, hand resting on the warm, fat body of the new baby in the house.

She slept. We didn't. And it was only the beginning.