Dear young man,
I am assuming you are a young man now, because you were just a boy when you gave your heart away to the pet shelter. Your heart was a small, four-legged creature with round, sad eyes and a fur coat the color of burled maple. His name was Dr. Dre and you loved him more than love itself. I’m writing now to let you know what became of your love and to let you know that he is safe, that he is happy, and that he has not forgotten you.
We found him almost five years ago now, in his cage at the pet shelter. We were looking for a dog that would bring smiles to the face of an adolescent who was raging at everything. We thought a dog would be the perfect medicine and, as it turns out, we were more than right.
The pet shelter was full of pit bulls and pit bull offspring on the day we found him. He was yet another one, but so different. As you probably can imagine, because you knew him so well, he was the one dog that was sitting right up at the front of the fenced-in kennel, against the gate, waiting for us to come by. We couldn’t help but stop and look at him because he was, and is, so beautiful, and then we stayed and stayed because he was overflowing with love. He craved our hands, he talked to us with his whole body, he wriggled and made small sounds of joy. We talked him over and thought about him, but eventually went on our way.
As we left the shelter, a strange thing happened. We could hear soft cries, almost words, coming from inside. Dre, who had seen in us something that he knew once before, was talking to us, telling us not to leave him behind. He knew, we say now, that we were to be his family – a family that he could love.
This story has a happy ending and that is why I am writing to you. We went back to the shelter that day and we brought Dre home to live with us – to a family of two women, two children and three dogs - because he was so full of love and so beautiful to behold. I have always wondered who it was that gave him up and have always wanted to reach out to the small boy that was his former owner, to let him know that Dre was safe.
How do I know that you were a small boy then? Because we were given the paper that you filled out when you gave up your four-legged love. On that paper, you were asked to say what your dog loved to do and why you were giving him up. In large black print and in a style that gave away your age, you said that your mother didn’t like him We can tell that is true because he is deathly afraid of brooms. You said that he liked to play and he liked to have his belly rubbed. When asked what you would like to say in closing about your former pal, you printed carefully, “just love him.”
We want you to know that we do. We love Dre and as you know, he loves us back. He sleeps in our young man’s bed at night, he gets his belly scratched, he greets us at the door and wriggles with delight when we come home, he chases squirrels, he scares the neighbor’s cat. He is at home in a pack of dogs, in a sea of love. Thank you for giving him up so that we could “just love him.” We want you to know that you loved him well, that he is very well loved, and that this small package of brindle fur with sad, round eyes, just loves you, too.
Dr Dre’s new family
Aminata, Deb, Annie Zeno and Dr. Dre
