Sorry, Charlie

C.S. Lewis famously said in The Four Loves, “Man with dog closes a gap in the universe.” We believed this firmly even before we saw Charlie.

When we parked outside the animal shelter, my husband Jonathan warned me, “It’s going to smell in there.” But in the interest of closing the universal gap—an action that many of our friends and neighbors called lunacy for a young couple nearing the third trimester of pregnancy—we pushed forward into the little building, which echoed with the amplified howls of the unwanted.

Well, mostly the unwanted. Within several minutes it became clear that all the patrons stalking the cage-fronts had their eyes on one animal: a mutt puppy, white with black spots, peering docile and small from the bottom of his enclosure. Charlie.

I began instantly to feel like one of those women on Black Friday, racing other customers toward a bargain television while the ire of competition mounts in her heart. Every molecule in my being snapped into assertiveness. I began to strategize: “Look at Charlie, but not too much. You don’t want anyone to know you want him more than they do.”

You can tell a quality dog when you see one. He wears his heart in his eyes. Charlie had come from a family with small children and an infant—of course a big selling point for us. The family had given him up when they unexpectedly lost their home. And like most puppies in a shelter full of aging and semi-aggressive dogs, he would go fast.

Nevertheless, we wore the warnings of our neighbors heavily on our backs, and went to lunch to think it over. They had told us, “Raising a dog and a baby at the same time is just too hard.” This advice made little sense to me, since I’d done the work of raising a puppy before and thought it counted as a normal part of life. Besides, its benefits so outweighed its detractors. But the truth is, I am afraid of having a baby. Because of my complete inexperience, it is hard for me not to believe the doomsday prophets who love to tell me about all the bad parts. I hope, of course, that child-rearing will not turn out to be the monster I fear. The hope is tender enough to be easily broken. What if the naysayers are right?

We prayed about the dog over our breadsticks and soup. Upon our return to the shelter, no one had taken Charlie yet. We took him for a short walk. Still plagued by uncertainty, we made the long drive home without him. We would think about it some more.

At home, we called the shelter and reserved Charlie for next-day adoption. When we arrived ready to write the check, the woman behind the desk said no one working the day before had informed them of our decision. Someone else had adopted the dog that morning.

The disappointment was crushing. We said “I’m so sorry” to each other all the way home, but submitted to providence. We are still trying to close the gap. Now it feels wider than ever.