You'll know

When Leo was sick, very near the end, the conversation would often go to the question of when. When is it time? Well, everyone said the same thing - "You'll know". And in the end, I did. But the same can be said for when it's time to begin again, to get back on the rollercoaster of good times and bad times and scheduling walks and early mornings and late nights and all of those things. For the past few years, I wasn't ready. Between my post-doc and the trips to Santa Cruz (to shoot lasers - no really!) and finances and time and the memories of Leo and what we'd been through, I wasn't there.
But in the spring, I started to look again, in earnest. I even saw one I wanted to visit, a black-and-white border collie mix (Fluffy!?!) on Long Island. He was nice enough, but as S said, "he's not your dog".
I kept looking. On Saturday mornings or Saturday afternoons, when we'd sit on the couch for a bit, I'd fire up the computer and look. Just looking. Looking at the hopeful faces and the stories and descriptions. I knew what I wanted - an adult border collie. No puppies. A dog that knew how to dog. I just needed to find him. And then I came across this one:

I sighed when I saw him. I showed him to S. She didn't even want to look. I persisted - "That FACE! Look at that face!" She looked. And she looked at me and said "go get him. That's your dog."
It was hard to fill out the application - rather, it was hard to send it in. Hitting "send" felt very... final. Like "you can't take this back, are you sure you want to do this?", even though I could back out at any step along the way. The application process took about 3 weeks from beginning to end - the application, interviews, home visit, and then a 3-hour drive from Brooklyn to Harrisburg, PA to meet him. And when we met him, well, S was right - he was my dog. While I was doing paperwork, he was playing bally with S, but kept coming to check on me. We got his back-story (short version - his owner passed away suddenly, and he was homeless, then taken in by the dog boarder), and were told that we were actually the third application - but that this blog, this chronicle of life with Leo was the difference. It doesn't end there - we went to pick him up in Pennsylvania just after Thanksgiving. That's when and where L and I adopted Leo, in 2003 or 2004. Max came to us with a scar on his left shoulder from going under a fence (get that ball!) - same spot Leo had a wound from the last stages of his cancer.  Coincidence?

This is Max, a 9-year old border collie. This is my dog, Max.