A Reciprocal Connection

I have been thinking lately about how my family’s animals picked us just as much as we picked them. I have written in a previous post about Erza picking me, but the other animals in my life followed that same pattern pretty closely.

Maggie was still needing to be with her mom when I first got to meet her. My parents took my sister and I to meet her when she was around six weeks old. We were supposed to have gotten a puppy from a previous litter, but the mother had sadly miscarried. Maggie was a part of the next litter to be born, so we had first pick.

When we went to meet Maggie, we sat down in the puppy play pen, and were obviously surrounded by Maggie and her litter mates. Every time one of her siblings tried to get our attention, if Maggie wasn’t being held by one of us, she would push them out of the way. “This is my family, so back off,” was probably what she was thinking. She wanted to love all of us, and not share.

River was a rescue puppy. I saw a listing on the local humane society’s Facebook page about a litter of puppies, and River wasn’t even one of those listed. Another family had already shown interest. Fortunately for us, that family changed their minds, and we ended up with him.

Originally his name was Galileo. What a mouthful of a name, especially for a puppy. So when we got him home, we decided to change his name. My sister offered up the name River because of the strip of white fur on his nose, it looks like a river.

These connections were meant to be if you ask me. I think that we receive the pet we need when the time is right. They choose to love us just as much as we choose them.