When we lost Peanut on May 26, 2010, it was exactly one month later, June 26, 2010, that we brought Apollo home. If you knew me during the Peanut years, you know how completely devoted I was to him. Living in a household without a dog got lonely and when we chose Apollo and he chose us, it felt right. When I close my eyes, I can still feel his little puppy body curled up in my lap on the drive home. He was warm and I could hear him breathe. We picked him up in Wausaukee and had a significant drive home from his foster family’s house. I held him steady with my left hand, playing with his ears, looking out the window, contemplating his name.
His name. As someone who silently giggles when I come across “unfortunate” human names, this was a defining choice. His foster family named him Red, which was a no-go from the start. So, I’m doing some free association thinking and the movie Troy with Brad Pitt as Achilles floats into my thoughts, and how he fell in love with Persephone, the protector of the oracle of Apollo, the Greek god of light, their Sun God. The Romans worshipped Apollo as a god of healing. Light, the sun, healing…exactly what was needed in the vacuum of our lives that Peanut left. Not a replacement, but a healer. That’s a lot of expectation for an eight-week, nine-pound puppy, but fucking-a did he deliver!!
From the moment we got back home, his huge personality filled every shadow of darkness. It took two rounds of obedience classes to get him to honestly, the sub-par level in which he would listen and “obey.” We did get him kennel trained which was huge because Peanut wasn’t, and it eventually became problematic – like the time in Milwaukee when he got my new $1,700 eyeglasses off of my night stand and I woke to the sound of him chewing and destroying them a mere two hours after I fell asleep.
Two weeks ago, I opened my Petfinder app and plugged in the info about what type of dog I was looking for (size, sex, age, etc.). Then I added our info (kids, other pets, type of yard, etc.). This is the website where we found Apollo. There are small-to-medium sized male puppies available for adoption. Some of them are part-terrier with wired hair like Apollo had. Some of them have the same black and tan markings that Peanut had.
While looking at pictures and reading puppy bios, it crosses my mind that I may be looking for a “replacement” for Apollo, and that if a pup has a different personality from his, which of course he will, I will be disappointed.
I just untangled my own answer right there.
