Schrodinger's Dog

On Saturday I got an email from my good friend and editor, Tom Shroder, with the subject line “this is so sad.” It was about a white dog named Diamond who was four years old and needed to be adopted, right away. Diamond never says a word. Dogs speak, if you listen. Diamond doesn’t speak. She says nothing. She was alone as a pup, and then a young adult, and then an adult, in a cement backyard, apparently in a nice neighborhood. Occasionally, food was thrown at her. She is nineteen pounds and skinny. The person caring for her, right now, is a kind person, and treating her well, and looking to find her a home. The person writes: “Because she has been programmed to be invisible, she demands nothing, spends time alone, and waits to be instructed. She can hold her business through the night and hours after. She loves to be cuddled. She is afraid of being outside so a small backyard or under a deck would make it easier until she adjusts. …”

I showed the email to Rachel. I said “yes?” She said, “yes.” That is how life-altering decisions are made, sometimes. You just say yes. You are not a hero. There is no glory in this, there is only pain, and relief of pain. You just say yes.

I’ve never met Diamond, because that was the end of the conversation between Diamond’s owner and me. I had only an email address. I sent her entreaties, including a link to this story.

Nothing back. Life is full of misconnections. Vulnerable lives are changed for the better, and ruined forever by crossed signals and missed communications and no one is to blame.

Rachel and I and Lexi want her, all 19 pounds of her. Diamond is white, with brown freckles. She is beautiful.

I don’t really have much more to say today.

I wrote this an hour ago. The lady who is caring for the dog just got back to me, minutes ago. We are in an email impasse. A problem of modernity. I do not know how this will end. Diamond is Schrodinger’s dog. With the umlaut.

There won’t be a finish to this column, until there is.