Today’s featured article is written by Loretta Dalton.
She came to us on a snow day. The morning brought excitement as I anticipated a rare weekday at home. On this icy day, I also hoped to spend a little time with my eighteen-year-old son who rarely stayed home long enough for me to complete a sentence much less have a conversation.
The house was still and silent. I looked out the window to see if the hill above my house was icy and saw a comforting, familiar sight: three four-wheel drive trucks. Two of my son’s best friends had spent the night. I went back upstairs to see if the boys wanted breakfast. As I approached the room, I expected to hear the sound of boys snoring or talking about what they were going to do that day, but, instead, I heard a strange scratching and whimpering sound coming from the bedroom. When I opened the door I quickly found the source of the sound: a six-week-old Pit Bull puppy. Hoping she belonged to one of the others, I woke the boys and asked about her. One of them said, “Oh, didn’t Jonathan tell you about her?” No, he didn’t tell me because if he had she wouldn’t be here, I thought. The friend continued, “He rescued her last night.” The other one piped in, “Yeah, they were going to kill her and Jonathan brought her home.” Well how great was this! Not only do we not allow animals in the house, this animal was a Pit Bull! Her days at our house were numbered, or so I thought.
Later in the day, I called my husband and asked if he had met the newest member of the family. Hoping he would be outraged and demand a new home quickly be found for her, I asked him what we were going to do with her.
He replied, “She sure is cute. Maybe she will help.”
I asked him how in the world a Pit Bull was going to help anything. Didn’t we have enough problems?
He simply replied, “Whiskey is just a puppy. It will be o.k.”
Whiskey! What did he say? Did he call that dog Whiskey? We have a Pit Bull named Whiskey? I don’t think so.
The days came and went, but Whiskey didn’t. It seemed as though she was here to stay. I often found her in my son’s room in the mornings, having slept with him through the night. It didn’t take long for everyone, except our female Golden Retriever and me, to fall in love with her.
I tried to love Whiskey. Everyone assured me that not all Pit Bulls are the same; it’s the way you raise them that determines their personality not their breed. I was just beginning to come around to the idea, when a large veterinary hospital bill came due. It seemed that our princess, Whiskey, had Parvovirus, a virus often fatal in puppies. I was so ashamed of the way I felt about her when I realized she probably wouldn’t live. The vet was not optimistic at all about her chances. But, a couple of days and a thousand dollars later, she came home as good as new.
I was trying to get accustomed to her breed and her name while she continued to win over everyone else. She was gentle and sweet; she never met a stranger and loved most dogs, except the female ones. Our neighbors even loved her!
While Whiskey continued to make herself at home, our home seemed to be falling apart. Our son was having problems. He had always suffered from anxiety, especially about new situations, but as he grew older he began to suffer more and more from depression. Our worst fears were realized in June of that year when we discovered he had become addicted to pain medication. We were devastated and at a loss as to what to do to help him. The more we tried to help, the worse things got.
Whiskey loved to ride in my son’s truck. One night he came home from taking her for a ride and told us she had jumped out of his truck and he couldn’t find her. He and my husband immediately retraced the area where Jonathan and Whiskey had been that night, but, like Jonathan, she was very lost.
For eleven days my husband searched the woods surrounding the area where Whiskey had jumped out of the truck. He put up “Lost Dog” signs all around the area. We received a few phone calls from people thinking they had found her, but none of the dogs turned out to be our Whiskey. A little girl who saw one of the signs even called my husband and told him she was so sad that he had lost his dog and she sure did hope he found it. As the days passed, the chances of finding our girl grew less and less. It seemed we couldn’t help Whiskey any more than we could help our son.
On the eleventh day, my husband decided to go back to the area one more time. He had made up his mind that this would be the last time he would look for her; there was no way she was still alive after all those days with no food, plus no one had seen her. He drove down the dirt road that had become very familiar over the past few days, and, just as he was about to pull out into the main highway and give up, he spotted something brown in a nearby ditch. He yelled, “Whiskey!” and she came bounding out of the ditch and jumped in the car so fast he did a double take to make sure it was really our Whiskey.
He drove home as fast as he could to share the great news. I heard him pull into the driveway and readied myself for the disappointment that was surely coming. But, the noise I heard in the doorway of my home was joyous. Whiskey was home! For me, Whiskey’s return symbolized hope; hope that my son would return to the person he was before addiction ruled his life. Surely if Whiskey could escape being shot, survive Parvovirus as a puppy and return home basically unscathed from eleven days alone in the woods, everything else would return to normal. But, I was wrong.
On July 22, 2010, the same year Whiskey came to live with us, the pain in my son’s life became too much for him and he committed suicide. We buried him in the same clothes my husband wore the day he found Whiskey in the woods: clothes that, to our family, symbolized hope.
Our faith in God has brought us through the dark, lonely days. Because of our Saviour, we know that our prodigal was welcomed into the loving arms of God; a God he loved. We know that the mental illness and addiction that plagued his mind have been completely healed, and he is happier now than he had ever been on earth.
Whiskey still lives with us. She has been more of a blessing to our family than anyone, especially me, could ever have imagined. My husband takes her on a long hike in the woods everyday with him. He and Whiskey have a prayer log that they visit quite often in those woods. My husband sits on the log with Whiskey close by and prays for the needs of our family and others he knows. He brings her in the basement at night to sleep on a warm bed and he sits and talks to her about how much Jonathan loved her. I think he feels close to him when he is with Whiskey. She is one of the last tangible reminders we have of our son.
Whiskey’s life is somewhat of a metaphor for God’s love for His children: Because of unconditional love, she was rescued from death. When lost, everything possible was done to bring her back to the place she belonged. Her every need is met by the one that loves her the most.
What a blessing Whiskey has been!
