Like children, it doesn't seem fair to have a favorite pet over another as each pet as his or her own personality and needs, but sometimes, there is a pet that just acts special, feels special, is special. It does not matter how long you have had the pet. It only matters that the pet has wormed his or her way into your heart and made a home there.
So it was with Hachiko. Hachiko was a purebred tenterfield terrier. She was bought on a whim. I had gone to the local pet breeder to find out more information on the shiba inu. While waiting for one of the handlers to speak with me, I saw this tiny black and white puppy sitting in a cage all alone with a sign that announced it was on sale.
The puppy's eyes were so bright and playful that I could not resist asking if I could see the puppy.
When the employee placed the little puppy in my hand, the puppy was literally in one hand. She was that small. I had never held a dog that small as I had always had medium to large sized dogs.
Yet, the little thing was a bundle of energy and muscle as she ran around the partitioned section where I was able to handle her and, doom of doom, bond with her.
From those fifteen minutes spent with her in that partition, I was already calling her 'Hachiko' after one of my favorite manga characters and the legendary Hachiko, the loyal dog who has a statue outside of Shibuya train station in Japan.
As she ran around me and cuddled and snuggled, I knew it was love.
When I brought her home, my son's first words when he saw her big ears pop up were, "What were you thinking?" Then he saw the way she snuggled into me and he rolled his eyes as he grumbled, "I hope I don't step on her."
It took my son longer to warm up to Hachi than I had. She was a lot more mischievous with him than she was with me. She definitely played the good cop/bad cop game with us.
By six months though, he was hooked too. Hard not to get hooked when Hachi was so loving and attentive. She loved to play like a cat when chasing a ball. She enjoyed riding in the car or walking to nowhere special. She absolutely adored to be snuggled and cuddled. In fact, she acted more like a baby than a real baby. Upon witnessing her behavior, my cousin remarked, "This is the trippiest dog I've ever met. She's so sweet and loving it is unreal."
Never have I had a pet that was quite like Hachiko. I had been told that when a pet loves, he or she loves unconditionally. I had never experienced that kind of love because I was usually the one who just fed the pet while the pet bonded with someone else. This may have been due to my work schedule which begins early in the morning and where I may not arrive home until late afternoon and too tired to do anything beyond taking a shower, eating dinner and stringing together a few coherent sentences. A pet needs a person home and present in order to bond with them. As such, most pets that I had in house bonded with my son or my mother or father.
But Hachiko had bonded with me. No matter how late I got home or how wiped out I was, she was there with a happy face and her body wiggling with delight as her tail wagged furiously.
And the sight of her would make me smile no matter how stressful the day was. It was she who reminded me of how to live in the present rather than just go through the motions.
It goes without saying that my heart broke the day that we had to put Hachiko down. For an unknown reason, she injured her back that caused her to lose function from her mid-back to hind quarters. We tried to find alternative ways to work with the injury. I was even ready to get her a wagon that she could be strapped to so that she could walk.
However, one of the side effects of a nerve injury such as hers was that when feeling comes back to the extremities, it can cause incessant tingling. For Hachiko, the tingling was so bad that she had started to chew her feet. Near the end, she had chewed one of her toes right off.
Not wanting her to suffer further, we made the decision to put her down. She was only one and a half years old.
As heartbreaking as it was, I was glad to have had her in my life. It was a brief, incredibly sweet interlude in my life that I needed. I had grown so regimented that I felt like I lived to wake up, go to work and then come home to start over again.
When Hachiko came into my life, her little body and big hearted love loosened up my robotic manner of living. It seems strange to say it but it really feels like it took the love of a pet to make me feel human again.
I am not yet ready to have another dog. I still need to get over losing Hachiko and like losing any family member, she cannot be replaced. Yet, I hope that one day, I will be ready and the lessons I learned with Hachiko can be shared with another dog.
A love of a pet is a gift. It is a different kind of love from a lover, a parent, or a child, but it has its own kind of resonance when it is experienced.