Love Song for Noah

Noah was my first Valentine from Michelle. We'd just moved in together and I was missing my parents' Springer Boudreaux somethin' feirce. We saw the ad in the paper. We said decided we shouldn't get a puppy. We decided we should visit the Springer breeder "just to look." We decided we wanted a liver-and-white female. I picked up the prettiest pup in the box (a black-and-white male) and it was a done deal. He was all fat and bloated b/c the breeder was feeding him crappy Wal-Mart food and he farted the whole way home. We thought he had a wad of food glued into the fur on the top of his head, but upon his innaugural bath, we discovered that, no, the hair just grew in the wrong direction-- he had a dorsal fin. We registered his name with the AKC as "Noah's Little Orca."

Since then, that dog and I have been obsessed with each other night and day. He is my lap blanket who smells like corn chips, the best damn dog I could ever have asked for, my love and my constant.

When Michelle and I split up, we had an agreement that anything that was a gift belonged the reciever, not the giver. But Noah wasn't really part of that deal-- he was always my dog, no matter what.

However.

I now have a job that requires me to be away from home an average of 11 hours a day.

However.

Noah has never been completely alone-- there was always another dog or Michelle or me or one of my retired parents around to keep him company. As a result, as I discovered when my dad drove him here to DC last weekend, he emits a non-stop stream of high-pitched, panicked barking when left alone for longer than 15 minutes. I learned this second-hand from my neighbors (who were, understandably, on the verge of creating a lynchmob or calling the cops on his neurotic ass) on the one night Fred and I went out to dinner.

However.

My new schmancy job requires me to go to Hawaii for a week (a week that, coincidentally coinicides (ha! redundant!) with my 30th birthday) in December, and, upon study of the going rates for dog boarding around here, I discovered that I would fork over nearly twice my (already quite pricey) rent in order to keep him someplace safe in my absense.

And so.

I've sent my drooly-mouthed, sheddin' bastard, floppy, spazzy, mush-face of a schmog back home to stay with my parents-- who dote on him with ridiculous frequency, who have a dog of there own who lives to wrassle-- so that he can be safe and happy.

I can't help but feel I'm letting him down. I can't help but feel terribly lonely here in this city of strangers. I can't help but feel guilty no matter what choice I'd made.

This is the crappiest week I've had since I moved here. So far.

(Oh, I miss you so, my Peanutio P.!)