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Nodding, Lucia walked over to the room and put her key in the door, unlocking it so I could go in. She smiled as I walked in and followed me. The old coonhound was waiting at the door leading to the outside, and his tail was wagging furiously.
“What about him?” I asked.
“Him?” she asked, somewhat shocked. “Sure. Would you like to go outside with him? He seems to want to go out back.”
“Absolutely.”
Lucia opened the back door, and the old dog looked at me for a moment, making sure he had my attention, then darted out into the yard. He was galloping for all he was worth and ran all around the fenced area. Lucia seemed surprised and looked back at me.
“He must like you,” she said. “He doesn’t normally show off like that.”
“Really?”
“Usually, he’s content to just kind of wander around. Very protective though, especially of the other animals,” she said. “We used to put him with the kittens because he was so gentle. But now that he’s older, it seems to be harder to get folks in to look at the kittens if he’s there.”
“I see,” I said.
There was no doubt about it, he was my dog. I felt it the second I met eyes with him, but hearing his story sealed the deal. Watching him run around and show that he still had plenty of life left in him was just icing on the cake. A protective dog who liked to wander around and still had plenty of energy? He was perfect.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Lucia said, eyeing the puppy room where Tammy had returned.
“Yes, actually. I’d like to adopt him,” I said.
Fifteen minutes later, I was filling out adoption forms and going through the mandatory process to take a dog home. There was some red tape to go through, but I was willing to do it for him. My mind raced to the conversations I had with Danica, when she mentioned her own dog. I wanted so badly to tell her about the pup I was bringing home, but I still only had her professional information. It made my chest ache, and I wondered if there was some way I could work it into a professional conversation.
16
Danica
I sat at my desk, staring at the email on my laptop for a long time. Probably a lot longer than I should have. I had a lot to do, and my anxiety was already at a breaking point, so obsessing over every word of the email was most likely the worst thing I could do to myself.
I had spent the last two days going back and forth with my boss, having uncomfortable and complicated conversations with him about what was coming in my future.
I was going to be getting settled in becoming a mom in a few months. That meant a lot of changes in how my work was scheduled and what I could do. I wouldn’t be able to spend weeks off at a time at vineyards, spending all day working there trying to get them in shape. I was going to need to take a much more streamlined approach, and possibly a completely different role.
Thankfully, after enough back-and-forth that included me finally laying it out on the line and saying how much I thought I had been overlooked for promotions before, that I got him to move. Now, I was discussing possible scenarios where I would be an executive and someone else would do the day-to-day, leaving me to only travel and be in a vineyard for the final approval or to limit the number of hours I was expected to be in the field.
It was a protracted affair, but I finally felt like I had gotten somewhere. I had sat down at the laptop feeling at least a little bit on the upswing. My dog curled up at my feet almost immediately and was snoring lightly. The house was also finally quiet since Jaz had gone off to her room to pout and apparently fallen asleep.
Jaz had been a big source of the anxiety in recent days. Pregnancy was working on her emotions pretty hard and making her act in ways she never had before. She would blow up about the smallest things, and one wayward comment about how my life was going to change for work turned into an all-out screaming match.
She would never recover from the way her body was changing. She would never get back the time she was missing at the studio. She was never again going to be considered for lead roles since the impression was that she was a “mom” now. So many complaints that flew out of her mouth, all centered around her being cranky that she wasn’t currently dancing and that she was missing that time and those opportunities.
