Millie, The Midlife Crisis Dog

I don’t think of myself as an animal person. I grew up with a cat, but he spent most of his time outdoors and only occasionally crossed my path inside the house. Mike had a dog, but she was an outside pet as well. After we got married, neither of us were dying to have animals in our house.

That has changed over the years, like so many other things. Our life as pet owners began with Miss Kitty, the abandoned kitten who showed up on a friend’s doorstep. We adopted her so young, she still required bottle feeding. Taking on the care of an infant kitten while I was wrangling a rambunctious toddler was not the wisest decision of my life, but it turned out to be prescient: I discovered I was pregnant with my second child not long after Miss Kitty arrived, so the re-training in midnight feedings that she provided me came in handy.

After Miss Kitty came Hailey. Our children were 5 and 7 when we adopted her; we wanted them to have the experience and responsibility of dog ownership, and for some reason it didn’t occur to me that an older, calmer dog would serve that purpose as well as a puppy could. I’d never owned a puppy before Hailey, so I had no idea what I was in for when she came home with us. Added to the general puppy madness was the fact that Hailey is part Shiba, a notoriously stubborn breed. She was easy to house train, because she’s very smart, but we learned quickly that she’d never be an off-leash dog. Still, we all survived her puppy years and Hailey is a senior citizen these days, a 14-year-old who hobbles around on arthritic hips and sleeps most of the day.

She is completely unfazed by Atticus, the rescue cat who was scheduled for euthanasia when we adopted him, and Lexi, the stray who showed up at another friend’s house and needed a new place to live. Atticus came to live with us before Miss Kitty passed away; Lexi joined him when it became clear to us that he needed a buddy to replace the companion he’d lost.

And now there’s Millie. I saw her photo posted on our local animal shelter’s Facebook page last week and just fell in love. I absolutely hadn’t planned on bringing home another puppy. Not now, not ever. When I asked Mike what he thought, he wasn’t completely opposed to the idea. He also wasn’t completely excited about it. But after my son and I went to visit Millie at the shelter, it was clear that we couldn’t leave her there.

Still, after just one day with a puppy in the house, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and second-guessing myself. I confessed as much to Mike. “I have no idea why I did this,” I said. “Every other time we’ve taken in an animal, there was some reason for doing it. This makes no sense. There is no reason why I did this to myself.”

“I know the reason,” Mike said. “Millie is your midlife crisis dog.”

I prepared to say Pfft! (Or something equally eloquent.) But then I thought about it for a moment, and I realized Mike was probably right. I’ve been through a lot of adjustments in the last year. I became an adult orphan. I became the mother of two adult children when my younger child graduated from high school. I took a sabbatical and, with more control over my time, learned a lot about my priorities. I’m thinking of work in terms of the next 15 years now, not in terms of the long haul. I’m clearly moving into a new phase of my life.

But instead of buying a sports car to help me reconnect with my younger self, I adopted a puppy. I named her Millie Maxine. Millie is a nickname for Emily, which was my grandmother’s middle name. Maxine, her daughter, was my mom.

I can already see how Millie’s changing everything: she needs lots of exercise, so I’m getting out of the house more often.  She needs attention, which means I’m spending less time staring at my phone and more time in the real world, playing with her. I’m thinking about things–dog toys, dog treats, dog obedience classes–that I stopped thinking about a long time ago. And Hailey, while not enthusiastic about having an exuberant pup around, is getting a lot more exercise simply by moving herself from one room to another, ignoring Millie’s invitations to play. I’m hopeful she’ll decide to accept a few of them, eventually.

Millie has turned every single thing about my life upside-down in the handful of days I’ve had her at home. And while I can’t say I love that, I can definitely say that she’s exactly what I needed.