I’ve always been a planner. It’s why I love writing — I can plot out a story and decide every turn. I’ve never learned to embrace chaos. And despite this fact, a few years ago I decided to get a puppy. (Admittedly, sometimes I’m also a bit of an idiot.)
I’ve had puppies twice in my life before, so I knew how much of a handful they can be — with their little shark teeth and their propensity for peeing on the floor the second you look away.
But I did what I always did: I planned. I bought baby gates and found a dog walker. I got pre-approved for adoption at a local rescue. I knew it would be difficult, but I was ready for a challenge. My life had gotten a little too hemmed-in, a little too tidy. I needed some excitement.
What I got was a whirlwind in the form of a twelve-week-old lab mix. As soon as she saw me at the rescue, she jumped in my lap and started licking my chin. She was perfect. The volunteers around us cooed. I was a goner.
She’s good, my little shark. She’s very good.
The trouble started approximately three minutes after I got her home. She’d been carried around the rescue because she was too little to get vaccines against parvovirus and the other dangerous bugs that could live on the rescue’s floors. So nearly as soon as I put her down on the grass to run around, she began to yelp. She picked up her paw and wouldn’t put it back down. At first, I thought she might have been stung by a bee. But further inspection showed that something was wrong with her back leg.
A trip to the emergency vet revealed what I feared: her leg was broken, and likely had been for a few days. And just like that, I’d gone from having a lab mix to having a tiny maniac with a giant pink cast whom I was supposed to prevent from walking around. That’s right — I was supposed to keep the puppy from walking. I was too stunned to laugh in the vet’s face at that suggestion. But if I could go back in time, I would.
To say the next few months were difficult would be an understatement. The sweet little puppy from the rescue turned out to be a girl with an attitude, who had no patience for the fact that she was supposed to be injured. She flipped over the playpen I got her, barreled through a baby gate, chewed her way through everything — including the drywall in my kitchen. And through all the sleepless nights and the forgotten plans, she became the best sidekick I can imagine.
Now, four years later, she’s taught me to love chaos, because she’s brought me so much chaos and so much delight. The leg healed up perfectly, despite all the running she did on that cast. And I’m still trying to keep up with her!
Jessica Chiarella is the author of the novel And Again, which was the August 2016 Target Book Club Pick. She holds an MA in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside. Her second novel, The Lost Girls, is forthcoming from Putnam in July of 2021. She lives in Chicago with her dog, Leia.
