Nelson

When Nelson came to me 15 months ago, he came with a reputation as a biter. He came from animal control, a stray, to the agency Needy Paws, who fostered him. He was a biter with his foster family, his first adoptive placement (they surrendered him back), and his second foster family.

His third foster family was an older couple, and he was great with them. This was at the beginning of COVID.

But I knew when he came to me that he had baggage, and so I was dismayed but not terribly surprised when that baggage emerged. First it was last summer, nipping hard at a finger poked through the fence next door, then a few weeks later going after one of my Circus Harmony nephews and one of the Circus Harmony students.

Recently, the biting and nipping has emerged more often, pointed toward me, toward the loving girl next door, toward my students. On Monday he went after yet another child who was visiting my home with his grandmother.

Monday night I made the difficult decision to surrender Nelson. The agency assures me that I am doing the right thing, that he had a good year with me, that he was damaged in ways that he himself can’t explain but that we can see, that I did nothing to make this happen but that some human somewhere in his life did.

I am of course wracked with sorrow and grief. My little buddy saved me a year ago from the soul-sucking isolation of the pandemic. I saved him too. We complemented each other.

And Tuesday morning, he was gone in a flash. We had one last car ride down Kingshighway, my hand caressing his head and his tummy as it always does in the car, and in an instant in a parking lot he was in a kennel in another car. I thought they might do an assessment or something and let me have another day or two with him, but Tuesday afternoon I got a long note saying that he wouldn’t return.

Tuesday was filled with more tears than I realized I had to shed.

I am crushed.

I may also be a bit over-the-top right now, but the emotions are real and raw.