Little Miss Mae

dwell

Sep 1

Little Miss Mae. Maggie Mae, to be precise. We’d been waiting for her for the past few weeks - preparing, nesting, trying to remember how puppy life goes, counting the days until she was ready to join us with her puppy breath, puppy dreams, and puppy love.

But really, we’d been waiting for her for much longer than that, it had been months. We’d even named her way back in late winter when our hearts felt as empty as the lifeless landscape. Like Nellie Belle, we named her and called her ours before she even existed. Her name, Maggie, was the pet name my Dad gave me when I was a little girl - Maggie McDougal, it was. (Yes, hearing Dad call me Maggie was as familiar to me as hearing him call me Carmella! And if you’re wondering, my sister’s pet name was Matilda McGillicutty, and our brother’s was Mr. MaGoo.) So there was her first name. And Mae? It’s a nod to May, our sweet Nellie’s birth month.

But how long would it take to find our new girl? We didn’t know. It was an empty wondering that seemed to stretch on and on. We limped along, my husband and I, daily sending each other golden retriever puppy reels to get us by. Then, one day in early August, in the time it took to dial a particular breeder’s phone number and ask the question, we found our Maggie Mae, the last female puppy in the litter. She was ours.

Last week, I took a road trip to Montana to get her. We tent camped, she and I, on our way back home. If having a puppy sleep across your neck as you’re snuggled down in a sleeping bag isn’t precious, I don’t know what is. From the moment we arrived home, she seemed to belong, like she was the one we’d been waiting for, the next sweet furry girl to follow Nellie in our family. By her second day, she’d figured out how to get into Nellie’s chair all by herself. I turned around, and there she was, snuggled in, as though she already knew.