In my twenties and thirties, while my friends were getting married and having children, I was intractably single. What I didn’t imagine was that in my mid-forties both a partner and a child would enter my life as a dog.
Beau was a sweet and obedient yellow lab mix, a rescue who instantly won my heart, but in September 2020, a few days after I brought him home to my one-bedroom affordable housing city condo, I returned from grocery shopping to find him barking, crying, hyperventilating, covered in his own mess, and trying to break out of his crate.
At the time, I had a contamination phobia…