I have always thought that I would only be a dog person, ever since I grew up with the most perfect dog, Zoe. Zoe was a white and black German Shepard. She was the thing in my childhood that changed who I was as a person. She was there from when I was born up until December 2018. She is the main thing that I will forever keep from childhood, and I think of her every day when I put my necklace around my neck every morning. She is in who I act as a person, I believe myself to fiercely loyal and protective of my loved ones, which she did every day for my family and especially my siblings. She loved us so dearly; I would lay with her on bad days, and she would drag us back to our house when we got too far from the house on her standards. Â
My favorite memory with her was when we lived in my first home on Horse Run Road, and my older brothers took me out to the roof for the first time. They had done it before, and I wanted to watch the sun set. When I got out with my brothers, and she jumped out the window before they could shut it. There we sat, my oldest brother, the second oldest, then me with my arm around her watching the sun set in the distance over trees and acres of yard that we played in together. Â
At that moment, I prayed to God she would stay with me forever. That she would be with me the day I was dropped at college, when I got married to the love of my life and when I would go through possible struggles with jobs and kids, fiercely protecting them just like me. That ended when we found out she had cancer throughout her body, if you know the movie, “The Fault in Our Stars”, the line “I light up like a Christmas tree.” That describes perfectly of what it was like when she went to the doctors and got tested for cancer and other things because she was hurt, and we can tell. Â
I have had a dog that is my best friend, who I wanted to be around me forever. But three years later, my mom finally agreed to let us get a cat, so we went to the SPCA and ended up with two. But my cat was Winnie. She was a black and white cat, and she hated to have attention on her unless she wanted it. She would sit on her cat perch and watch us live our lives. She and I were alike in many ways. I felt that she was a gift, my Zoe. She would sit with me while I did my homework during Covid and sleep next to my head at night to be close by. Every day that I would leave the house, I would come back to she would be in the same spot on her perch like waiting for me to come home. Â
These two animals I have loved in my lifetime, which have bought me joy in a way that I never felt beyond them. I am so thankful for them to have become a large part of my life, and I don’t know what I would do and how different I would be without them. I wish that I could wrap my arms around them and lay there in their presence and feel the calm they gave me.Â