Meet Buddy

As soon as I started to process the reality of the stay at home orders, I began thinking impatiently about the puppy we had decided to get which had not yet been born and would not be available to us for another four or five months. The prospect of Quinn being home, with just us and our old dog Mosey, unable to see ski club friends or school friends, teachers or coaches, or anyone else for that matter, just seemed like too much. What better time to have a puppy—something to bring joy and keep us busy and get us outside? For most of Quinn’s life, she’s talked of getting a puppy someday. There could be no better time than March of 2020.

I called Harold, the breeder we’d made a deposit with in January, and though there was no way to move us up on his waiting list, he shared the name of another breeder near him. I communicated with her and she had one black lab that would be available in May. In my mind, again, there was a yellow guy, and in my impatience I wanted him now, not later. Sam and Quinn rolled their eyes at my obsessive week-long search, and I called Harold again. This time he shared the name of a “crusty old Mainer” from whom Harold himself, it turns out, had been buying dogs for twenty years. He had a litter that was ready and he might have one or two pups left; Harold had one of the litter mates and said she was doing great. He warned me Dave Luxton wouldn’t seem warm or friendly on the phone, but assured me he was a decent guy who had good dogs. 

I spoke with Mr. Luxton within the hour. It was Saturday afternoon, March 28th, and he told me he had two yellow males left and ready to go. He sent me photos. He was gruff. And he warned me there was “some guy comin’ up from Boston” the next morning at nine and he couldn’t make me any promises over the phone—how was he to know if I was serious? I called Harold back and asked why this man had puppies left when Harold had a waiting list months long. He told me it was a good question to be asking, but with a laugh explained that Dave Luxton did not advertise, he had an aversion to the internet, and he only ever sold his dogs through word of mouth. “If I were you,” he told me, “I would get in the car tomorrow and pick up a pup before they close the border.” And with that surreal notion, I made our plans. We would arrive in Bethel, Maine by 8am on March 29th, just ahead of the guy from Boston.

Getting to Maine by 8am required leaving Vermont by 5am. It required getting a good night’s sleep. But how could we possibly do that? Quinn was so nervous, she burst into tears at every turn. “What if he doesn’t like me?” she asked, again and again. I tried to assure her that was an impossibility, but still she worried about falling in love and being rejected by the pup she had dreamed of for so long.

Quinn’s “sister-friend” Giselle and her family were also on Harold’s waiting list for a yellow lab. And they too were wondering how to get their only daughter through the at-home days ahead. So, I tipped them off too and they made the same plans we did. We’d all be getting up early the next day.

On the drive over we tried to imagine a name. Sam generated his usual sampling of haggard old man names, straight out of Appalachia, and turned his nose up at the hard to fathom names Quinn generated. I subtly tried reminding her of the little yellow lab stuffed animal she had been given by Nonna and Papa, whom she had named Buddy, and as the other names came and went, Buddy kept popping up. In my mind, it was the purpose he was meant to fill, as winter dragged on and lockdown set in, and it was a name she had first come up with. Sam and Quinn worried it might be confusing, since we are in the habit of calling Quinn Buddy, but somehow it felt right still.

We arrived at Mr. Luxton’s house early, as promised, and found our friends had already arrived. Graciously, they waited to let Quinn go in first. Social distancing had already set in and it felt strange to see them there and not be able to greet them with hugs. Everyone seemed to feel nervous. I went in to the barn to meet Mr. Luxton and get a glimpse of the dogs and their first home before bringing Quinn in. To my great relief, I entered a clean office space, with a couple of clean kennels and a big clean pen with a wiggling bunch of five happy, well-fed puppies. And they were gorgeous. And Mr. Luxton, it turns out, was charming and friendly and a softy for his dogs and for little kids. 

I went out to get Quinn and Sam. She was so nervous she looked like she might cry, again. When she stepped inside and saw the pups, I thought she might explode. Mr. Luxton pulled out the two yellow pups she had to choose from and, as the stories always go, she found her match instantly. One chubby guy ran right to her, not to me or Sam, but to Quinn. And he sat on her foot, leaned against her leg, and stared up at her nervously, as if to ask, “What if she doesn’t like me?” As this was happening, the other pup, a bit smaller and a bit more feisty, was jumping all around her and, without giving him much of a glance, she gently held him away so as not to be interrupted from her Buddy. It was clear to all in the room that they had chosen each other.

Once our paperwork was done, and we got our instructions for how to care for him, Quinn carried him out and we sent Giselle and her parents in to meet their Willoughby. While we waited for them, I watched Quinn nervously process that she was going to be taking a puppy home with her. He stuck close to her. She ran, he followed. He absorbed every ounce of her attention and love. 

As I watched her, I realized that as excited as I was going to be to have a puppy at home, watching Quinn’s joy was a joy that far exceeded my own. “I have a puppy,” she would said, again and again, in those first weeks with him, somehow still surprised by how lucky she was. And of course I just thought, the best is yet to come buddy; the best is yet to come.

Buddy's first pickup from Quinn

Sister friends with their brother dogs

Heading home, from Maine to Vermont

He made it!

After an early morning, a long drive, and a warm bath for Buddy, they were both tired out.

Add caption

Wherever Quinn goes, Buddy goes...happy to take a nap and wait if he has to.

Often sleeping, always with her.

When it is a tough day, he calms her down.

In stay-at-home mode, we've had lots of these days.

Reading buddy

Snuggle buddy

He seems to have a good sense of what his role is supposed to be.

Week Three

Today we are supposed to be flying to Paris. We would arrive and take a train south to meet Josh, Geraldine and the boys for a week-long visit in the country, before returning to Paris for three days of exploring the city on our own. Instead we are on our own at home, and millions of people around the globe are also at home. 

In the past three weeks, the realizations have continued to set in as exponentially more people, on every continent except Antarctica, have been infected. When we sent students home just over three weeks ago, the number of confirmed cases in the US was under 300, and in Vermont less than 5. Today there will be over 350,000 people in this country alone, and over 1.2 million worldwide. This morning there are 512 confirmed cases in Vermont, 22 cases in Washington County. It’s no longer just the elderly who are dying. Worldwide over 70,000 people have died; today we will hit the 10,000 mark in our country alone.

On March 19th we taught our first remote classes, hopeful (but not confident) they would last only until our scheduled April break. One week later, on the evening of March 26th, the governor announced that all Vermont schools would remain closed for the rest of the school year. We didn’t tell Quinn until the next day.

Our days of working remotely, are also Quinn’s days of remote learning. A few days after her school closed, she was able to go to pick up materials from her teacher. She brought home a yellow folder full of work packets and a Chrome book. Our dining room table became ground zero, with everyone’s work piles blending together. Sam and I have been so flustered trying to get ourselves prepared, that we have given Quinn little help. I counted on her love of reading to get her through, but she worries too much—about “not doing it right,” about falling behind her peers, about disappointing her teacher, about being embarrassed. 

Quinn has been working hard all year at learning to control her emotions and express her needs without angry outbursts. They’ve continued to happen, but less and less frequently and always with quick and genuine apologies. Better than most people I know, Quinn can offer articulate and mature explanations of what is bothering her, once she reigns in the rage. In the past couple of weeks, as she’s worried silently about what’s going on, the rage has started flaring up again. We are trying to help her. Sam will sit and draw with her, as if she is in art class. 

My contribution, predictably, has been to help her establish some order for her work: a different folder for each subject and a chart that she could use to track her progress and structure her structureless days. Quinn, like her mother, likes to check boxes.

One evening as she was headed to bed, she stopped at her whiteboard, which hangs above her desk, to put a checkmark on the calendar as she does each day to mark its completion. She paused. She stared at March and then said, to no one in particular, “I don’t know why I even bother anymore; the days are all the same.” The next day the calendar was erased and this was in its place:

From the very beginning of this I have been thinking it’s a tough time to be an only child. And, recalling our original promise, that she would always have a dog, and realizing that we are looking at five more months of being at home, it became a Coronavirus mission of mine, from the outset, to find her a puppy as soon as possible. We brought Buddy home from Bethel, Maine, at the end of week one.