Megan Stielstra's Blog

In early February, 2005, Christopher and I adopted Mojo from a local shelter called Precious Pets Almost Home. They estimated him to be about ten weeks old, which means his birthday is now-ish.

Our grand master plan was to get a puppy in the summertime, when I’d be home more often for training and walking and pooping. But then we were poking around on petfinder.com near the end of January, and saw this:

I knew it was my dog.

People have since asked how exactly I knew, the same way that, when you’re single, you bug your friends in relationships: “How did you, like, KNOW s/he was the one?” and the answer is always, “You just DO,” which (back in the day) really pissed me off ‘cause I needed there to be an equation, something with STEPS, because steps were accomplishable, but, of course, there aren’t any: no steps, no logic, no discernable formula to such things, just a screaming in your gut, a big invisible hand pointing down out of the clouds, a voice in the back of your head going THERE, YOU DUMBASS, LOOK! HE’S RIGHT THERE! IN FRONT OF YOUR VERY EYES!

It was the same with Mojo. We knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was supposed to be ours.

Over the past four years, this dog has saved my life about a thousand times, none as notable as the first few months after we brought Caleb home, when I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around my hormones, couldn’t quite take care of myself, couldn’t quite stop crying for any given length of time. I wasn’t Brooke Shields, Down Came the Rain, but I certainly wasn’t myself, and when Christopher would leave for work in the morning, and Caleb would cry, and I would cry—both of us sitting there crying, Calen ‘cause he was three weeks old and that’s what he was supposed to do and me ‘cause he was three weeks old and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do!—my dog would stand guard at my feet, ready to attack whatever unseen force was upsetting us. When Caleb would finally sleep and I would nap, Mojo would lay down next to my head, ears back and alert, or else sit frozen by the bassinet, as though he was watching the baby so I could sleep just a little more.

These days, the two of them are the best of friends, and both Christopher and I are a little jealous that our dog loves the kid more than either of us.

Today, we fed Mojo sausage in honor of his birthday.

Tomorrow, he’ll get sausage ‘cause I love him.

The day after that, he’ll get none, ‘cause I’ll have to retrain him not to beg.