Seven Months

The whole truth about Rufus, for the people who love him too.

A note: this one’s for the readers who’ve been here a while and know the texture of my life. I’m writing this from Indiana. Second trip this month, after a long night that ended in the ER with my mother. This has a great deal to do with why Rufus is exactly where he needs to be.

Thank you for questioning, caring, and understanding.

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Some of you have been asking about Rufus. Over the last several months, many of you fell in love with him like we did. Ahhh. Goofy, energetic, beautiful Rufus.

Our sweetest boy is living in Washington now, with his own big brother from an earlier litter, folded into a canine community with more room and more hands than we could give him.

Here’s how we got there.

I’ve had dogs my whole life. I know what a puppy asks of you, and Greg and I said yes to all of it with our eyes open. The work was never the surprise. The timing was. Rufus came in hot right as my mother’s health started to slip, right as I understood, really understood, that she’d need more of me. Not once in a while. Often.

You followed his unlucky first year. The tonsil procedure. The foxtails he swallowed like snacks. The multiple vet visits. The pneumonia. The hospital stay. The incessant skin allergies. The list went on. That dog fought hard for a puppy. It was one crisis after another.

Between the ranch, four of our six kids living at home, and a mother I now fly to without much warning, something had to give. I couldn’t be everywhere at once. I couldn’t be enough in all the places that needed me. And our working dog Rufus deserved someone who could be.

When we told his breeder where we were at with everything, how we were struggling, she didn’t flinch. She sprang into action. His older brother from a previous litter was in Washington, she said, and that family would gleefully absorb him into their canine community. Dogs, land, time. All of it.

It was a decision that didn’t come lightly, and trust me, it was an agonizing goodbye. The kind that is right but still guts you. We miss him every day, but luckily we get updates, pictures, and proof that he’s thriving.

Rufus and his bro hiking in Washington.

It was my supreme honor to be Rufus’ human mom for those seven months. But you can’t always see what’s coming. I’m needed in a new way now. A different way. One that, if I’m honest, has no timeline I can name.

The judgment will come, I imagine, but that’s the trade when you share your life out loud. I’ll still be over here loving animals the way I always have. That love is part of why I made this call. Rufus deserved more than what was left of me during what has become a genuinely hard season in my life.

But you asked about Rufus. And now you know.

All of my love,

Catt