Sasha

Our family feels more complete, now.

These last 15+ months have been hard, to say the least. With everything medical, emotional, spiritual…it’s been overwhelming and painful. When Justin got home at the end of October, we knew Harper was old and getting sick. We did not expect that we would be letting her go the first full day Justin was home. Our hearts never fully recovered, and probably won’t. She was our first “child,” and who helped us in ways that are inexplainable. She gave us joy, connection, pushed us to get outside, gave us structure to our day-to just say a mention a few things.

We always knew we would want another dog eventually, we just didn’t know when. We didn’t want to replace Harper and we were in the midst of crisis after crisis. When Lucy was in the NICU, we had one another. However, when one of us is gone, either in the hospital or work or insert whatever reason here, it is incredibly isolating, even with all of the help from friends and family. Harper filled that role, and now it felt like our house was too big; we were missing something.

We started looking at dogs, and all of them were just not the right fit. If it were just Justin and I, the story would be so different (but less rich). We would have said yes to any one of those dogs, but Lucy needs a very specific type of personality and connection that we honestly didn’t know we would be able to find. So, we gave up thinking we are just going be for a while and pick up looking again later, because, honestly, it was painful. Seeing these wonderful dogs but knowing they aren’t the right match, but also knowing they are going back to horrible situations.

Not long after we decided to stop our search, a group we had contacted months before had found our email in a spam folder and reached out about a sweet girl named Sasha. They read about Lucy and couldn’t help but laugh at the similarities. Sasha was also a medical miracle. Some time in her past, she had broken her pelvis and healed without medical intervention. Like the great April Ludgate describes their dog Champion, “(they) can do more with three legs than most dogs can do with four! Except digging (they) are really bad at digging.” Though Sasha has all four legs, one is seemingly for stylistic purposes only and it doesn’t phase her one bit.

With no strings attached, Sasha’s foster came over to introduce us. To say she lit up the room and our hearts is an understatement. From then on we started to seriously consider adopting Sasha. Of course what ran through our minds was everything from money to timing to training to medical needs for all of us AND Sasha, traveling, and most importantly-Lucy.

So-we prayed and we hashed out everything. Each thing we questioned was given a positive answer before we even asked it. It was evident that Sasha was meant to be our dog, or more importantly, we were meant to be Sasha’s humans. What sealed it was her connection with Lucy.

During all of this time, we kept expecting our families various difficulties to pass or the hard chapters to close. Recently, we became so disheartened with Justin’s new diagnosis of Crohns because by now things were supposed to be healed. By now, Lucy was supposed to be g-tube site free. By now, we were supposed to be in full swing of this “new season” right in time for our two year wedding anniversary and to celebrate, we were bringing Sasha to be forever home with us. Instead, Justin is starting new treatments soon and Lucy is currently recovering from her gtube closure surgery that took place yesterday.

This isn’t a new season, or maybe it is, but it is not what was laid out or expected. Our excitement turned to fear as we thought of friends and family questioning if we were irresponsible or just plain stupid for adopting Sasha in the midst of yet another whirlwind of a hot mess.

We have realized that life is never going to be completely settled, and there is never going to be a perfect time. All we can do is prepare for what we do know and adapt to what comes our way. We’ve decided that instead of letting things continue to happen to us, we are going to make a decision for our family and invite this sweet pup to join us, to help us cope, to help us heal, to help us get our structure back, get us outside, to give us more joy.

Zero burden, just love and needed peace and comfort that could only come from our little Sasha. In just the five days she has been with us, we have seen a change in our home. We are outside more, we laugh more, we play more. We spend less time on our phones. Sasha realizes our change in mood before we do and calls us to be present-not just for her, or ourselves, but for Lucy. You can tell she holds pride in the fact that she has bonded us even more. She has been this lifeline I don’t think we fully realized we needed.

Sasha will never take the place of Harper, she will always be our first pup. However, Sasha has expanded our hearts in such a short amount of time, and has grounded us. Helped us breathe.

So, welcome to the Rauh Family, Sasha. We love you so much already.