My choice after the divorce: OkCupid or Petfinder?

When loving a dog is much harder than loving another man.

J lost my dog ​​and my marriage around the same time.

My husband and I had been going through a cordial separation process for six months when Jessie, our 12-year-old daughter year-old rescue lab, fell ill. Her breathing was becoming labored, she was losing weight without explanation, and she clung to me with a lingering melancholy that I couldn't ignore.

The vet found a large tumor in his lungs. When she died four months later, I was deprived.

Jessie represented our family's happiest times, a reflection of us when we were younger and still intact. She was the one constant, loving bond we all had before the kids - then marriage - grew up and moved on.

It doesn't matter that we had a divorce amicably and still communicated frequently, even had a few vacations together. When Jessie passed away, it was undeniable that our once intimate family of four - no longer legally or physically related - was, if not entirely over, at least irrevocably changed.

Our grief for Jessie bound us again, sharing stories, tears, photos ("that's the cutest" "no, that's it!") before scattering again.

The discomfort that followed stayed with me. I woke up with a pit in my stomach, missing the rattle of Jessie's collar that was luring me into her first foray of the day. It took me forever to throw away the rest of his dry food. Sometimes I'd sit on my back steps with a pile of tennis balls and imagine us playing fetch.

After a few months of grieving, I started to want a new puppy. I missed having companionship, the need for another creature, and unconditional love. And it didn't help that after the divorce, despite friends taking me out for cocktails and fireside chats, I was spending more time alone on the couch than I had in decades.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">So I opened a Petfinder account and searched for "average height, less than a year old, less than 50 miles, short hair, nice disposition."

I've been browsing the site for a few weeks and figured I'd know when true love was coming. Browsing through the capricious puppy photo gallery one afternoon, I came across five-month-old Charlene, her head tilted staring at me.

Droopy ears, wide-eyed, an intoxicating plaintiveness. Right size, right age, right look. According to her profile, she was found abandoned in the woods of Tennessee with two siblings, but they carried no obvious anxiety about people. In fact, they seemed hungry for emotional connection.

Me too.

I submitted my application to the lifesaving league, made an apology for my partially fenced yard, introduced the convenience of my work-from-home setup, and pledged my canine devotion. It was eerily similar to marketing myself as a dating prospect; throwing humility to the wind, I introduced myself as a "54-year-old active writer" who had "lots of love to give".

In 24 hours, I was invited to an open house to find out if Charlene and I were really compatible.

I brought my friend Miriam. Under a large white tent, a dozen chairs had been arranged in pairs for future couples. The two women in charge ushered Charlene out, who quickly buried herself in my lap. After ten minutes of hugging, I took her out to the mulch yard to play with the other canine adoptees. She swung into action but kept coming to make sure I was still there, then buried herself in my lap again. It was flattering but also, well, rather quick for someone who should probably, given my recent losses, take on new relationships very slowly.

Miriam us took a photo, since it looked like an open-and-shut dog-human match. But as the Lifesaving League women filled out the forms, eager to close their event with this final adoption, something was wrong.

"Wait a minute I said, stroking Charlene as my eyes filled.

I just didn't feel ready to love another creature so deeply, to be so necessary. I was not ready to give up my newly obtained freedom...