The other day, M was having one of her meltdowns.  Prompted by nothing we could identify, we found her in her room, hiding under her comforter, inconsolable.

She’s never been able to get herself out of one of these.  She ends up just exhausting herself, and getting through it that way.

This time though, I decided to bring in the heavy hitter – Cosmo, our dog of a few months.  And he was in full crazy mode – jumping, nipping, running – being about as cute as possible.

M tried her hardest to fight the smile.  She’d smile for a second, then go back to frowning,  Then again.  Then finally, she gave herself over to the crazy puppy love.

Cosmo’s my hero.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  My husband had his gallbladder removed yesterday (outpatient surgery, which means I’m playing nursemaid at home).  In an effort to make things as easy as possible around here, I asked a friend to take the dog (aka Cosmo) home with her for 24 hours – one less yippy little mouth to contend with, I figured.

What I didn’t count on was the reaction of the kids to the temporary loss of their dog.  M spent most of the night talking about missing Cosmo, then fell apart crying when she went to bed.   I’m thinking M is tired of missing those she loves, like her sister, and now her dog.

Would I do it again?  I think so.  Hopefully, tonight, when Cosmo comes home, M will see that those she loves DO come back, and stay in her life.

So yesterday, L was just all kinds of crazy, from the moment he got up.  I mean, one non-stop trantrum/fit/whine/etc.

Now, those of you who haven’t been down the adoption road are probably thinking “so what?  my kids are like that all the time”.  And let me just respond, “no. no no no.  no”.  Its a totally different thing when you’ve got a kid who’s processing massive amounts of loss, rejection, pain, etc.  Its just a whole other level of insanity.

Anyway… I had planned on taking him to Cosmo’s first dog training session, but began to think better of it.  I just started having visions of him melting down in front of a room full of people, having to drag him and the dog out of there.

But at the last minute, I took him.  And he was perfection.  For an entire hour, he sat there quietly, listening to the instructor, watching Cosmo and the other dogs, perfectly.  It was unbelievable.  It was not even like anything he is on a good day, let alone a bad day, yet there he was, perfection.

There’s something about being asked to be responsible for something smaller than you that registers with people – especially kids who have been hurt.  That one hour alone made all the effort related to raising a puppy worth it.

So L: wanted to know why our new puppy didn’t have to go to the courthouse too!  I didn’t really have a good answer for him.  Especially since this is the kid who, 10 minutes after bringing Cosmo home, said, “HE gets to be adopted TOO!”.

L has totally lived up to my expectations with this puppy.  He’s always shown such gentleness to all animals.  In fact, when we’ve questioned whether or not L was going to be “okay”, we’ve always said “hey, hey doesn’t hurt animals, so there’s SOME hope!”.

I think its helpful to him to care for someone even more vulnerable than he is.  Cosmo is just another part of the healing process.