Meredith May - Loving Edie: How a Dog Afraid of Everything Taught Me to Be Brave

Praise for Loving Edie

With a journalists introspection and a poets heart, Meredith May movingly captures the bravery in loving another living being, and why love is always worth it because it teaches us so much.

Steven Rowley, bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus and The Guncle

Not every dog can be brave, but Meredith Mays new memoir makes clear that scaredy dogs can love fiercely and teach mere humans powerful lessons.

Clive D. L. Wynne, PhD, director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University and author of Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You

Loving Edie is a truly rewarding story of a very sensitive pup and her loving humans evolving together messily, honestly, and beautifully.

Julie Barton, New York Times bestselling author of Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me from Myself

[A] heartfelt tale of how one incredibly anxious puppy completed a family.

Booklist

Also by Meredith May

The Honey Bus

Loving Edie

How a Dog Afraid of Everything Taught Me to Be Brave

Meredith May

For Jenn

Meredith May is the author of The Honey Bus and was previously an award-winning journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She is also the coauthor of I, Who Did Not Die and is a fifth-generation beekeeper. She lives in Carmel Valley, California, with her wife, Jenn, and golden retriever, Edie.

Disclaimer

Some names of the people who appear in this book have been changed to protect identities.

Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them, filling an emptiness we dont even know we have.

Thom Jones, Saying Goodbye to Shelby (2003)

Contents

Fear makes me feel alive. They call my kind of people adrenaline chasers, those who flirt with danger for the exquisite, specific euphoria that comes from relying on your wits to survive.

I first felt this rush at four years old. Grandpa was visiting from California, and when he asked my mother if he could take me to the beach near our home in Rhode Island, she gave her permission but with one caveat.

She doesnt know how to swim, she warned Grandpa. So dont let her go in the water.

Grandpa and I stood on the shore, he in Levis cutoffs and me in my bathing suit, watching the waves roll toward us and crash into fizzy foam. The waves were small, rising only to his waist, but that meant they were at my shoulders. He looked at me and wriggled his eyebrows. I smiled back. We counted to three and ran full force toward the water.

Following Grandpas movements, I dove headfirst into the wave break and immediately got spun around and slammed into the sand. I came up sputtering and disoriented, and he put me on his knee, and explained how to look into the distance at the incoming waves, to read their rhythm and anticipate their arrival. Then he taught me to wait until I felt the tug of the undertow, to turn my back and get in position, then lift my feet and ride the swell all the way in. He demonstrated, holding me by the waist and letting a wave propel us to shore. Bodysurfing felt like flying.

Conquering the sea made me feel invincible and started me on a lifelong quest for heart-pumping exhilaration. By age seven I was on a diving team, somersaulting off the three-meter board with that young persons trust that nothing could ever hurt me. I grew into the teenager who adored scary movies, whose idea of a good time involved either skydiving, white-water rafting, or bungee jumping. It comes as no surprise that I landed in a career with inherent danger. I became a newspaper journalist, the one who runs toward the wildfire, the war zone, the protest, to bear witness.

For half a century, fear has been my life coach, motivating me to squeeze every drop out of each day. And all this time, Ive yet to break a bone or scare myself beyond my limit. Fear has never betrayed me.

Until it did. Until my fearlessness was consumed by one tiny, helpless golden retriever puppy who was very , very , very scared.

Just Right

From my airplane window I can see the San Francisco morning commute at its usual standstill, but from this high up its almost beautiful, the headlights outlining the knot of overpasses like one massive, twinkling, macram.

As long as the plane stays in the air, were still on vacation , I think to myself, clinging to the last tendrils of New Zealand before real life clomps back in. Next to me my wife is sleeping, her head tipped back with her mouth slightly open, and shes making that little exhale-puff-snore thing she does. Weve been in the air for thirteen hours, and shes been out for approximately twelve of them. Ive never seen her this restful.

Jenn, the taker-of-middle-seats; Jenn, the eater of any meal placed before her; Jenn the giver of coats when I forget mine. After five years of marriage, she has yet to raise her voice to me. I cant claim the same restraint, yet somehow, she forgives each and every one of my hissy fits, using verbal judo to talk me down before we ever make it to an actual argument. My agreeable wife, when asked what she wanted to do for her fiftieth birthday, said she didnt want to make a fuss over it. When pressed, she suggested a simple dinner, maybe the wood-fired roasted chicken at Zuni Caf, where we had our first date. I suggested we fly to the other side of the world, shut off our phones, and disappear for a month.

Okay, shed said.

We arrived in Auckland in early November 2018 with the sketchiest of itineraries, rented a twenty-five-foot motor home meant for six, and drove from the top of the country to the southernmost tip, counting more sheep than people. I chauffeured so Jenn could lean out the passenger window to snap photos of said sheep with her film camera. Our whim dictated our route, and we relied on an app that connects travelers with Kiwis who allow camper vans to park on their farms. We marveled at how nice everybody wasmaking us meals and lending their bicycles, showing us how to bottle-feed their lambs, and driving us to caves not found in tourist guides to see glowworms for free.

With each day, our urban shield of stranger distrust thinned a bit more. New Zealand reminded us that there are still places where people dont have to compete for everythingfor apartments, for parking spaces, for school admissions, for angel investors, for tables in restaurants. With enough room to breathe in New Zealand, people had the serenity to be authentically kind.

Jenn awakes with a snort and her eyes flick open. Still in the fug of sleep, she quickly scans her surroundings, unsure of where she is.

Were descending, I say, slipping my hand into hers and giving it a squeeze. She looks at the pulsating city below and the worry lines reappear on her forehead. I can tell shes thinking about workmost likely the stack of crime reports piling up on her desk at the police station. Lately theres been a rash of girl packs rushing luxury boutiques in Union Square, fleeing with whatever designer clothes they can snatch in seconds. Jenn feels bad for the shop owners who cant defend themselves against the raids, but also for the girls, some as young as eleven, who will exchange their futures for a Louis Vuitton purse. Its a crime she never could have imagined investigating when she joined the force twenty-three years ago. The city has hardened since she was a wide-eyed recruit.

Quick...tell me your favorite part of the trip, I say to distract her. First thing that comes to mind.