How a gift from long ago got my son his dream dog

My in-laws never gave each other lavish gifts. But after my father-in-law, Don, was nearing the end of his battle with lung cancer, he enlisted my help with a birthday gift for my mother-in-law.

I understood the importance of this gift. Don wanted to show his wife of nearly 50 years how much he loved her. He knew his time on earth was short and the right gift would tell her what was deep in his heart.

The right gift turned out to be three gold chains like the ones Don had seen a model wearing in an advertisement. The chains were of graduated lengths, and he decided his wife, Ruth, should have a similar set. He slipped a wad of cash into my hand during a visit.

“Pick out something nice,” he said.

I settled on three sparkling diamond-cut gold rope chains. My husband and I bought a stuffed dog since his mom loved dogs so, and we wrapped the chains around its neck, like canine bling.

As we celebrated Ruth’s birthday, she opened cards and then the box that contained the dog wearing the chains. It took a moment for her to realize what the gift really was, and as she unwound the chains from around the stuffed dog’s neck, the look on her face spoke volumes.

“This is my last gift from him,” I know she was thinking. “He’s giving me this fancy, expensive gift because he’s dying.”

Rather than celebrate the gift, she mourned her husband. But fate twisted, and my mother-in-law died first, quite unexpectedly, just seven weeks after unwrapping the gold chains that she never wore.

My father-in-law died seven months after his wife. They never got to see their only grandchild, born seven years later.

That was 17 years ago. The gold chains have been in my jewelry box all this time. I’ve never worn them; just looking at them made me feel sad. But when I found myself needing $700 to make right the awful mistake I made with my son’s 10th birthday present, I realized they could help me right some of fate’s wrongs.

My husband and I decided long ago that a puppy would be the perfect gift for the 10th birthday of our son — our only child. All his life, the kid’s heard tales of our dogs, funny stories of them eating the platter of Thanksgiving turkey, watching over him when he was an infant, being carried back from a too-long walk, stealing the Baby Jesus from an outdoor nativity scene. He knows the stories by heart, as if he were alive when they happened, and as his hopes of a sibling slowly dissipated (“Lightning’s not striking twice here,” I told him), he turned his attention to the possibility of a canine companion.

Even though I lost my job as a newspaper editor — on April Fools Day, no less — we decided to go ahead with our plan. Since my position was “eliminated,” life has been stressful, and we figured a puppy would be a bit of fluffy sunshine peeking through our economic storm.

We loved all our dogs, to be sure, but the best thing about not having one is that the house is so much cleaner — no dog hair anywhere. Over and over again, I’ve sworn that if we ever got another dog, it would be one that doesn’t shed.

We thought a Labradoodle would be wonderful: smart, gentle, playful and — almost best of all — non-shedding, but the price for one of these designer dogs is generally high. Instead, we got a puppy from one of the local rescue organizations.

If you think this is going to be a heartwarming story about how wonderful our rescue puppy was, you’re wrong. I know lots of people who’ve adopted wonderful pets from rescue groups, but we’re not among them. We adopted Sophie, the puppy from hell.

If you want to read the entire story, go here, but in a nutshell, Sophie, the rescue puppy, never liked my son; she spent a lot of time snarling and snapping at him. One day, when Sophie bared her teeth and went after him, I got between the two; I took the brunt of the canine assault. That little puppy cut my lip and left me with both a bite and a bruise above my right eye.

After a frantic phone call from me, the rescue people retrieved her.

So, there went my kid’s 10th birthday present. I imagined that years from now, while trying to get over a crippling fear of small animals or bitches named Sophie, my son would recount to his therapist the fast and furious attack on his protective mother.

I felt awful, but what could I do? We had already invested our doggie budget in the puppy from hell.

“It’s OK, Mom,” my kid said. “I’m glad she didn’t hurt you more. We really don’t need a puppy right now.”

But I had to make this whole thing right.

I searched the Internet, first for rescue labs; then I searched for Labradoodles. A breeder in one of the tonier suburbs in our area of Michigan e-mailed me the cost of her puppies. “I have temporarily reduced my price from $2,500 to $2,000 due to the economy,” she wrote. “This price modification will allow more people to have the puppy of their dreams.”

Ha! Only if there’s a Cash for Canines program, I thought.

There was no way I could spend that much on a dog. My severance package had run out and I was awaiting my first unemployment check.

Then I stumbled upon beautiful Labradoodle puppies from a breeder a couple hours away. They weren’t cheap at $700, but that price was easier to consider than the average of $1,200 to $1,800 I’d been finding online.

We made $150 at a yard sale, which covered the deposit on the puppy and the trip to visit him. We fell in love during that visit, which meant that we needed $600 more.

And so it was that on the day I had to register with Michigan Works!, the last step before actually collecting unemployment, I showed up with a pocketful of gold, courtesy of the grandparents my kid had never met. Also in my pocket was a broken bracelet of mine, and an earring that had lost its mate years ago. After I registered for work, I headed to the storefront with the huge “WE BUY GOLD” sign out front.

The man behind the counter inspected and weighed the jewelry. He offered me $575, a good amount, to be sure, but not enough to pay for the new puppy.

“If you can do it for $600, we’ll have a deal,” I said.

The man hemmed and hawed. He re-weighed the gold. He thoughtfully rubbed his neck.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he said. Then he counted out $600 worth of $20 bills into my hand, a wad of cash reminiscent of the one my father-in-law had pressed into it years before.

Now we have a black Labradoodle my kid named Teddy after first considering monikers like Zeus and Chowder.

“Your puppy is a gift from Grandpa Don and Grandma Ruth,” I told him as I explained how we were able to pay for the dog even though I didn’t have a job.

The kid was all smiles, and I knew in my heart that the grandparents he had never met in person were smiling down on their only grandchild from above.