Sophie’s Choice

Seven years ago, my daughter Grace got a Golden Retriever puppy and named her Sophie. We already had one dog, a feisty peekapoo named Barkley. He was named after basketball star Charles Barkley, who once called himself a “bad dog.” Barkley bites. Sophie was gentle and affectionate. At age one, she made a life choice. Did she want to spend her time with other dogs or with people? She chose people. She bonded totally with Grace and her father (me) and her mother (Barbara).

A year later, Grace left for college and Barbara and I became Sophie’s main companions. We loved her and she reciprocated. We took her to the beach and got great pleasure out of watching her splash in the surf and chase a ball. On spring and summer mornings, I’d sit on our deck, drinking coffee, reading the paper, and throwing a ball for Sophie. She was with Barbara or me most of every day. But at night, she still slept on a small, round bed on the floor of Grace’s now-empty room. She loved us, but she missed Grace.

Until Sophie arrived, I had no idea how deeply attached one could get to a dog. In truth, I didn’t understand it until two months ago when Sophie died, killed by rat poison that someone had thoughtlessly put where a dog could get at it. I won’t describe how badly she suffered as her lungs filled with blood and her body slowly failed. She died in three days.

We suffered too. We cried. Every few hours, when I’d think of Sophie and her pure innocence and the cruel way she died, I’d suddenly gasp. Barbara was inconsolable. Grace, who had married right after college and moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with her husband Walton, rushed home. So did our son Freddy, a junior at Auburn University.

Now comes the mystical part. The next week, Mary Ellen Tasillo, a makeup artist at Fox News I’d become friends with, sent me a condolence card. She wrote that Sophie, somewhere in the mists of the afterlife, was even now finding a new dog for us who would assuage our grief. I was touched by the sentiment.

The following morning, Grace called from Tuscaloosa. At the Target store near her home, she had encountered an abandoned dog, a mutt. When she approached, the dog had skittered away in fear. But Grace has a way with dogs. They quickly sense she’s their friend. And within a half hour, she had picked up the dog, plopped her in the car and headed back to her house.

On hearing about this from Grace, my first thought was: Sophie sent us this dog. I hadn’t seen the dog. All we knew was that she was a female who looked a bit like a small German shepherd with a tail that stuck straight up. She had no collar or ID. Her face looked dirty, as if she’d been digging in the ground. But it was merely the dark coloring of her snout. She seemed to be terrified of men. There was no evidence Sophie had sent the dog, but that idea lingered in my mind.

Grace learned from Target employees that the dog had been living in the parking lot for a week and had repeatedly evaded the Tuscaloosa dogcatcher. The Target folks had put out food for her to eat. Had the dogcatcher grabbed her, she’d probably have been put down in a few days unless someone had claimed her. Grace rescued her from that fate.

And as fate would also have it, Barbara and I were going that weekend to Tuscaloosa, where I was giving a speech and going to a basketball game. As it turned out, the most important part of our visit was meeting the new dog. She had been called Foxy by the friendly Target workers because she’s the size and sleekness of a fox. We renamed her Annie, after Little Orphan Annie.

Annie soon warmed to Barbara, but slunk away when I approached. We figured she’d been abused by a man. It took the entire three-day weekend for her to come close to me. But she finally did, rubbing up against my legs as I softly rubbed her head and chin.

I now regard Annie as the luckiest dog in the world. She spent a week in February homeless in a parking lot. She spent a week in March in Florida on vacation with Grace and Walton, sitting in the surf and learning how to retrieve a ball.

This week, Barbara goes to Tuscaloosa to pick up Annie and drive her to our house. This is where she belongs. Sophie sent her.

– Fred Barnes