To the people who hit my friend's dog last night

Yesterday was a hard day to follow the news. A young family was killed in a tragic accident. It is frightening to imagine being here one moment and simply gone the next. I read the headline and my stomach clenched and my soul hurt. One of the gifts of recovery is you get your feelings back. One of the curses of recovery is you get your feelings back.

Then there was the young mother who had everything taken from her in mere moments. She let go for a few seconds. Just a few seconds. I firmly believe that ANYONE would have done the same thing. I read that story and I couldn't breathe. I thought about how she must blame herself and the torment that will haunt her for the rest of her life. I’m certain she did everything in her power to save them and it will never be enough. I don’t believe it is possible to recover from that. My heart broke. Yes, for the two young children who are gone from this world without ever having been able to experience it. But more for that young mother whose world ended in one reflexive second.

And I broke my rule. I have one main rule on Facebook. Never read the comments. When there is any sort of big news posted, I never read the comments. Yesterday, I chose to. I scrolled through several layers of “read more comments.” I know better. I do. What I saw was blame. Judgment.  Callousness. Perfection. Pride. Hate. People fueled by the anonymous courage that social media provides sat and typed in the most heinous and disgusting things and hate flowed into the world. I struggled to practice spiritual principles. I fought the urge to contribute to the hate by bringing my own self-righteous anger into the fray. I took a moment and breathed and tried to let it go.

This is what I brought into this morning. Some heartache for people I've never met and tiredness because sleep was evasive last night.

Gunner is a good boy. When he was very young, he came into my clinic with parvo and was very sick. The sad truth in veterinary medicine is some people cannot afford vaccines for their puppies. Some of those puppies get parvo. Treatment for parvo is infinitely more expensive than vaccinations. You see where I’m going here? Gunner was abandoned. Once he was healthy, my friend adopted him.

Last night, Gunner managed to get out of his fenced yard. Fortunately, he was wearing a collar with his phone number on it. Someone will find him and call, right? He’s such a sweet boy and would go right up to anyone. He never met a person he didn't like. They looked for him for hours, but never found him. Until this morning.

Last night, when my friend saw your car pulled to the side of the road, she thought you were fighting. You seemed to be examining the front of the car and your girlfriend was sitting behind the wheel crying hysterically. When my friend asked if you seen her dog, your abrupt “No. Goodbye.” made her back up and leave you alone. When the police called this morning and told my friend that an injured dog had been spotted, she knew right where to go. And there was Gunner. He spent the night under a bush because he was too injured to get himself home. He was cold, alone, and in pain. All. Night. Long. I think about that and I want to hate you. I want you to hurt. I want you to be cold, alone, and in pain. I want you to have to spend a night going through what he went through.

 I don’t hate you for hitting him. Accidents happen. Overpass barriers fall on cars. Mothers let go of strollers for seconds. Dogs run in front of cars. I want to hate you for not telling the truth. For being so angry or scared or panicked that you didn't just say “yes. We hit him. He went that way.” I want to ask you why. I want you to explain to me how you could do that, how you could make the conscious choice to allow another living being to suffer. And I want to hate you.

It’s a fine line between letting it go and putting it away. I like to call it letting go because it sounds so much more recovered and emotionally mature and grown up. Really though, a lot of the time I just choose to not feel that stuff right now. Lock it down. LOCK IT DOWN. There’s a feeling happening! Put that shit away.

Until I get a target. Until I get a justified target for my self-righteous anger. Someone I can callously judge from my place of prideful perfection. I would never leave an injured animal. I would have told the owner immediately and helped however I could. I wouldn't have let go of that stroller. And boom, I’m the commenter on facebook. I’m the judge, jury, and executioner.

So I don’t hate you. I don’t want to hate you.  I wish you had made a different choice. I wish for Gunner’s sake you had done things differently. I think that maybe it kept you up last night. Maybe you were the one who called the police and stated that you saw an injured dog.  Or, maybe you honestly couldn't care less that a dog was injured and that his family was worried sick about him. You’ll have to live with that. I can’t be the arbiter of your decisions. I can’t afford to hate.

I want to let you know that Gunner is still alive. He’s being treated for his injuries. He’ll have a long way to go, but he should be able to make a full recovery. I believe that there is love in this world. Love can overcome hate, but it’s hard. Hate can be so much easier to muster.  But when I can practice love, I allow the joy to come in. Today I choose love. I want to love like Gunner. Everyone I've ever met.