Tragedy, Triumph, and Rotten Behavior

Twenty years ago, the woman lost her husband and her dog. The two of them drowned.

The woman's friends, worried about her despair and fragile hold on life, raised money to buy her a puppy.

I sat next to the woman at a Saturday night barbecue. She lives in Wyoming, dresses Western, raises bison, exudes energy, and remembers with gratitude the pup who saved her life.

“I was so sad I didn't want to live. But then, I had a puppy to take care of.”

I found it inspiring that the woman's friends found a way to help her hang on, and that the woman had opened her heart to love again after grievous disappointment. But the story didn't stay altogether lovely. When I asked the woman how long she'd had the dog, and if it had remained her great friend for its whole life, she told me a disgruntled neighbor had poisoned it. The woman suspected that's how her dog died, but then other neighbors confirmed the man was bragging about it.

Hard to square both sides of human nature in this story. The heroism of a young woman who finds strength to keep going in part because of the kindness of friends, against the nastiness of a man who, instead of airing grievances real or imagined to the dog's owner, gave the dog a horrid death.