This Is My Dog, Kira Kamala

I got her as a symbol of victory, security, and home.

Kira on her first birthday, barking for a ball in her favorite park. Photo by me.

This is Kira Kamala, my little dog.

I got her in response to the 2020 election; specifically, in the wee hours, when things weren’t looking so good, I promised the universe (okay, my Facebook friends) that if we pulled off a win, I would get my kids a dog. Okay again, I said I’d get my kids the pet of their choosing. Their first request was a bearded dragon, then a Macaw. I redirected them back to the land of the somewhat sensible, and we got a dog.

In reality, I got me a dog.

I’d never had a dog before, but had always wanted one. As a child, I had a book of dog breeds, and I earmarked which ones I wanted most. My favorite was a Cocker Spaniel. Then I grew up and got cats, and then had kids. Things seemed too crazy to also take on a dog. Maybe one day I’ll have a partner again, I thought, and then I could handle a dog. But making that wager on election night meant fulfilling a long-held wish, and acknowledging that if I wanted to make a life with a dog in it — and if I wanted my children to grow up with a dog — it was time to get a damn dog.

So I got the damn dog, in mid-November 2020. I had no idea how much I could love a creature as disgusting as Kira, but here we are. I adore her.

But she’s not just a pet, or a long-held wish finally come true.

Getting Kira Kamala represented a sense of victory, of staying put, of feeling like the U.S. was a safe place to continue to grow my home and raise my family.

What a fool I was, to put so much weight on such a tenuous sense of safety and security. How short-sighted, to think we’d put Trump and the lunacy of his followers behind us.

I cringe at audacity of believing adopting Kira was my happy ending, the end of an era.

I mean, she still is, even now, in her perfect little doggie way.