So, I bought a puppy because I was sad.

And no, don’t worry — she’s for life, not just for Easter.

Meet Nova, my new whirlwind

This week, in what looked like a snap decision but was really years in the making, I brought home a new dog. Her name is Nova. She’s a red toy poodle with a face like a velvet button and the energy of a thousand suns.

When I say it was impulsive, I mean it in the way that only long-buried longing can be: the kind of desire that hums quietly for over a decade until suddenly it roars up and insists, now. I’ve wanted another dog every single day since Milk — my first — came into our lives thirteen years ago. I am, unapologetically, a Dog Person. I didn’t grow up with them but I’ve always known I’d be one of those eccentric old women who runs a sanctuary for unwanted dogs, probably in a battered velvet robe with gravy stains down the front and tissues up the sleeve. It’s the dream.

So when I announced Nova’s arrival — to the few people I told beforehand — most thought I’d lost it. “You’re already juggling grief, work, parenting and the relentless admin of modern life,” they said, “and now you’re adding a puppy?”

Yes. Yes I am.

But the truth is, I didn’t buy a dog because I needed more chaos. Believe me, I am at absolute capacity for chaos. I didn’t get her because I thought she would fix anything either — I know better than that. I bought her because I needed something to shift. Not heal or resolve. Just move.

Because when someone you love dies - someone you share a home and a life and a future with - their absence doesn’t just sit quietly. It expands and becomes this heavy, sticky thing that wraps itself around the house and seeps into everything, like damp in the walls. Since Greg died in 2021, the girls and I have carried on, as life forces you to. We’ve moved forward, step by step. But underneath all the movement, something stagnant was growing. A kind of stillness that you start to confuse with peace. You tell yourself that the absence of pain is a good sign. But sometimes, stillness isn’t peace, it’s numbness. Sometimes it’s emotional hibernation masquerading as recovery.

I’ve tried everything to blast it out — cranked up the music (mostly K-Pop because, frankly, joy is joy), burned eye-wateringly expensive candles, considered selling up and starting again somewhere new. But it’s not the house that’s the problem. It’s what has settled inside us. I needed something that would force us to feel the floorboards again.

There’s something oddly cinematic about the early days of grief. It’s dramatic, devastating, almost beautiful in its brutality. But no one warns you about what comes after. The bit where you’re “okay” on paper, able to navigate the school run and the supermarket without breaking down. Because you appear fine, the world treats you as if you are. And because the world treats you that way, you start to gaslight yourself into believing it too — even when what you actually feel is stuck and generally dulled. Not violently heartbroken anymore, but suspended in some emotional treacle. Grief, once it stretches out, finds its own strange tempo.

I’d convinced myself that a puppy was a ridiculous idea; just too much work and too many moving parts. But then a friend brought round their new dachshund puppy, and I held him in my arms and felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time — something unnameable and deeply alive rising in my chest. Joy. Real joy. That fizzy kind that bubbles up before you can stop it. And just like that, I knew.

The girls had been quietly preparing their pitch for months, assuming it would be the battle of their childhood. I had waged similar ones in the late 80s over cable TV, planting ripped-out magazine listings in coffee mugs for my parents to find. It took me five years of slow-burn persuasion and relentless dog memes to get Greg to agree to Milk.

This time, my youngest made a PowerPoint presentation. I think they were more shocked than me when, after asking tentatively, “Mum, can we get a puppy?” I replied, “I think that’s a brilliant idea.”

The presentation was quite convincing

And then Nova arrived. A small, fast, fur-covered catalyst. She chews everything in sight. She wees constantly. She has no respect for Milk, our blind elderly queen, who absolutely did not sign up for this but thankfully, treats her Nova with her trademark irreverence. She is chaos in a tiny, caramel-coloured package.

But she makes us respond. Not out of duty or survival or obligation. Out of joy. Out of being fully, physically here. You cannot drift around a puppy. You cannot be numb. She insists we show up.

Nova doesn’t know about death. She doesn’t know about absence or legacy or the weight of memory. She knows only that right now is the time for playing, leaping, biting, running, loving.

I’m not trying to sell the idea that a dog is therapy. She’s not. She’s a living, squeaking disruption. But what I’ve come to understand is that energy — even the wild, uncontained, puppy kind — is everything. It’s what breaks up the fog and reminds us we are still here.

And maybe that’s the whole point. But on the flip side (as I’ve spoken about in my voicenote), it brings up something I’ve been keeping carefully hidden from myself and others - how deeply lonely I am.

My thoughts start on how brilliant dogs are, then ends on the realisation that I am lonely

As ever, onwards…

XS