An Unwanted Gift Brings Spiritual Awakening
. . . AND BOUNDLESS JOY! Dolly Lama and Pat: Lakeside at Great Sacandaga.
WRITTEN BY WENDY HOBDAY HAUGH PHOTOS PROVIDED
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s Patricia Nugent prepared to retire in 2009 from a long and rewarding career as a school district administrator, she had two exciting goals in mind: first, to adopt another Golden Retriever, having been without one for four years; and, second, to write the Great American Novel. After eagerly anticipating the search for her next canine companion, Pat was stunned when coworkers presented her with a young female Golden Retriever—a puppy that not only treated Pat’s indoor flooring and outdoor grass as one and the same but indiscriminately ingested everything from basket reeds to carpet fibers.
Dolly Lama and Dolly Mama.
“It was the worst retirement gift ever,” Pat recalls with a laugh, “but it was the Law of Attraction at work: you attract what you focus on. I put it out there that I was going to write the Great American Novel and get a Golden Retriever— and I got the dog! As the saying goes: Be careful what you wish for.” Looking back, Pat realizes she should have been more specific in describing her dreampet. “My intended golden,” she writes, “was to be a fully-grown, rescued, male: housebroken, neutered, calm, and content to lie at my feet while I blithely tap away on my keyboard. Everything Dolly was not.” At their first meeting, Pat affectionately dubbed the pup ‘Dolly.’ But despite the dog’s sweet nature, Pat fiercely resisted becoming her ‘forever person.’ Even after bringing Dolly to the home she’d recently built along the shores of the Great Sacandaga Lake, Pat was determined to find her a more willing adoptive parent. Everything changed, however, when neartragedy struck.
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SPRING 2022 | SIMPLY SARATOGA | 29