Why I don't want a Dog, and Why I Can't Have Children

I swear by my Zooey Deschanel bangs and temporary Ed Hardy tattoo (a pirate girl over my heart, coyly peeking out from behind a fan) that I'm not turning into an emo diva. Things are just hard right now.
As frank as I generally am, I don't really want to talk about all the reasons I feel sad these days, and some things I'm just not at liberty to discuss anyway. That's a change, right? I guess if I were to sum it up, I just feel drained, and like I need to find a way to replenish the love. I don't want or need some solo vacation or other alone time typically prescribed to burnt-out women. I need to feel some love so I can give it back-- at least, that's what Dr. John Gray (author of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus") would say. Actually, can I make a shocking analogy?
Remember the story in the New Testament (actually in three of the four gospels) about the woman with an issue of blood who touched the hem of Christ's robe and was healed? Remember how he asked, "Who touched me, for I perceive virtue gone out of me?" Well, in NO WAY am I anything like Jesus, so don't get me wrong. I'm working on it, but my strongest efforts are paltry at best. Anyway, normally we think about that woman's faith, which would have been incredible. Talk about a spiritual gift, right? But when I think about the Savior recognizing a measure of His infinite love going out to someone else, it begins to make a little sense to me how finite my own love is. It makes me want to emulate Jesus even more, so my own cistern of love is always overflowing. But right now, I'm "wrung out and dry as a bone" (thank you, Ingrid Michaelson).
I guess that I also had not realized that love comes with a price. Normally, when we love it's easy to get caught up in the back-and-forth flow of good feelings. Or even if it's one-sided, love makes you feel like you're better than you were. But take my face-in-the-dirt episode of a week and a half ago: My friend told me he thought maybe I wouldn't want his friendship anymore, and couldn't believe it when I told him of course I wanted it. But we both saw what it cost me emotionally. We both witnessed my crumbling and tumbling. And I don't regret one bit of it. It took a chunk of my love storage, but it was worth it, and I know that love is always the best decision.
So yes, sometimes that price is painful to pay, but you can see how it is good in the long-run. Love means giving up your pride and your selfishness. Love means saying you're sorry and owning up to your own faults constantly. Love is tearing down the corroded and dilapidated walls we build around our selves and rebuilding someone else-- whether your own self or the person who needs you. It takes work, it takes patience, it takes perseverance. And you come out with something beautiful.
But like a love jackhammer in a power outage, I feel like I've lost my juice. This morning, after a wringing weekend, I came to work and found my little sheep Bethany dead by my parents' barn. Her neck was nearly severed. A dog must have gotten her. I went screaming through the field, looking for our other sheep, Flower. I found her by a fence, with blood on her neck, standing completely still. I couldn't get a reaction out of her, and I thought she'd died of some kind of shock. The neighbor's goats were also gone, in a bloody heap across the fence. Thank heavens for my sainted brother who came to investigate after my sobbing phone call. He said Flower actually is still alive, but we won't know until later how hurt she is, and if we need to stitch her up or just put her out of her misery.
Now anyone who knows me well understands that I don't want a pet right now. Despite the lectures and the urging from my family and friends, I have no desire for a guard dog. Initially, these were my reasons:
1) I don't like big dogs. I hate the way they goose you or come nose around your body in the most intrusive way.
2) I don't want poop all over my yard. I don't want something digging up my grass or peeing on my trees or tearing up my things. I don't want to have to remove ticks.
3) I can't afford the food and the vet, etc., etc., and
4) I'm not around enough to give any pet the kind of love I think it needs. I don't want to be tied down.
But now I have another reason. Even though I just fed Flower and Bethany a few mornings a week, I saw them born. They knew and trusted me. They let me pet them and weren't skittish like typical sheep. They actually obeyed me, and though our relationship wasn't super close (like mine is with my mother's dog, Molly-- who, by the way, is super loving but an extreme pest, and I think taking her to and from our cabin this weekend was torturous), I felt so awful finding my sweet little sheep so massacred. It was the saddest and most violent thing I'd ever seen in person.
Anyway, I can't do the animal thing. I'm too disposed to love and attachment. I can't handle the loss, even more than I can't handle the poo in my yard.
And that makes me wonder if it's also a big blessing that I'm not married and making children. I don't think my heart could take it at this stage of my life.