One tiny spotted puppy, a red collar, an old orange bandana, and the strange way a heart learns it has room for both.
Case File Tags: puppy homecoming, Binky, Blitzø, Luna Bean, Great Dane mix, Anatolian Shepherd, service dog life, disability, chronic illness, post-op recovery, healing, grief, family, finding belonging, ordinary joy
Content Note: This Dispatch discusses chronic illness, disability, surgical recovery, grief and pet loss, complicated family history, and the emotional weight of rebuilding a life after long periods of survival mode.
Also contains excessive puppy teeth, gratuitous dog nicknames, and one confirmed charging-cable casualty.
Welcome to The Crippled Cryptid
Disability, chronic illness, service dogs, and survival without the performance.
If you’re new here, hi.
I’m Sky.
Professional cryptid.
Former unwilling amateur cyborg.
(I love getting to say that.)
Occasional chronic illness and disability advocate.
Author.
Bookworm.
Keeper of very loved dogs.
Medically complex enough to make my chart a jump scare.
I cope with sarcasm, snacks, and narrating my life like it’s a field report.
Sometimes there’s coffee.
Those are the best days.
Today, there are electrolytes and Cherry Coke.
Lots of them.
Because your ghoul is rocking Summerween like it’s a personality trait.
Today’s electrolyte abomination is a mixture of Sour Peach Powerade and Sour Green Apple Powerade.
Weird mix, I know.
But something about it is perfectly me.
Since I can’t find the pear flavor of Liquid I.V. anymore, which is honestly a tragedy worthy of its own investigation, I’ve apparently decided this concoction is my entire identity now.
Most days are lived in a haunted meat suit with a questionable warranty and a long-standing feud with my nervous system.
And on Tuesdays…
We document it.
The appointments.
The adventures.
The spirals.
The “we left the house and now we have a story” moments.
Sometimes that story is me sitting in a waiting room mentally drafting a rant while staring at outdated magazines.
Sometimes it’s:
“We found a place afterward and the food changed my life.”
Sometimes it’s both.
I spend a lot of time in Bed Jail™, but when I venture into the wild, I’m rarely alone.
There’s Luna.
Medical alert service dog.
Guardian.
Enforcer.
Service Dingo™.
Public access professional.
Emergency “we need to sit down right now” decision-maker.
There’s M&M.
My Player 2.
My soft place to land.
Snack provider.
Voice of reason when I have none.
Which is often.
I’m a very stubborn cryptid.
And, in spirit and usually at home, there’s the Yard Yeti.
Keeper of the home base.
Guardian of the Wi-Fi.
Champion of:
“I support you from this chair.”
And now…
There is one more set of paws in the Den.
Tiny paws.
Vanilla-sock-wearing paws.
Paws attached to an alarmingly pointy collection of baby shark teeth.
Potato.
Is that his government name?
No.
Have I been calling him that since approximately the moment I laid eyes on him?
Absolutely.
Will I stop anytime soon?
Evidence suggests no.
There is, of course, the rest of our pack too.
Human and four-pawed alike.
We love every strange little branch of it dearly.
This space is for chronic illness without inspiration porn.
Disability without apologies.
Life as it actually happens.
Including the messy.
The mundane.
The frustrating.
And the unexpectedly good.
If you’ve been here before, welcome back.
If you’re new, you’ll find your footing.
Welcome to the Cryptid Dispatch.
Field notes from the chaos.
📡 Cryptid Dispatch Incoming…
First, yes.
Today’s Dispatch is arriving later than usual.
It has been one of those days where errands had to be run, time escaped through a suspicious portal somewhere around midday, and suddenly I was looking at the clock wondering who authorized several entire hours to disappear.
But I couldn’t disappoint.
I had to show up anyway.
Because that’s what we do here.
We show up.
And occasionally, when we’re late, we bring puppy photos as reparations.
I believe this is legally binding.
Some adventures are road trips.
Some are enormous milestones.
And some are realizing you’ve officially gone from a one-dog household back to a two-dog household…
…and somehow that changes the entire gravitational field of your home.
Not badly.
Just completely.
Luna once came into this family and turned a one-dog home into a two-dog home.
And now, after loss turned us back into a one-dog household, Binky has wandered into the Den and made us two again.
I didn’t realize how much that would feel like something.
Not replacing what was here before.
Never that.
I’m learning that love doesn’t require an empty seat before someone new is allowed to sit beside us.
But making room again?
That feels like something.
For another food bowl.
Another leash.
Another ridiculous collection of nicknames.
Another heartbeat asleep somewhere in the house.
Another creature to worry about, laugh at, teach, protect, and love completely.
It’s wild sometimes.
Frustrating?
Definitely.
There are moments when I question whether puppies are actually mammals or simply teeth with legs.
But there are more moments lately where I’m laughing until I wheeze like a haunted tea kettle than there are moments where I’m crying my eyes out.
And I think that counts for more than people realize.
Because healing doesn’t always announce itself.
Sometimes it just moves in.
Four paws first.
🐾 The Cat- Dog Is Out of the Bag!
Most of you probably noticed that I’d been dropping suspicious little hints that Miss Luna Bean might be getting a brother or sister.
Well.
It happened.
We had been unofficially looking at the shelters for a while.
Just looking to see who was out there and we couldn’t find the right fit, and then…
My cousin had a litter of Great Dane × Anatolian Shepherd puppies, with some Kangal in Dad’s family tree, and one tiny spotted cryptid somehow ended up coming home with us.
And by “tiny,” I mean temporarily.
We are under no illusions about the future dimensions of this animal.
This wasn’t something I considered lightly.
Adding another dog meant thinking about Luna.
About training.
About the household.
About whether I had the capacity to raise a puppy while navigating disability and recovery.
About whether another dog was actually right for us, rather than simply something my heart wanted.
There were a lot of conversations before there was ever a puppy sleeping in the Den.
And then there was him.
This particular weird little cow-puppy.
And somehow, somewhere between considering whether we should adopt him and actually bringing him home, he started becoming ours.
It is also not difficult to tell that he already has approximately 400,000 names.
Because let’s face it.
We’re those dog people.
Look at Luna.
Government Name: Luna.
Known Aliases: Bean, Bean Bean, Luna Bean, Butt-Butt, Butterbean, Beanie, Beanie Baby, Babygirl, Lulu, Lulubeans, Bienenstich, like the classic German bee-sting cake…
And I could keep going.
So naturally, the newest member of the Den already has his own rapidly expanding criminal dossier.
Binky, because the first night he cried so much that the name just happened. A binky is another word for a pacifier.
It fit.
- Itsy Bitsy.
- Bink-Bink.
- Blitzy.
- Itsy Bitsy Blitzy.
- Binker.
- Binky Baby.
- Bug.
- Vanilla Sockies, which requires absolutely no explanation once you’ve seen his feet.
And, eternally:
Potato.
The list is young.
Give us time.
He’s a smart little guy with a frankly unreasonable amount of curiosity about the universe.
Unfortunately, his current scientific method is:
MOUTH.
What is this?
Mouth.
Can I eat it?
Mouth.
Is Luna’s leg a toy?
Mouth.
Is this charging cable important to Mama?
An excellent question.
MOUTH.
So far, the official casualty report includes one charging cable, lost while I was out running an errand and M&M dared to use the bathroom.
A moment of silence.
Thank you.
He is, however, a baby.
A tiny, rapidly growing, slightly feral baby shark.
So, we teach.
We redirect.
We reward.
We try again.
And we remember that he has been on this planet for approximately five minutes.
Thanks to the absolutely incredible people in my Free Group, we are already astonishingly well supplied.
And when I say supplied, I mean supplied.
We’ve also received a mountain of genuinely thoughtful training advice that I cannot wait to start working through.
Not just with Binky, either.
Miss Luna Bean gets refresher courses too.
Training isn’t something dogs graduate from and never revisit.
Skills get practiced.
Brains get exercised.
Relationships keep being built.
And before anyone worries…
No.
The baby has not dethroned Her Majesty.
Luna is still the Den’s Princess.
She just has a tiny court jester now.
A tiny court jester who occasionally bites her butt.
And would like to know if there are flavors in her massive ears.
With MOUTH.
🐕 From One Dog, to Two, to One… to Two Again
This part surprised me.
Not getting a puppy.
We knew that would change things.
What surprised me was the emotional geometry of it.
There are two dogs moving through the house again.
Two sets of nails clicking across the floor.
Two different personalities orbiting the same rooms.
Two sets of needs.
Two dogs learning each other.
Luna, who knows this house.
Who knows its rhythms.
Who knows her job.
Who knows me.
And Binky, who currently knows approximately four things:
Food is excellent.
People are excellent.
Luna is fascinating.
Everything might be edible until proven otherwise.
Watching them figure each other out has been funny and chaotic and occasionally exhausting.
But underneath all of it is something softer.
The Den feels different.
Fuller.
Not because there was something wrong with it before.
Not because another dog could ever replace the ones we’ve loved and lost.
But because apparently our home has room for this.
Room for another beginning.
I think I do too.
And maybe that’s the part I wasn’t expecting.
🐾 The Princess & Her Unrequested Apprentice
And Luna?
Luna did not submit a formal request for a baby brother.
I checked the paperwork.
Nothing.
Her life changed too when we brought him home.
Suddenly there was a tiny spotted creature following her around, investigating her toys, interrupting important Ball Business™, attempting unauthorized chomps, and generally behaving like someone who has been alive for approximately seven minutes and has yet to read the employee handbook.
So, we’re making sure Luna gets something just as important as Binky gets:
Permission to have boundaries.
She doesn’t have to entertain him every second.
She doesn’t have to share everything simply because he’s a puppy.
She gets one-on-one time.
She gets her work.
She gets her ball.
She gets places where tiny brothers cannot bother her.
And when she tells him, in perfectly appropriate dog language, that he has crossed a line?
She’s allowed to communicate.
Because being a good big sister shouldn’t mean having to tolerate everything.
She’s still Luna.
Still my Bean.
Still the Den’s Princess.
And still my working partner.
Binky joining our family doesn’t change Luna’s job.
It doesn’t change my relationship with her.
She is still my medical alert service dog.
The dog who has spent years learning the language of a body that doesn’t always give me much warning.
That relationship is hers.
Nothing about loving him takes anything away from what she and I have built.
But one of Binky’s teachers didn’t exactly volunteer for the position.
Because he watches Luna.
A lot.
He watches how she responds to us.
He watches her settle.
He watches her work.
He watches her get rewarded for making good choices.
He watches her move through a house whose rules she already understands.
He also watches her play Ball, although I suspect his primary conclusion from that lesson is that Ball is apparently a major household religion.
Obviously, Luna isn’t responsible for training our puppy.
That’s our job.
But dogs learn from dogs.
And there’s something incredibly sweet about watching this tiny creature study the dog who already knows how life in the Den works.
He’s learning from us.
But whether she realizes it or not… he’s learning from his big sister too.
Sometimes I look at Luna, then at this ridiculous little spotted creature beside her, and realize something I think I needed to learn twice:
Love isn’t divided by the number of paws in the house.
Bear is still loved.
Luna is still my Bean.
Binky is becoming ours.
Nobody had to become less loved for somebody else to become more.
We’re all just learning how to make the Den big enough for everybody.
🧡 Two Things Can Be True
There’s something else about Binky coming home that I don’t think I’ve really known how to explain yet.
His color is red.
Which probably sounds like an incredibly ordinary sentence unless you’ve known this family for a while.
Because red was Bear’s color.
Red and orange.
Those were his colors.
He looked so handsome in them that somewhere along the way, they simply became Bear Colors in my head.
The same way Seafoam and Yellow are Luna Colors to me.
After we lost him, I don’t think I consciously made some grand declaration that another dog could never wear red.
There wasn’t a rule.
Nobody carved it into the walls of the Den.
But somewhere inside me?
I think I had quietly decided I didn’t want another dog in red.
It belonged to Bear.
And then BJ, the Yard Yeti, and I went to Petco.
We were only supposed to get a couple of things.
You already know how stories beginning with that sentence usually end.
Somehow, among all the puppy supplies and tiny collars… the collar we walked out with for Binky was red.
Bright, unmistakable red.
And the strangest part?
I loved it.
I love seeing him in it.
It didn’t make me look at Binky and see Bear.
It didn’t feel like Binky had taken something that belonged to him.
Binky just looked like…
Binky.
My ridiculous spotted baby with his vanilla sockies and oversized paws and tiny red collar.
And somehow red became big enough for both of them.
Because on homecoming day.
M&M was choosing Binky’s first bandana.
Of all the bandanas we own, the one she chose was an orange plaid one.
Bear’s orange plaid bandana.
So, there was this brand-new little life standing in our house wearing Bear’s bandana and his own tiny red collar.
And somehow…
it didn’t hurt in the way I might have expected.
There was grief there.
Of course there was.
I miss Bear.
I will always miss Bear.
There are things that belonged to him that will probably always feel like his.
There are memories attached to colors and collars and old photographs and the particular shape a dog leaves behind when they aren’t physically there anymore.
But there was something else there too.
Love.
New love.
Not replacement love.
Not love trying to cover up grief or pretend something wasn’t missing.
Just… more love.
I think sometimes we’re taught to imagine grief and joy as opposites.
That if we’re grieving, happiness somehow means we’re moving on too quickly.
That loving someone new means loosening our grip on someone we lost.
That making new memories somehow overwrites the old ones.
But that’s not how this has felt.
Two things can exist at once.
I can miss Bear so badly that sometimes the absence of him still catches me completely off guard.
And I can look at Binky in his little red collar and think:
God, I love that color on you.
I can remember Bear wearing that orange plaid bandana.
And I can smile seeing it wrapped around Binky on the day he came home.
One feeling doesn’t betray the other.
One dog doesn’t erase another.
Binky didn’t take Bear’s place.
There isn’t a place to take.
Bear’s is already his.
Permanent.
Loved.
Ours.
What Binky did was something entirely different.
He made a new place.
Maybe that’s one of the strangest things grief teaches you.
A heart doesn’t have to evict anybody to make more room.
Sometimes the Den gets bigger.
Sometimes the family gets bigger.
Sometimes even the colors get bigger.
Bear can still be red and orange.
And now… so can Blitzy.
I think Bear would’ve looked at this enormous-footed, spotted little menace wearing his bandana, sighed the deepest old-man sigh imaginable, and wondered why we had brought home another one.
And somehow?
That thought makes me smile.
💜 Loving Out Loud
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how recovery, physical and mental, doesn’t always look the way people expect.
Sometimes it isn’t getting cured.
Sometimes there is no cure to be found.
Sometimes recovery isn’t a finish line at all.
Sometimes it’s getting a little piece of yourself back.
Sometimes it’s making dessert because your grandfather invited you and your girlfriend over for dinner to try your grandmother’s meatball recipe.
A French-Canadian recipe. Pouding au chômeur.
The kind you don’t exactly stumble across every day here.
And then finding out it’s something he hasn’t been able to have in years.
Sometimes it’s sitting with him long after everyone else has left, looking through boxes of photographs.
Your dad.
Your uncles.
People you know.
People you never got the chance to know.
People you’re just meeting for the first time.
Hearing stories that existed before you did.
Being given one of Nana’s Boyd’s Bears to remember someone you never had the chance to meet.
And then bringing that bear home.
Putting it beside your writing desk.
Looking over at it sometimes… and smiling.
Sometimes recovery is finding family you didn’t know you had.
And somehow loving them almost immediately.
It’s leaving already thinking about when you’ll go back.
Already planning the next dessert you’ll bring.
Sometimes it’s a puppy from your cousin who comes barreling into your life and, in less than a week, somehow manages to steal everyone’s heart.
He’s a little munchy.
But we forgive the baby shark phase.
Mostly.
Seven months ago, many of these stories wouldn’t have happened.
Not because they’re extraordinary.
Because they’re ordinary.
And sometimes ordinary is one of the first things disability takes away.
The ability to decide you want to leave the house.
To visit someone.
To wander through a store.
To make something for dinner.
To sit around a table longer than you planned.
To bring home a puppy and suddenly reorganize your entire life around potty schedules and the suspicious silence that means someone is probably chewing something.
Sometimes healing isn’t becoming who you were before.
Sometimes it’s realizing there are still versions of your life you haven’t met yet.
And one of mine apparently has vanilla sockies.
🌎 The World Got Bigger
Until pretty recently, I could count almost all of my family members on one hand.
Honestly, I could’ve put everyone in one room and still had space left over.
That was normal.
That was my entire understanding of what family looked like.
And then this year happened.
Now there are grandparents.
Brothers.
A stepmom.
Family recipes.
Stories.
Old photographs.
People who knew people I never got the chance to meet.
There are hugs.
Invitations.
Conversations that begin:
“Did anyone ever tell you about…?”
And suddenly I’m learning things about myself, my family, and where I come from.
It’s weird.
Not bad weird.
Not uncomfortable weird.
Just… different.
The kind where someone quietly redraws the map of your world while you’re still standing on it.
I don’t think I realized how small my world had become.
Part of that was disability.
Part of it was circumstance.
Part of it was survival.
When you’re surviving, your universe can shrink.
A bedroom.
A few safe people.
The same walls.
The same routines.
You adapt.
You have to.
And then one day, you look up and realize there are entire branches of your life you haven’t explored yet.
I’m thirty-one years old and somehow discovering that my world is both much bigger and much softer than I thought it was.
I’m still getting used to that.
I think I will be for a while.
But I don’t hate it.
Actually?
I think I like it here.
A lot more than I expected.
I like my brothers.
My stepmom is amazing.
My dad is dorky in exactly the horror-movie, spooky-creature sort of way that makes me go:
Yep.
Those are my people.
And somewhere in the middle of all these new names and old photographs and family dinners and inherited recipes…
I finally feel like I found where I belong.
A little late, maybe.
But I made it.
And now there’s a puppy asleep somewhere in the middle of it all.
That feels important too.
🌱 Sometimes Hope Has Muddy Feet
I don’t want to turn Binky into a metaphor.
He’s a dog.
A very real puppy with very real needs, an alarming commitment to putting forbidden objects in his mouth, and absolutely no responsibility for fixing anyone.
Luna isn’t responsible for healing me either.
Animals aren’t medicine with fur. No matter how good they make you feel.
They are living beings we make commitments to.
But sometimes, when you’re already doing the work of surviving, loving something can remind you that you’re still capable of imagining tomorrow.
Tomorrow, we work on his name.
Tomorrow, we practice sitting.
Tomorrow, we try again with the potty schedule.
Tomorrow, Luna learns a little more about being a big sister.
Tomorrow, Binky learns a little more about being a member of this strange Den.
Tomorrow, there will be breakfast.
And probably chaos.
There are suddenly so many tiny tomorrows built into our days.
I think that’s what I’ve been feeling.
Not that a puppy came in and magically healed anything.
He didn’t.
My body still hurts.
I’m still recovering from surgery.
I still have appointments.
I still have chronic illnesses that do not care whether I’ve scheduled them into the itinerary.
But I am looking forward again.
Not toward some imaginary version of myself who wakes up cured one morning.
Just… forward.
Toward training sessions.
Family dinners.
Puppy milestones.
Luna learning how this new version of our family works.
The next dessert.
The next story.
The next ordinary thing.
Maybe hope doesn’t always arrive glowing.
Sometimes it trips over its own enormous feet.
Sometimes it pees somewhere inconvenient.
Sometimes it falls asleep upside down.
Sometimes it has vanilla sockies.
🐾 Luna Rating Scale™
| Category | Official Rating |
| Snack Quality | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Emotional Stability of Humans | ⚠️ Questionable But Improving |
| Couch Recovery Efficiency | 11/10 Would Nap Again |
| Chance of Mom Overdoing It | 🚨 Elevated |
| Peanut Butter Cookie Compensation | Still Inadequate |
| Tiny Brother Situation | Under Active Investigation |
| Tiny Brother Biteyness | 🚨 Excessive Chomp |
| Potential Trainability of Tiny Brother | Promising |
| Princess Status | 👑 Unchallenged |
🐾 Official Statement from Luna Bean, Service Dingo™
I have been informed that the Small Spotted Creature lives here now.
I was not consulted regarding the amount of biting.
He follows me.
He watches me.
He steals things.
He does not understand personal space.
His résumé is extremely limited.
However…
He appears trainable.
I have begun demonstrating Important Dog Skills, including:
- Ball.
- How to follow Mom everywhere.
- Ball.
- Appropriate household surveillance.
- Ball.
- Looking extremely concerned when humans behave suspiciously.
- Ball.
His performance review remains pending.
I am still Princess.
This is non-negotiable.
Also, I would like it formally documented that I deserve additional peanut butter cookies for my mentorship services.
After careful consideration…
He may stay.
I reserve the right to revise this decision if he bites my butt again.
—Luna Bean, Service Dingo™
Senior Management. Den Princess. Apparently a Big Sister Now.
👻 From One Cryptid to Another
Seven months ago, my world felt much smaller.
Today?
There is an orange Jeep outside.
There are muddy paw prints on the deck.
Books stacked beside my chair.
Family recipes waiting to be made again.
Photographs of people whose stories I’m finally getting to learn.
People I didn’t know I had.
A Service Dingo™ demanding that someone throw the ball.
And a spotted baby shark with vanilla sockies currently learning what it means to belong to the Den.
My body still hurts.
Recovery is still recovery.
The appointments still exist.
There are still days where Bed Jail™ wins.
None of that disappeared because good things happened.
That’s important too.
Joy doesn’t cancel disability.
Love doesn’t cure chronic illness.
A puppy doesn’t erase grief.
Finding family doesn’t rewrite every painful chapter that came before it.
But good things are still allowed to exist beside hard things.
Two things can be true.
I can grieve Bear and love Blitzy.
I can be disabled and still have adventures.
I can be recovering and still be building a life.
I can miss what was and love what is becoming.
Maybe that’s what this whole strange season has been trying to teach me.
Healing isn’t always getting something back.
Sometimes it’s discovering that your life can grow around what never came back.
That grief can have a chair at the table without being the only one allowed to speak.
That red can still belong to Bear… and look absolutely perfect on Binky.
That Luna can still be my Bean, my working partner, my Service Dingo™, my once-in-a-lifetime girl… and I can fall completely in love with her ridiculous little brother too.
Nobody had to become less loved for somebody else to become more.
Sometimes love just makes another room.
If you’re low on spoons, grab a couple from the snack table.
I keep extras there.
Drink some water.
Take your meds if it’s time.
Eat something.
Even if it’s only a few bites.
And if your life feels like a string of strange side quests, you’re not alone.
Some days feel like D&D with a character you absolutely did not build.
Some days feel like Jumanji and somebody else already disappeared into the jungle.
Some days are big.
Some days are just:
We survived the appointment.
We survived the body.
We survived Bed Jail™.
We got up and fed the dogs.
We laughed today.
All of it counts.
The Summer of Adventure is still on.
Even when adventure looks like a thrift store.
A flea market.
A root beer stand.
A family dinner.
A box of old photographs.
Or sitting on the floor trying to convince a Great Dane × Anatolian Shepherd puppy that electrical cables are not, in fact, a food group.
It still counts.
Maybe especially then.
Current Status:
Part cryptid.
Former cyborg.
Post-op and healing.
Mildly unsupervised.
Back to a two-dog Den.
And somehow… looking forward.
Thanks for coming along with me.
—Sky
Disability. Honesty. A little chaos.
(Occasionally field-tested.)
💜 Reading, sharing, or simply staying is more than enough.
There is never pressure to donate.
But if you’d like to support the long, slow work of staying alive, stable, loving loudly, raising tiny cryptids, and still wandering when I can, thank you for being here.
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