Beau and I had had "puppy fever" for quite some time now and we kept talking about getting a puppy. We wanted a Bernese Mountain Dog or a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog. Huge gentle giants known for their calm, family orientated nature. And what beautiful dogs they are! But unfortunately, living in the desert makes breeders of these dogs very rare, and the few that do breed them take full advantage of their growing popularity by charging $2000 and up! Ya, right...
So when my mom told us about a program that lets you adopt breeder dogs for free and all you have to do is let the program take them and pimp them off twice a year, we jumped at the chance! The dogs are very well trained, beautifully bred to look their best, and you get to use the program's vet, boarding and training. Then as an added bonus, the program is a place that provides guide dogs to the blind free of charge, so in a way we are helping a wonderful cause. We visited the dogs twice and met Bob Dylan, a beautiful chocolate lab. As soon as I saw his perfect face I knew it was over for me. We brought him home that weekend.
When we brought Dylan home, he immediately found the toys we had bought for him, ran around the yard and snuggled up in his very large crate that came with him. This was going to be the start of a beautiful friendship...
Fast forward about a week. I have now learned that Dylan must be briskly walked twice a day, no matter that it is absolutely freezing a windy outside, or he gets bored and destroys the house. So my mornings are spent bundling up the baby, pulling Dylan off the furniture and shoving us all outside where we then walk all over town until he is tired enough to just sit nice and eat his toys. He has so far desroyed my only black bra, a huge body pillow that left fluff all over the house, a baby toy and so many dog toys I can't even remember the number. He has also eaten a pumpkin pie and a stick of butter. As I write this I am puppy-sitting my mom's dog (from the same program. She raises them to be guide dogs someday) and Dylan is outside. He has destroyed our screen door which I am sure my landlord is going to love, and he is now standing on top of the washing machine, looking into the kitchen window.
That is the funny thing about labs. They are such beautiful, happy looking dogs and you bring them home expecting to have photos of that perfect, all-American family with your dog sitting nice in the center... and then you realize you are now living out pages from the book Marley and Me. And yet you still love them! There is something about a smiling Labrador retriever face that you cannot help but forgive which is probably why we are all still breeding them and claiming they are perfect family dogs.
Add all this puppy chaos to a screaming colic-y baby and you have a petty clear picture of my life right now. Which is why I absolutely relish those couple of hours after Beau gets home and we walk the dog, then bathe the baby and put her to bed and we can snuggle up on the couch and talk about our days or just quietly watch Bitchin' Kitchen on the cooking channel (my new obsession). Those few hours are my favorite of the day and looking forward to it helps me look past the destroyed baby toys and just laugh when Dylan pulls out my box of Christmas decorations and litters them all over the floor. It's all good, because in only 3 more hours, Beau will be home... And yesterday he just happened to come home with a beautiful bouquet of flowers that are now sitting in front of me and they smell amazing. Maybe I do live in that perfect all-American family portrait.
"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do." - Bob Dylan
No comments:
Post a Comment