We are not dog people

The story will always begin something like this: I was sitting in a chair by myself, no one squeezed between my hip and the armrest or perched over my head.  My phone was in my hand because no one had taken it to watch adults talk in children’s voices while they review toys on YouTube and I was scrolling through Facebook. It was after dinner, the dishwasher was loaded and running, the kids were playing instead of fighting and it was too late to rewash the latest load of clothes I had forgotten to put in the dryer.

So I was sitting all alone, with nothing to do but look at what everyone else was posting for people like me who are just sitting and then I saw her. This little fuzz ball of a puppy was in my feed and OMG she would be the best puppy for McKenna and her owner says she’s looking for her “furever home” and that could be us! We have a furever home! It’s quiet here at this very second! So quiet I’m the only one speaking with exclamation marks.

There was probably a pause here for me to try to coax our current dog into coming in the house by waving a peanut butter covered bone out the door and then another pause for me to make sure the level of quiet in our house was not a suspicious level of quiet and then another because I set my phone somewhere random along the way but none of these pauses caused common sense or self control to kick in.

It was still quiet enough for me to feel almost bored so I did what any mom who thinks she is approaching too much quiet would do. I messaged the owner of the puppy and told her we love her, we want her and we will drive to meet her as soon as I wrangle up the quiet people who won’t be quiet once I put them in the car.

We are not dog people. My husband said this after we got Max (our lab) last year and the kids cheered over seeing the crayons he ate come out in his poop. I agreed that we are not dog people as we took his photo in kids costumes and bought him three different kinds of food to taste test and took him to dog school where he was the worst and the best student.

Our family, the “not dog people” whole of us, has expanded. We picked up our little Lily on Friday and everyone loves her. I do the baby sway while I hold her and we half-crate train her because she’s quiet when she sleeps with us and I’m a fan of sleep and Sawyer calls her Wiwy because he’s still got a good year before he can perfect an L (fingers crossed). She’s the teeniest tiniest thing and we’re completely crazy for adding another pet since we’re not dog people. But she’s already got a dress and enough pink stuff to make your eyes roll back to your brain and she likes her food softened just a bit and her car rides short.

A photo posted by Jessica Watson (@fourplusanangel) on Oct 23, 2015 at 6:16pm PDT

This is the last of our pets for sure because Max has half the house and Lily has the other and there’s nothing left because that’s how math works and we’re not dog people anyway. We’re parents getting used to our kids growing as our hearts stay the same and wondering what to do with our hands when everyone can zip their own coats and put the straws in their drink boxes.

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