I really like dogs. In practice, they are at the top of my list of favorite animals and quite a lot of my time and energy is spent thinking about them. They are the physical manifestation of love and affection. They are soft and warm and happy and I don’t think there’s anything that could convince me otherwise.
In my household, we currently have three dogs: Chica, Juli, and Pepper. Chica and Juli are beagle sisters and Pepper is, what we presume to be, some sort of German Shepherd mix. We’ve had Chica and Juli for about 10 years and Pepper for a bit over one year. In fact, it was not too long ago that we celebrated Pepper’s Gotcha Day (what we call the day we first found him) and regaled ourselves with the tale of his induction into our familial unit.
It was fairly late into the evening of July 4, 2017. A family of skunks had been making a great exodus from the pasture in front of our house to our backyard and my mother and I were watching the action intently in our driveway. From down the road, we heard a flurry of high-pitched barks ring out across the distance. Of course, we turned away from the skunk shenanigans to investigate these barks and found ourselves in the presence of a small, brown puppy. This small puppy ran towards my mother as she crouched down, held out her arms and picked up the dog.
From that instant, that dog’s fate was sealed. We tried and tried to find out who his owners could have been, but it was all to no avail.
We were stuck taking care of this small puppy.
In case anyone was not aware, I’d just like to say that taking care of a puppy is awful. What’s even worse is being the ‘reason’ why your family ends up taking care of the puppy. You see, July 3 is my birthday. That year, for my birthday, mostly as a joke, I said that I wanted a dog for my birthday. Everyone came to the consensus that that was a terrible idea, but I suppose the universe had other plans.
In the week after we got Pepper, I underwent maternal trials that I had never faced before. I had to drag this dog around outside and wait until he used the bathroom. I would give him food and play with him, which sounds nice, except for the fact that he insisted on doing the opposite of what you wanted him to do at all times. Worst of all, at night, I’d lay next to his bed and wait until he fell asleep. I’d slowly creep away, hoping, praying, that he wouldn’t wake up and start to bark. All would be going well, but then I’d step a little too loud and whoosh there goes an hour of precious sleep spent laying next to a small dog, trying to convince it once more that sleep is much better than staying up all night playing with its toys.
I know that it could’ve been a whole lot worse, but in the moment I was so done with this dog that I just wanted to throw him back into the streets. Even so, I’m glad I was able to endure his incompetent puppy stage because now I get to enjoy his competent puppy stage! Sure, he still eats basically everything, is like 40 pounds heavier, and barks at random things, but he’s so cute that I don’t mind! So yes, dogs are a very important part of my life, but it’s not always fun to have them around.
hwopdop 