burnt toast life

oh… Bird

Anyone who has been following along for any length of time knows that Bird is my “problem child.” Lovable, yes, but also naughty. Prone to antics. (Remember this?) (And this?)

Well, this time it may not be his fault, but the incident caused us plenty of headaches nonetheless.

Every year when we go on vacation, we have to board our dogs at the kennel. Up until this year, we’ve taken them to the same place – it’s in town, it’s convenient, and it’s reputable. But part of me never felt good about it, mostly because the dogs are kept in large cages all day and night. Yes, part of the caged area is outside, so they can “enjoy the outdoors.” And yes, my dogs are kept in my bedroom for 8 hours a day during the work week usually, so it’s not really that different. But still. I always felt so bad leaving them there, especially since I was going to enjoy a beach vacation. Ryder would usually come home with some sort of physical proof of his anxiety, like last time when his paw was red and hairless from being chewed on all week.

So you can imagine my delight when a new kennel came to town a few months ago. Not only did they have open play for dogs (and doggy daycare), but boarders enjoyed luxury dog accommodations. They got their own little rooms with beds and windows (no cages). So all week while I was at the beach, my dogs would socialize with the other dogs, play on the outdoor kiddie toys, bathe in the multiple pools, and then go to sleep tired out and happy in their own private room. It was perfect! And I even managed to convince myself that it wasn’t THAT much more expensive than the other place (ahem… $200 more expensive. Eeesh).

I took the boys for a personality evaluation a week before we left to ensure they would get along with the other dogs, and of course they passed with flying colors. I left them there for a day of daycare, just to test the waters, and the owners raved over their awesome personalities and said they were welcome to come and play anytime. We left for the beach feeling really good about the whole situation. And zero guilt!

That is… until Wednesday. Early in the morning Eric got a phone call from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. They were calling to inform him that there was a complaint filed against Bird for biting someone. Eric assured the woman that there must be some mistake, as his dog was safely ensconced at a kennel and we were on vacation. And we had received no phone calls from the kennel.

Well.

Apparently it went down like this: one of the employees at the kennel left a bagel unattended (um, why was she eating a bagel around the dogs in the first place?). Bird and another dog, Fred, stole the bagel and started eating it. The employee removed Fred from the area, then attempted to take the bagel out of Bird’s mouth. So…he bit her.

Apparently he bit off the tip of her finger and she had to go to the hospital and get stitches. She wasn’t mad or anything, but since it was a dog bite it did need to get reported to the state. Luckily, the whole place is equipped with web cams (which we were able to view remotely, another huge selling point on this place), so the owners were able to view the incident and confirm that the employee handled it 100% incorrectly. The bite was reactive, not aggressive. They were totally on our side. But despite this, Bird had to be quarantined for the remainder of his stay, and he is never allowed back there for boarding or daycare.

Also, when we asked why the hell they didn’t call us, they said, “It is what it is. We didn’t want to ruin your vacation.”

Um…OK? Really? Because it wasn’t much better hearing it from the Board of Health, that’s for sure.

The whole thing just sucks big time. Because now, not only can we never go back to that place, but also Bird will have this mark on his permanent record forever. So we can never board him anywhere. Trust me, one of the first questions on any application for a kennel or doggy daycare is, “Has your dog ever bitten anyone?” and now we will always have to answer “Yes.” What are we supposed to do next year on vacation?

Because of the incident, the girl who got bit was fired. Not that I’m ever happy to hear about someone getting fired… but it sounds like she’d be better suited to a different profession anyway. Too late for us, though.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with this dog. But then something like this happens, and all is forgiven:

birdmolly1

Poor Bird!

What a day!

First off, today is my 4th wedding anniversary. Time flies when you’re battling infertility, amirite? I’m going to share a photo from my wedding day to prove that I was thin once (and it wasn’t that long ago). Maybe my “goal outfit” should be this teeny, tiny, exorbitantly overpriced white dress…

mark my words, I will get this body back...

mark my words, I will get this body back…

Anyway. This morning I was taking the dogs out, as I do every day right before I leave for work. Ryder, our Golden, is free to roam the yard off-leash and won’t run away, but Bird would sprint cross-country if we let him. So I had Bird’s leash in my hand, and he yanked on it, and I guess my grip wasn’t as good as I thought because the leash dropped. I watched helplessly as he ran with Ryder to the other side of the yard.

THANK GOD Eric hadn’t actually walked out the door yet to leave for work yet, because clearly my fat ass wasn’t going to catch Bird. I yelled up the stairs for help and stood by uselessly as Eric followed Bird around, using his best stern voice to try and get him to come back. No luck. Our property borders a large field where horses are kept, and Bird thought it would be a good idea to go chase the horses, who were out and grazing just beyond the perimeter of our yard.

I didn’t see it happen, but apparently the horses didn’t take too kindly to being chased, and one of them expressed his anger by straight up kicking Bird smack in the face. The good news is that this caused Bird to come running back to Eric for assistance, so at least we got him back in the house. The bad news is that he got kicked in the face by a horse.

I felt terrible, and the whole thing was 100% my fault. Eric ended up working from home and of course rushing Bird to the vet immediately. The poor little guy wouldn’t let anyone near his mouth without snapping at them, so they had to put him under anesthesia to assess the situation and to sew him up. His jaw wasn’t fractured, but he did need both internal and external stitches and he might end up losing a tooth.

Happy anniversary, right? I mean, it could have been SO much worse (like, if the horse had stomped on his head in earnest… if he ran out into the road and got hit by a car… if we was still missing and unaccounted for, and possibly halfway to Canada). But still. Poor Bird has to wear a cone of shame for 2 weeks, has to be on medication, and woke up crying from surgery because he was in so much pain. As it stands now, he’s just moping around the house not being himself (it probably has a lot to do with wearing the cone, which he does not like). I feel like a terrible mother. Oh, and the $1100 vet bill wasn’t pretty, either. This comes not even a week after dropping $450 on new brakes and rotors for my car and a few short weeks after accidentally putting my iPhone through the wash. So much for saving up for maternity leave, eh?

Also… selfishly… I’m mad about how it kind of ruined the whole day. First, it cast a negative light and became the central focus of our anniversary. Second, Eric sent me beautiful flowers to work, along with a card that said, “Surprise! We’re going out to dinner. Your choice of where.” This coming from a man who doesn’t really like going out to dinner, and who I usually have to bribe to go out to dinner. Me, I love going out. So had we not had our little drama, I’d have spent the afternoon eagerly weighing my options in terms of restaurants. Instead, I was stuck knowing that we’d have to do takeout because Bird couldn’t be left alone. And I even straightened my hair today!

But as I said, it could have been worse.

Lessons learned for me: double wrap the leash, pay attention, keep a tight grip, stop making expensive mistakes.

Lesson learned for Bird: don’t go chasin’ horses.

poorbird

doggy guilt trip

We have a Golden Retriever.

We also have a Jack Russell/Whippet Mix, but he’s not the main subject of my guilt. I don’t know why; I guess it’s just the way my bizarre little mind works.

So here’s the thing. My parents have grandkids, both a boy and two girls. Eric’s parents also have grandkids, and also have both genders represented. While I’ve always wanted to do my part to provide them with more, I’ve never felt obligated to do it. I never felt pressure from my family to have kids.

The place that I am feeling pressure is with my dog. My dog. Yes, it’s insane. But I managed to pick the most stereotypical kid-friendly dog on the planet, through no fault of my own, and literally every time I look into his big brown eyes I think, “Damn, I wish you had a little kid to play with.”

I take pride in saying that both my dogs were adopted, but let’s be honest…Ryder probably would have found a good home even if I hadn’t gotten to him first. He’s a purebred 5th generation Golden Retriever with the papers to prove it and cost his original family $900. But then the Dad of the family was away a lot and the Mom of the family left Ryder in his crate all day, even though she was home all day, which prompted her neighbors to threaten calling animal control. We found out about Ryder’s situation via a forwarded email and took him home two days later.

That’s when the guilt trip started, I think. He was 7 months old and had spent most of his life with this family of three kids. I felt terrible when the little 5-year-old cried as I loaded him into our car, but it wasn’t my fault. I was saving him from her asshole mother who couldn’t be bothered to treat him like part of the family. We took him home and he seemed to like it there, but then we had to go to work. We left him alone for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. We felt awful. We quickly decided that he needed a buddy, and that’s when we adopted Bird.

Ryder and Bird are best buddies, probably out of necessity, but nevertheless it’s better for my anxiety to know they’re hanging out at home together while I’m stuck at work all day. But still. I feel so incredibly guilty that I haven’t blessed them with a baby yet. Both of them, really. Because Bird would love playing with kids, too.

Guilt – is it ingrained in me somehow? I feel guilty when I leave them in the morning, guilty when I get home and I’m too tired to walk them, guilty when they shower me with love and affection that I don’t feel worthy of. Guilty that I can’t give them what they so clearly need. Then I think, hey now, there are dogs out there in the world who are abused and neglected who would kill to have the charmed life that our dogs have, all clean and fed and coddled in a nice warm house. That’s true. But I feel like I owe them more than just the bare necessities.

twins, right?

twins, right?

You wanna know what Ryder is like? Picture the dog from the movie “Up.” The one who says, “Hi, I just met you, but I love you.” He’s a big, dopey oaf who thinks he’s a lapdog even though he weighs 80 lbs. He’s afraid of everything – we have a jug style water dish for the dogs that he refuses to drink out of because one time it made a loud GLUG GLUG noise. He once spent hours “trapped” in the kitchen because our little recycling bin had gotten knocked over in the doorway and he was too terrified to go near it. And don’t even get me started on the vacuum.

The fact of the matter is that he’s stupid. He’s stupid, he’s inbred, he’s easily frightened and he’s also the most gentle, sweetest soul you’ll ever meet. I literally think about his mortality on a daily basis, and wonder how the heck I’m going to survive it when he passes. And then I think, I’m really running out of time here. He’s only 2 and a half; he’s young and energetic and at the perfect age to play with a toddler. What if I don’t have kids until he’s old and feeble? It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to him. I feel like I’m depriving him, and also am depriving those future unborn kids who should really get to meet my Ryder at his best.

And his breed was part of the reason I knew he was perfect. We knew we wanted kids, so a Golden made so much sense. It’s not like you ever hear about children “being attacked by that vicious golden retriever.” That’s not to say that other breeds aren’t great with kids, too…I am 100% pro Pit Bull (as Eric likes to point out, they are the original nanny dog), but I never had dogs before. Goldens are so simple and easy to train. They’re a great starter dog for someone who has no idea what they’re doing. They are the breed that you choose when you have/want kids and you don’t want to worry for one second that it was a bad decision. For this reason, it seems like they belong with kids. And then I take it one step further and think I owe the dog some kids.

This weekend we went camping. The campground had a dog park that we spent a lot of time in, and let me tell you it was awesome. Oh! If you want to hang out with people who aren’t obsessed with kids, go to a dog park. This one woman was practically spitting nails at the little kids from across the street who wandered over to see the dogs from the other side of the fence. Another person threatened to leave if kids came in. I know it doesn’t always hold true, but a lot of times dog people are decidedly not kid people. No one asked me if I had kids or when I planned to have them, that’s for darn sure. They just talked about dog this and dog that for hours on end. It was actually nice.

So anyway. We were at the dog park when an adorable little redheaded girl of about 2 toddled over and started petting Ryder through the chain link. His tail was wagging furiously as he tried to get closer and closer to her chubby little hand. I’m not gonna lie… this scene caused tears to prickle behind my eyes as a million metaphors raced through my mind. There’s a giant fence between him and that little kid he’s supposed to play with. It’s a fence called infertility, miscarriage and injustice. It’s a fence I’m trying to climb with all my might, but I just keep falling down on the wrong side of it. It looks so easy, but it’s just so hard.

Doggy guilt trip. Am I crazy?

scaredy dog

Why, hello! It’s been so long. Long enough to acquire a few more animals, of course. So here’s the current headcount:

2 dogs

8 chickens

5 fish

1 turtle

1 cat

One of these days I’m going to start charging people admission to come over to the Harding Family Petting Zoo. It’s a grand old time.

Anyway, we got this cat. A rescued, 3-year-old, no-one-wants-me-anymore-and-my-owner-is-moving away cat (who is fat). I saw him for approximately 3 seconds on the day he came home before he skittered off to  hide in the basement for 5 days straight. We did not catch a glimpse of him for that long, but knew he was alive simply because the litter box was still being used. He was rightfully a little apprehensive about the dogs, who were joyously curious and scared the hell out of him. Now that some time has passed the cat (who we have named Clembough, Clemmie for short as a nod to Groupon’s $1,000 baby-naming deal which may or may not have been a total publicity stunt) cautiously comes up from the basement, pausing at the top of the stairs and meowing loudly for a little attention, please. The dogs oblige immediately, which causes him to flee back down the stairs to his secret lair. The only time he is comfortable going as far as the kitchen is when he hops onto the kitchen table, which is more than a little bit gross.

Since he has taken up residence in the basement, we put his food and water down there. Unfortunately, the dogs can reach it. And since Ryder is afraid of his own water, he is delighted to be able to steal the cat’s non -threatening water.

Allow me to explain. Ryder is what you may call a scaredy-dog. I love Ryder. In fact, of all these animals, he is by far my #1 favorite. But he is also a purebred Golden Retriever and inbred enough to be a bit dumb. We found one of those continuous water dispensers at a yard sale for $3 and picked it up, thrilled that we didn’t drop $40 for the one I had been eyeing at Target. The dogs took to it just fine – until that horrifying moment when the 3 gallon water jug made a GLUG GLUG noise and traumatized Ryder for life. Now he refuses to drink from it, approaching it only when I stand beside him and stick my finger into the water, indicating that it is in fact NOT a giant monster poised to attack him. Since I don’t always stand there with my finger in the water, he tries to find alternate sources for thirst quenching. Every time I take him outside, he drinks rainwater from the lip of an overturned pond that’s waiting to be installed in the backyard. He noses his way into our showers every morning to lick the suds in the tub. And he steals the cat’s water from the tiny dish. The whole thing is maddening.

I know, I should just give him back his old (non-scary) watering dish and stop torturing the dog. But wouldn’t that just be pandering to his insecurity? Giving credit to inane neuroses? Ok, so he’s just a dog. But Bird has no problem with it, and it GLUG GLUGGED at him, too. I’m at a loss here. Poor scaredy dog.

 

Naughty Bird & the stinky chickens

If I ever start a band, that’s what I’m naming it.

This week was interesting, to say the least. It culminated with me on my hands and knees last night, furiously scrubbing chicken shit off my dining room walls and cursing the chicken coop man who refuses to return phone calls.

Here’s what happened: the chicks got too big for their cardboard box, and around that same time Eric stopped cleaning out their cardboard box. This resulted in a filthy, smelly, chicken filled cardboard box caked in excrement on my dining room table. Not cool. Last garbage day I made the decision that I could not, under any circumstances, continue life for one more day with that pit of despair contaminating the air of my home. The box got tossed, but the chickens remained. I had to find a quick solution.

I should also mention that I found someone on craigslist who sells beautiful, hand-constructed chicken coops for $250. This is a fantastic bargain considering Green Acres wants $700+ and the materials to build one would probably cost $200 alone (not to mention the manual labor, time spent, and so on). The dude answered the first time I called but hasn’t since. Hence, the homeless chickens were relocated to the dog crate.

The problem with that solution, of course, was that we no longer had a functioning dog crate. So at first we let Bird run free, a privilege that Ryder earned a few weeks ago. He thanked us by peeing on the bed (daily), chewing my glasses beyond recognition, eating one of Eric’s expensive tools, and eventually pooping on the bed. Clearly this was a bad plan.

Someone had suggested that we close him in the bathroom instead. This turned out to be a worse idea.

The yellowing linoleum that came with the house, while ugly, was perfectly functional. Now we have half a floor missing, which looks quite ghetto if you ask me. Bird also managed to chew through 2 bath towels, 3 rolls of toilet paper, and a very soft and comfortable bath mat that we got as a wedding gift. He was just about to start work on my bathrobe when we got home.

As angry as we were at Bird, this whole fiasco did force us to take action – quickly. Eric found someone else on craigslist with a smaller, “transitional” coop for just $35. We spent last night cleaning out the layer of solidified bird droppings that had formed in the bottom of the dog crate in the space of just a week. It was a grand time. The mess in my dining room was epic, but now it’s cleaned up and smells pretty and the chickens are outside! Yay! They love their new home and I love that because of a naughty Bird, the stinky chickens are officially where they belong.

finally, a home

Bird is the word

The girl who doesn’t like dogs seems to have adopted another dog. And if she would have stayed at the SPCA one second longer, she probably would have come home with 5 more. That place is burnt toast central.

Bird came into our lives in a roundabout way. My dear friend Emily sent the below picture with no descriptive text.

This is Bird.

Side note: this is the same Emily who sent a photo of another very adorable pup a few weeks ago who was gone before I could answer. So I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

We went to meet Bird last Sunday and fell. in. love. For some reason when I said “Jack Russell terrier” to anyone, they became alarmed. “Those dogs are crazy” was all I kept hearing. Well, he is crazy, I’ll admit that. But he’s crazy just like Ryder, so he fits in well around here.

Sunday and Monday were a blur of anticipation and nerves. Apparently, Bird had sparked quite a few inquiries and we weren’t the only family interested. It was such a different experience than getting Ryder, where we just said “Yes, we want the dog.” Five minutes later, we had a dog. Easy.

For some reason the SPCA was obsessed with us having a fenced in yard. It was just really strange that they were so picky over unwanted animals – the whole application process surprised me. I figured we were doing them a huge favor by taking the dog off their hands, but then I suppose it makes sense to screen potential owners. These animals deserve the very best homes. Anyway, Bird was being fostered at Leader of the Pack in Kuhnsville. The owner there, Lisa, is amazing, and long story short she recommended us over another family even though she knew the other family personally. She was very impressed with the way Ryder and Bird played together when they met.

This may sound strange, but I could tell these two crazies were meant to be brothers. They just have the same… face. Maybe it’s the look in their eyes. While the transition has been a little bumpy (not for Bird, mostly for a jealous attention-seeking Ryder), they are already having a blast hanging out together. At this very moment, Ryder is sharing his favorite bone with Bird. OK, so Bird stole it. Whatever. They’re cute.

Sharing so nicely

amazing ammonia

You know when you are thinking about doing something but you keep putting it off and putting it off and then it just seems too momentous to bear? Sometimes that’s how I feel about blogging. I’m not really sure why – I love writing and I love sharing my writing. But for some reason I feel a sense of obligation to constantly update my blog, which makes the posts obligatory. And once they become obligatory, I don’t want to do them anymore. Of course, this guilt/anxiety is 100% self-inflicted. My new goal is to update when I feel like updating and stop feeling shitty about not updating. Hopefully then I will post more often than every three months.

What has happened since November? Not much. I do have a new obsession, and her name is Pinterest. Oh, Pinterest! I spent the entire weekend pinning, searching, admiring, swooning. Yes, I’m late to this bandwagon – but better late than never, of course. Actually, the slew of new ideas may be just what I need to keep me blogging. Maybe I’ll make brilliant crafts and post pics. Maybe the projects I find will go horribly awry and I can post about that. Either way, it provides something to talk about besides the dog.

Ryder is doing splendidly. He has a few behavioral issues that we need to get taken care of, but for the most part he is a good boy. His first birthday is coming up in March and I intend to have a full-fledged party with cake and balloons. And dog treats.

The point of this post isn’t to ramble on and on about how I’m going to write more. The point is to actually write something, which is why I am sharing my incredible story of oven burners, ammonia, and Google.

We moved into our house in June. It didn’t take long for us to realize that certain things had been left, shall we say, uncared for. The bathroom was unusable. The kitchen cabinets were filthy. There was a mouse living in the dishwasher.

We hired a professional cleaning service, and they did an impressive job transforming the house from practically uninhabitable to comfortable. They even revealed to us that our kitchen floor was really light tan, not brown as we had originally assumed. The one thing that they could not solve was the oven burner problem. The burners on the stove had so many layers of baked on, caked on grease and food spills that they suggested we buy new ones. The cleaners had spent a good amount of time and an entire package of Magic Erasers to get one burner semi-clean. It simply wasn’t worth the effort.

Unfortunately, these burners are $60 a pop, and there are four of them. So the past six months I have been trying to ignore my repulsive burners and hope that guests think they are black (they’re light gray). The other night, on a whim, I decided to use Google to figure out how to clean them. I think it was the Pinterest inspiration, actually. I discovered that all you had to do was put each burner into a Ziplock bag with 1/4 cup of ammonia, let it sit overnight, and scrub it off the next day. It seemed too good to be true, but ammonia is cheap. It was worth a shot.


The pictures don’t lie. Not only did it work like a charm, the grease that had “demolished 10 Magic Erasers” literally washed right off with hot water. It’s a little sad how excited I got over this cleaning mini-miracle. I had to use a scrubber sponge in the corners in order to get them perfect, but remember these things hadn’t been cleaned in approximately 50 years. I’m sure someone with a reasonably dirty stove wouldn’t have to use a sponge at all.

That’s it. That’s my story. Wasn’t it worth waiting 3 months for?

wordless wednesday

I know, it’s been too long! I wish I had some good excuse, something like “I’ve been busy working on my novel,” but the truth is that I’ve been busy catching up on recorded episodes of Auction Hunters. Anyway. I do have a whole post planned out and I’ve even arranged to blog on Nazareth Patch too (yay!)… I just haven’t been motivated. I spend all day writing and when I get home at night, sometimes the last thing I want to do is stare at a computer screen. But anyway, just so y’all don’t think I gave up on the blog, here are some pics for wordless Wednesday. Or in my case, not so wordless, but not as wordy as usual, Wednesday.

how to become a mother overnight

I swear, this blog isn’t just going to be about puppies. But the dog is new and the blog is new, so this is what I have.

It’s no secret that Eric and I want to have children, but haven’t been blessed with one yet. I guess that’s a very short and compact way of summing up a much more complicated reality. But anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The point is that I used to mock people who treated their dogs like children, talked to their dogs like children, and behaved as though their dogs actually were children. Now that I have a dog, I’m starting to understand why this is so easy to do.

It all started at Marshall’s when I was shopping for a dog bed and various other accessories. I started perusing the dog toy section and thinking, “Ooh, this one’s cute. Should I get the wittle bitty lambie or the wittle bitty lion? Oh my, but then there’s a giraffe, too!”

baby toy? dog toy? both..?

Yeah. It felt suspiciously like shopping for a small child, and the similarities were not lost on me. Plus, from the moment we brought him home to live with us, Eric automatically became daddy and I became mommy. Ryder’s new tag bears our last name. It’s like we effortlessly adopted a very furry child.

And like having a new baby, I feel desperately guilty every morning when I leave him and anxious to get home to see him. The romanticized notions are basically gone, and he gets in my way and annoys me daily – you know, like when you have a kid. I’m proud of what he has learned so far – you can already tell he’s getting more comfortable in his own skin and he’s even learning how to walk properly. Our little boy is growing up so quickly…

One non-baby related thing that makes me very happy about Ryder is that he has forced me into exercise. For the past year I have made up excuse after excuse to go back to bed for an hour after waking up at 7 to pack Eric’s lunch. Every night I would go to be saying, “Tomorrow will be the day. I will stay up and do my Pilates video or maybe even go for a run. I will not go back to sleep.” And then morning would come and the bed would look so inviting that I would abandon exercise in favor of sleep. But now that I have this very active pup, I’m guilt tripped into walks in the morning. Well, the first morning was a guilt trip. Now I actually enjoy these walks, probably as much as he does. I actually have more energy during the day, and I feel just slightly less guilty about crating him all day. Eric and I even started taking evening walks, too, rather than flopping down on the couch the minute we get home from work. So all in all, this dog has improved our lives and given us a pseudo-child.

Don’t get me wrong – we still want a real baby. But he’s a nice distraction in the meantime.

must tolerate dogs

I’m not a dog person.

This may even be an understatement, especially since several friends responded to my text about getting a dog with, “What? Did pigs start flying to announce that hell froze over, too?”

The truth is that I never wanted a dog. A few years ago I would go as far as to say I disliked them, but really only when they were jumping or drooling on me. However, I married a “dog guy” and we talked about getting one since the idea of sharing our lives together finally became reality. He insisted that he needed a dog, and over time the idea grew on me. I even began to romanticize the notion, imagining a stoic companion to keep watch beside my armchair while I sipped hot cocoa and delved into a good book. In my doggie daydreams, of course, I never imagined a poorly behaved pup.

Eric and I clashed on what breed to get, and somewhat violently. I wanted a small, pocket-sized dog to carry around in my handbag and strut with down the street. His inclinations leaned more towards large, bad-ass dog that could be his best friend and not threaten his manhood while on walks. He wanted a pitbull; I wanted a pug. We both agreed that whatever dog we picked absolutely had to be a rescue from a shelter and not a pet store purebred. Since we disagreed on just about everything else about our future pet, the matter was laid to rest for the time being.

Then Friday afternoon rolled around. My mom forwarded us an email about a 7 month old Golden who needed a home – and fast. The email came with 2 snapshots, a sad tale of allergies, and a warning that whoever wanted the dog needed to make a decision before Saturday evening. We called and set up a meeting for the next morning.

We could tell Ryder was going to be a firecracker from the first time we saw him straining against his leash as his family walked him down the street. There’s just something about the way he walks – it’s as if he doesn’t quite know how to coordinate his front legs with his back legs. It was immediately apparent that this was a high energy, high maintenance dog – but he was a purebred Golden worth $1,000 that we were getting for free. He was a big dog (Eric’s happy) but a loyal, friendly dog that’s great with kids (Amanda’s happy).

Then we heard a bit about why the family was getting rid of Ryder, and that’s when I knew he was absolutely, without a doubt coming home with us. Eric already chastised me for speculating and giving credit to hearsay, so I’ll just say this – they (supposedly) did not give him the love and attention he deserved, allergies notwithstanding. It became apparent that he was my “burnt toast dog,” which went along well with my burnt toast husband and various other burnt toast people/items in my life. But that’s another story for another time.

So Ryder is our dog, and so far things are going well. He is rambunctious, excitable, and has endless stores of energy. My biggest complaint so far is the ridiculous amount of dog hair and dog dandruff all over my clean floor. It’s pretty obvious that he has never been to the groomer, so hopefully once we get that out of the way the shedding will be less intense. We took him to the dog park on Saturday afternoon and he had an absolute ball, plus he seems to play well with others. He sleeps curled next to our bed at night and follows Eric around the house wherever he goes. He clearly needs to be trained and to get comfortable in his element, but I can tell he’s a good dog already. We definitely made the right decision – though I still would not call myself a “dog person.”