I don’t have children, I have dogs!

It took nearly four years of prompting, prodding, poking, pleading and pushing to get my husband to agree to adding a dog to our life. Finally, around Valentines Day 2011 I was able to get the stars to align.

In 2008, I was working an event and I met a dog breeder. She had a baby English Bulldog in her arms and of course I had to ask to pet her and got to talking to the woman; telling her how much I loved French Bulldogs, where I had first encountered them, etc. She said that she and her husband bred both English and French Bulldogs and she gave me one of her cards. I tucked the card away and only casually mentioned to my husband that I had played with a baby bulldog that day and got the usual response, ” We don’t need a damn dog“.

The business card ended up in the bottom of my work bag for more than a year; until one day I was cleaning out the bag because I was getting a new laptop at work and wanted to carry it in the bag. I came across the card and popped it into my wallet.

Several months went by and I happened to pull out the card when I was getting out my debit card to pay for something online. I decided to pull up their website to see what the cost of a Frenchie would be, I had heard they were expensive. Once on the site I knew I had heard correctly. They didn’t have any puppies available at that time, but I looked at a bunch of pictures of some past puppies and their parents. I showed a couple to my husband, he admitted that they were cute, but again said “We don’t need a damn dog“.

I would pull that card out every few months, look at the puppies, see if they had any available for adoption, show them to my husband and hear the same thing. “We don’t need a damn dog“.

Sometime around the end of 2010, I started looking at their website almost daily because they had posted a note that they had two new litters of Frenchies being born and I wanted to see the new puppies. As I remember the two litters were quite big; 6 in one and 7 in the other. So many cute puppies and they would be available around Christmas time, of course.

I watched as each little cutie was adopted by another family, each time telling my husband; “oh no, another one has been adopted can’t we please get a puppy.” And again he would say “We don’t need a damn dog” and now he added “especially at that price“.

It was the around the end of January and I was just finishing up another event out-of-town. I had some time to kill at the end of the day right before we could start packing things up. I was wasting some time looking at email, Facebook and then I thought to pop over to look at the puppies. I was surprised, they still had two little ones left, both appeared to be very, very small they were around 3 months old and still hadn’t been adopted. So on a whim I sent the breeder a note. I mentioned that I had met her all those years ago and that I had been longingly watching all the puppies get adopted and saw that they had two still left. I asked if they might be willing to work with me on the price, because the regular price was just out of my budget. I sent it off figuring that they would probably say “no negotiations on the price and thanks for looking“. I packed up and headed home.

The next morning I got an email. “Thank you for your interest in our frenchies, I think we can negotiate on the price. I need to share your offer with my husband. I will contact you shortly.” My husband was up watching the news, I was still lying around in bed. But I got up, so excited about the possibility of the new puppy, I kind of forgot that I hadn’t event spoken to him about it.  I kept checking my phone as I got ready. I took my shower, checked the phone, dried my hair, checked my phone, brushed my teeth, checked my phone.  Finally, the reply came. “Yes, my husband agreed to your offer. Which puppy would you like to adopt? Both are female”  She offered to send me a link to some video of the puppies. I replied;  “Great I will show them to my husband and get back in touch.”

So, then I had to think about my approach with my husband. I decided to tell him about the great deal I had the chance to get on a puppy and would he please just look at the pictures and the videos that she was sending me and to just keep an open mind. Please.  His reply was “We don’t need a damn dog” but this time it was accompanied by “But I will take a look at the pictures and videos”

Maddie the day we brought her home.

Then he saw her, tiny, cinnamon brown with a little black mask on her face hopping around her sister. Those cute bat ears and a tiny tail that looked like it belonged to a baby dear.  I couldn’t believe it, he said “OK, that one!”

Within minutes of that “ok” I made the deal, paid the adoption fee and made arrangements to pick her up the next morning. I wasn’t going to give him a chance to change his mind.

We picked her up in the Denny’s parking lot just off I-5 halfway between Vancouver, where the breeder lived, and Olympia where we lived. She was so tiny, I could hold her in one hand, she trembled when I took her in my arms, but soon snuggled up next to me under my coat and stayed there for the next two hours. Snoring, sleeping and snuggling with her new human. I don’t think I was ever as happy as I was that day.

And so much for all the rules my husband laid out when he agreed to the dog. Not on the furniture, no sleeping in the bed, no feeding her from the table, you walk her, feed her, etc, etc.  He was puppy whipped in a day. She was sleeping on his lap while he watched T.V., he was singing her to sleep at night in her crate, giving her scraps from the table and within a month she was sleeping in the bed and not the crate. She has helped him lose 20 pounds, cut his blood-pressure medicine in half and I think just in general really cheered him up.

They say people with dogs are happier and live longer and I believe it!

What about you – do you have pets?