Well, I wasn't a pet person...

I was not a pet person. It was as simple as that. I guess the problem would be then that I married one. And dated him for four years before that. So you can imagine, I’ve run through quite a few reasons not to get a dog. I didn’t want to tie myself down to an animal before kids. It would be cruel to get an animal when both of us are at work all day. We don’t even have our own backyard (we live in a condo), so where was this active puppy going to have room to run? These worked for awhile, but once the wedding was over and the newlywed phase started to feel normal, he was on me again. I finally agreed to LOOK ONLY at our local SPCA about two weeks ago. Big mistake. Because Harper was there in the puppy nursery, nine weeks old, with a big spay scar on her little baby belly and although I might not be a pet person, I’m not heartless. She came home with us that day, and we haven’t had a life since.

She’s a boxer mix and even though the SPCA said they didn’t know what she was mixed with, around the time our ten year old neighbor exclaimed “A baby pit!” we had heard it enough that we finally had to accept it. We’ve gotten a crash course in raising a dog, from volumes of literature on boxers and pit bulls, to the best feeding schedule and treats, to crate training vs puppy pads. The lessons that really stick with me though, are these:

Puppy teeth are like needles and not only will they break the skin, they’ll break the blood vessels under the skin, resulting in your arms looking like you have heroin for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They might say that puppies are as hard as newborns, but given the fact that newborns actually sleep for longer than 20 minutes at a time and stay put when you put them down (and have no teeth to chew) I might venture out and say that puppies are harder. But even when they are making your life ten times harder and more complicated, you can love the furry ball of needle teeth more than you thought possible. (I think this is why they were designed to be so cute.) The maternal instinct kicks in right away because you are 100% responsible for their well-being. Case in point- Saturday found me opening Harper’s jaws and prying out duck poop without a second thought. With my bare hands. And I used to say I wasn’t a pet person…