Day One Hundred Twenty Nine

This and That

My husband deserves a medal. He likes animals. He just wouldn't have quite as many living with us as we do. That's okay. He adapts.

I've written about our first encounter. We were in college and he saw me sitting on the lawn in front of my dorm with a sick puppy on my lap. He offered to drive me to a vet. That was it for me. He was my hero and I have followed him ever since. Literally. I followed him back to Pittsburgh, then to Edinboro, Erie, back again to Pittsburgh, then Orlando. He's hinting about wanting to retire to Costa Rica. Whether or not I haul my butt there depends on whether or not they quarantine animals. (Kids! I'm joking. Dad and I will stay here until you have to pull our respective plugs...)

Andy puts up with a lot. I live by the "Don't ask permission; beg forgiveness" method. He really is never quite certain what new creature will be living here when he gets home. Rooney was perhaps the biggest surprise. One Saturday morning, I asked him if he would like to run errands with me. He said, "sure," but wondered where we were going. When I said, "the airport," he looked stunned. Then all the cylinders fired and he shook his head - knowing what that meant. "You got another dog." It was a statement, not a question. The thing is, he always intends to stay detached, but the reality is, he quickly becomes the favorite human. To the dogs. I still maintain that distinction with the cats.

 

I remember when I came home from a dog show with our first French Bulldog. He was in his recliner. When he heard me come in he said, "You better not have another dog!" I did, and she did the best possible thing - Maddy climbed onto his lap and never left. Eventually, he had Maddy and her two girls, Missy and Teddy with him every night.

Then there was the time I had been visiting my folks in PA with my kids. We fell in love with my father's Chihuahua, so we had to get one for ourselves. Simon was so tiny, I could hide him in my coat. That worked well when we stopped at a Cracker Barrel and I wasn't going to leave him in the car. I put him in my coat. I was young enough to pull off looking like I was pregnant. I got away with that until I was paying the bill. All of a sudden, my "stomach" started to roll around. Simon, who had been sleeping, woke up and started moving around. When he popped his head out of the top of my coat, the cashier almost fainted.  So did Andy when we got home.

Like I said, he adapts. He also forks over quite a chunk of our retirement money into their care. Between food, vet bills and miscellaneous like beds, toys, grooming products, etc. it gets expensive. I think he secretly likes the activity - it gives him a lot of material for laughs and sympathy when he gets to work.