little brownie

At home, at any given point I’ll just be walking along through the kitchen or a hallway and find my hand in a mouth. This is new.

Once she realizes that I’m hip to her game and I stop to see what’s going on in her little 27% Shephard, 23% Husky, 20% Staffie/pit-bull brain she wiggles and jumps to confirm that I’ve won big at her game – and that it’s now the time to start thinking about how to manage the ensuing energetic puppy chaos; are we walking, or are we playing, the only two options to handle her psycho puppy energy.

Once we lost Bea, the most loving and affectionate soul to ever exist in a dog’s body, the gap of joy in our days was cavernous. As though one of the brightest lights of my days suddenly went out it felt like our home was cooler, less patient, less loving. One month into our stages of grief hoping for emotional distraction I started quietly perusing shelter websites, following local dog fosters on various social media, and suggesting to my broken-hearted husband, Bubba, that we could just start thinking about a new dog. My heart too was broken but I felt like I needed to change something in a drastic way to pull this family out of our collective funk; anything was better than this.

One rainy afternoon Bubba and I parked at our local Petsmart to stock up on food and snacks for our black lab Pepper and orange tabby Mr. Big when we were stopped cold by an A-sign outside the sliding doors advertising a dog-adoption event happening at that very moment. Once read, Bub and my eyes burned momentarily with tears, synced with the realization that entering this building with lonely animals in crates was a terrifically bad idea.

Fuck. We both breathed the word aloud.

Alas, as heralds to each other’s happiness and overall suckers, we linked arms and kept walking through those doors, greeted by a chorus of very loud and often piercing barks of dogs aching to go home with just anyone, fortheloveofgodplease. Once we stocked up for our pets I glanced at Bub and said those ridiculous, hollow words that we could just go take a look. Scritch a puppy face. Pet someone lonely. Where’s the harm? I thought to myself, all the while also fully aware that I’m full of shit and the first dog, the very first dog I tell you! that licks me would be coming home with us.

When we first saw how this event was set up with several dozen puppies and older dogs all on display in their various pens and cages my eyes misted again, acutely aware of the years of love I had left for Bea that had nowhere to go. All the littlest guys were flooded by wanting children and delighted adults alike, basking in tiny puppy licks, yips, and squeezes, crooning over the cuteness overload. I love a puppy but I have also had a puppy – Pepper was a wonderful, infuriating experience yes, but two full-time working professionals don’t need another several months of sleepless nights and potty training; once was enough. We felt like we weren’t in the market but we knew that when we were, we wanted a three to four year old, calmer, sweet, and maybe protective family dog.

Both Bub and I drifted to a big fella, sleek and gray, absolutely miserable in his crate. Honestly we didn’t really drift to him as we were curious what kind of boy existed that could pierce our brains with such sorrowful, scared, incessant barking – a desperate, high-pitched sound that screamed needs; homeboy was practically scaring the children. He weighed perhaps 60#, his fur was short and silver/blue, his pointed ears on high alert as a Staffordshire terrier is apt to be in a new place.

I’m not sure what it says about my pet-owning (for the sake of time let’s just say it’s strictly with pets,) personality when I gravitate most towards the outlier who most desperately needs a hand more than what logic would consider safe and cute – but here I was, crouched down in front of big ‘Jasper’s’ crate, fingers through the cage, cooing quiet murmurs of comfort while reading his most pathetic and painful bio. The fella had a lot of trauma and a lot of pain, but I could see in the one good eye he hadn’t lost that there was a goodest boy in there who could be my new best friend. Bubba had the same lightning shoot through him and we hovered long enough for an organizer to let us walk him, pet him, hold his face. His incessant barking stopped once he had gotten out of his crate and the gal in charge, Shay, told us that he was probably freaked out with this being his first adoption event. He’d made the drive all the way from Texas then boom – here he was. My eyes stung again at the notion of this gentle beast being stuck, scared, in a loud van for days before getting caged up in this loud fluorescent lit box store.

It was love at first sight.

Feelings got put aside – motivated by my more rational husband, and we left Jasper there while quietly wishing him luck and headed to the grocery store to continue our day of errands. Upon entering, the aisles of Fred Meyer were suddenly boring, stupid, and irritating. I couldn’t think of a single thing we needed now, distracted by my heartstrings pulling me physically back towards the door. Bub finally stopped our little cart, looked at me once, and proclaimed we needed to go bring that boy home. My joy was instant and after picking up a big steak we sped back towards that Petsmart.

After a lot of back n’forth with the organizers and a lengthy phone call with his clingy, protective foster dog mom describing Jasper as the best boy with tons of love to give, she left us with the warning us that Jasper had never been around cats. I repressed that negative bit as we walked our new prince out of the store and delighted in his big grin, his one eye shining with what I’m going to assume as happy gratitude, the impressive smile dribbling an equally impressive amount of drool in the back of my car on the ride home.

Once home, Mr. Big, the tabby and my main furry squeeze of the last fifteen years was asleep on our bed so I closed the door and let him sleep while Jasper ran around the house grinning, sniffing, and trotting merrily along the way. Pepper and he got along just fine fairly immediately, and after a bit of happy snuggles we finally relented to needing to see how our new meatloaf supreme was going to behave around the most precious cat – so we let him have a little lie-down in his new crate and closed his door, releasing the cat from the bedroom. We waited with bated breath.

Mr. Big left our room and stepped towards the living room – and instantly, sadly, Jasper sprung viciously at his bars, simply quaking to get a hold of Biggie. Mr. Big froze, sensing absolute danger, then retreated back to the bedroom. The test was over, Jasper failed, Bub and my hearts both fell. A big part of me knew that Jasper would have that prey drive but I banked on feeling deserving of a stroke of luck and thought that maybe something nice would happen in my stupid optimism.

Bub got on the phone with the foster mom and explained it wouldn’t be a fit after all, further solidified by the dog lunging at our fifteen-year-old boy after the kid excitedly rushed to meet him while Jasper was on my lap – a move clearly meant to protect me, suggesting he would be an excellent protector but regrettably not for our family. I took it upon myself to drive Jasper back to Shay the next day to another adoption event, where it turned out Jasper wouldn’t be adopted again and he was subsequently returned to his foster mom in Texas. I’ve been watching his foster group closely though and it would seem she has decided to keep Jasper forever, he’s been recently removed from their adoptive list. Before we had even brought Jasper home, after he had spoken to this woman Bubba marveled to me how this foster who’d had this dog for close to four years, who clearly loved this dog so much would want him to be adopted in the first place and I try to think of that to this day, several months after the fact.

Bringing Jasper home however turned out to be a good experience for all parties: Jasper got a wonderful steak dinner and hot breakfast with a happy and loving 24 hours, his foster learned more about him for his couple other adoption events for other prospective families, and we realized that maybe we weren’t ready to let Bea go but we were ready to fall in love again. Another few weeks went by when Bubba stumbled upon a strikingly beautiful dog in need of a home at a shelter in Lynnwood, a female four-year old Shephard mix: Teddie.

We scheduled a Saturday to meet her with Pep. Teddies’ foster gushed about what a cuddle bug Teddie was, how sweet she was, that Teddie slept in the same bed as the fosters cat, and that she was smart as a whip. Teddie looked like a petite Shephard with a Pitbull face, perky ears, the most beautiful golden eyes set against her faun fur, a curled up tail with fluffy little pantaloons dangling off her haunches. Walking our dogs together felt natural and I watched Teddie’s every move looking for a predatory behavior, for a red flag, for any neuroses. But, pretty girl Teddie trotted along sweetly, obediently, and even leaned into my legs for a deep itchin’ and a scratchin’ towards the end of our meet and greet. All that was left was to introduce her to the kiddo to triple check our people-compatibility (which went perfectly) and within 48 hours we brought Teddie home.

The kid was instantly enamored with this dog who stuck to him and seemed to even desire his company; a nice break for him after Bea and Pep who really kept to Bub and myself respectively. Bub was home with her the most, and I’d hoped she’d bond with him while I felt we’d chosen wrong for about three weeks, pseudo buyer remorse mixed with a lingering, unbased feeling that we had purchased a poor rebound. I was emotionally hung up thinking about Jasper almost hourly, remembering a dog who I had adhered to and fallen in love with hard enough to cry over losing after only 24-hours of knowing him. Teddie seemed to sense my reluctance and one night after those first few weeks, she jumped on the couch right next to me, flopped her 55# body onto mine and stretched, poising her snoot up and directly at me smiling. She scooted closer and closer until she was into my lap, enjoying my almost begrudging pets, giving my other hand tiny licks just like Bea used to. She wouldn’t move from that position for the rest of the night and now, weeks and weeks later, Bubba swears that she has ‘chosen’ me as her main person. I don’t argue anymore seeing as she enjoys each of us in her own way – but, she does seem to have taken a shining to me specifically. I have indeed, against my best intentions, fallen in love.

What’s funny about Teddie is that the shelter placed her at four years of age, however, had they spent more than a couple moments with her acting like her fool-self they would have noticed that she is just a baby – our vet confirmed her to be under the age of two by her teeth and personality. Despite our best efforts also of not going for a baby OR a Husky – one of the breeds that we had always avoided due to the energy level and fever-pitch barking that we enjoyed on TikTok but not for our home, we got just that by swabbing her cheek for one of those online DNA doggie tests.

Shit. Send her back, this one’s too salty! Bubba jokingly texted when I sent him the screen-shot of her results confirming her sizable, 23% Husky genes. We don’t really see it in her, but as a friend of mine pointed out he did indeed ‘activate’ the Husky in her by howling while he held her – then her genes kicked on and she wailed, ah-ROOOOOOOO’d and howled the song of her Husky brethren for a solid thirty seconds. It was cute until the kid figured out how to get her to ‘talk,’ and now we lovingly refer to her Husky side as her ‘triple dipped’ side (triple dipped in psycho that is.)

For now, Mr. Big is her main point of fascination as it turns out Teddie deeply appreciates the treats Mr. Big leaves in his cat box, and if he’s on the bed she bee-lines to him for sniffs and perhaps some gratitude for his butt: a fun source of treats. JOYEOUSLY however, we learned to mitigate all this poo-eating by noticing that Teddie is indeed whip-smart but she has yet to figure out how to open a door that isn’t at least 1/4 way open – a good thing to mitigate cat box snacks, and coincidentally early morning puppy jumps in bed.

Thankfully, our little Triple-D has blended in beautifully. We joke that she keeps us young, she’s definitely keeping our 10-year old Pepper young by constant play, probably the most fun Pep has had in months. We retreated from the puppy, from a Husky, and here we are – in deep with both for quite the ride.

Our little Miss Ma’am Triple D Teddie girl has changed our home for the better, and I couldn’t be happier to have lost this bet.