Every Dog Has His Day: For Once, I Was RIGHT!

Okay, I wasn’t going to write this one. Really. I was going to honor my wife’s request not to devote a blog post to her feelings about the new dog. But, for reasons that will become obvious once you’ve read this, I just couldn’t resist. If you’re reading this, honey, please know that it comes purely from a place of love.

Yesterday morning J. looked at me with a serious expression on her face – the kind you don’t want to see on your spouse. She then said the words you don’t want to hear your spouse say: “There’s something I need to tell you.”

As my heart sank, I tried to think of what I might be in trouble for. I came up empty.

“What is it?” I asked, bracing myself.

Her face changed then, as an ironic smile appeared, and she declared, “I think I’m in love with the dog.”

I’m thrilled with this, of course. The responsibility of finding a dog that would be a good fit with our family and the variety of personality types the four of us represent fell squarely on my shoulders. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, but it hasn’t happened yet. She hasn’t given us any reason to pause. (No pun intended.)

It was a rare moment when I got J. to admit that I was right: I had predicted, during our first conversation about dog ownership, or the prospect of it, that the dog would seek her out, and become her dog and that she would fall in love.

Sure enough, Ally follows her everywhere, and J. speaks to her in a sing-song voice, rivaled only by her Spanish baby-talk that still melts Jackson’s rebel heart.

She says things like, “I love her eyes. She has such pretty eyes.” And Ally just sits there, back end wiggling, tail wagging, basking in all the love.

“There’s something about the unconditional love of a dog,” I say, never passing up a platitude, “that’s very disarming.”

As I mentioned, I wasn’t going to write this post. However I realized I really had to when Jeanette came by my job at lunchtime today, talking about how she’d been discussing Ally with some friends at her former office. “I showed them a picture of her,” she said, taking out her iPhone.

“You didn’t make it your home screen picture, did you?” I asked.

She paused, and then smiled. “I did,” she admitted.

And with that, my decision was made. Honey, this blog’s for you.