A New Addition

I have now officially survived my first full week in almost 20 years without having a dog in the house and like I predicted it would, it pretty much sucked. Although I spent a lot of time complaining about poop, shedding, selective hearing, barf and pee, I really miss my dog. Even though he spent most of the time sleeping and toward the end, never even got out of his bed to welcome me home, I knew by the way he glanced at me out the corner of his half-open eye that he was happy to see me.

Within hours after returning from the vet without Cosmo, we started contemplating the next dog and, more specifically, when we should acquire said dog. I, of course, made a list of reasons as to why the next dog should join our family later rather than sooner:

1. We needed time to grieve, mourn, be angry, be depressed and finally, accept the fact that Cosmo was gone. Having a new puppy might result in us skipping the depression stage.
2. I'm taking Zach to a national tennis tournament in Arizona at the end of October, and even though Doug is staying home, he wasn't planning on staying home with a new puppy to take care of.
3. The only thing harder than house training a dog during a Minnesota winter is training a dog to play the piano while simultaneously barking to the tune of "Girl From Ipanema."
4. I want to experience the luxury of welcoming green grass without first having to pick up a Winter's worth of dog shit in the backyard.
5. Our schedule in the Spring, because of tennis, is best described as "chaos."
6. We aren't home during the day very much in the Summer, so having a new puppy just to leave him home alone all day when it's nice outside would be mean.
7. I just donated most of our dog stuff to the humane society.
8. It would be great to be able to take at least one vacation without having to worry about our dog-sitter's schedule.
9. Being able to mow the lawn without having to pick up dog poop first would be, well...a first.
10. Puppies are a lot of work.

After reviewing the list, we came to the conclusion that the best time to get a new puppy would probably be next August. Our hectic summer schedule would be done, the kids would have a few weeks to hang out with the dog before school started and I would be able to take advantage of having a couple months of house training-friendly nice weather.

So I guess that explains why, on Monday, I drove two hours one-way, spent time in one of the stinkiest, noisiest, most cluttered houses I've ever seen, and am now introducing the newest member of our family: Danger, a 13-week old Schnoodle.