New Arrivals

This weekend, we started a major house cleaning. No, my wife’s mother was not coming over for a visit (well, yes she was, but that’s a story for a whole other article). No, this cleaning was for two new members of our family. I don’t know if my memory has faded over the past three years, but I am almost positive that we did not clean up and straighten this much when our daughter was born.

You might be thinking that in our senile old age, we’d gone and done the unthinkable and my wife was expecting twins. No, from her reactions and cleaning frenzy, this was much worse. I knew she was serious when I was banished to my basement to… organize. Everything had to be off the floor and put away. No big deal. Then she said that includes almost three years of old manuscripts, computer parts and… (wait for it…) all the paperback books had to be on the shelves. The upside of this is I found my weight bench.

When we told our family and friends of our plan, the reactions were varied. “Wow,” was the most sedate. “Are you crazy? That’s asinine!” was probably the most common (I’m paraphrasing since this is a family targeted blog.). We were cleaning and picking up to make sure the house (ok, mainly the kids’ toys) was ready for two dogs.

When our thirteen-year old miniature schnauzer died before Thanksgiving, my wife began the search for a new pet. My son took Pepper’s death hard, but we’d been preparing him for it and he knew his dog went to a better place. A few weeks later, he began talking about another dog. He even had the name picked out… Pepper II. The one after that would be Pepper III. (He got up to Pepper XIII)

We always planned to replace Pepper. Our kids loved him and enjoyed playing with him. He was my daughter’s shadow. (Especially after she’d eaten. When she switched to solid foods and began feeding herself, he gained enough weight to develop a waddle.) With the changes coming in the new year, we knew they were going to need playmates to keep up with them.

So, my wife went through the local rescue shelters. She found a fluffy white breed, called a bichon, and fell in love with it. I had two criteria and this breed met both. It had to fit through our dog door and I didn’t have to shave it. White was an added bonus. I’d be able to easily see it in the middle of the night right after I tripped over it.

Then she stumbled across two dogs that had been rescued. Stripe and his mother Honey. They’d both been rescued and were looking for a home. Hey were both house trained and used to children.

How did we go from one dog to two? (We heard that question from everyone. Why two?) Just after Christmas, we found out that we’d both be starting new jobs (This will be a whole other article.) and the dog would be home alone during the day. So two dogs made sense to us so they wouldn’t be lonely. Stripe and Honey were perfect for this. They’d been together for two years and Honey didn’t walk around babbling and drooling. (I’m hoping my wife will pick up some tips from Honey on how to stay sane with young children.)

When my son saw their pictures on the web page, they immediately had a home. We called and arranged the pick up. We managed to get my son to take off his coat and come back in the house since we couldn’t pick them up until the following day.

It’s been a week and both Stripe and Honey are acclimating well to their new home. There was a little confusion the first night. My daughter wanted Honey to sleep with her and my son wanted Stripe to sleep with him. With all of her stuffed animals and dolls, there’s barely enough room in her bed for my daughter, let alone a dog. Of course the dogs had their own agenda and spent most of the night exploring inside and outside.

My careful planning with the bichon was out the window, however. Honey is a German Shepard and Stripe is a Labrador/Shepard mix. Even though they are “medium” size dogs and the dog door is for medium dogs, Honey barely fit through. Each time she went out during that first night, I had to make sure she could get back in. I got a new dog door first thing in the morning and by mid-afternoon, had finished my third trip to Lowes and had it installed.

Stripe got his name from the line of white fur on his chest and stomach. Every other part of him is coal black. I mention this because we did have one escape. Stripe stayed close to the house and raced around exploring. It would have been much less nerve-wracking if he’d made his escape during the daylight. But he did it in the evening. It was just like a horror movie. I’d see a blur streak past out of the corner of my eye. When I looked, there was nothing but blackness. My two kids standing on the porch screaming did an adequate job of filling in for the mutilated teenage girls.