Meet Daisy

Tyler and I have talked extensively about the day we get a dog. We haven't gotten one before now because we were always moving around and living in small apartments and we knew we wanted a substantial dog that wouldn't fit in a small apartment.

It's our 5-year anniversary on Friday and I wanted to do something special for Tyler. I decided that the time had come, and I wanted it to be a surprise. All week, I looked at the dogs they had online, and I thought about going down there and scoping the place out, but I knew Lillian would totally rat me out and spill the beans to Tyler. Then, on Friday, I was chatting dog adoptions with my sister on the phone, and as soon as I hung up, Lillian piped up, "we're getting a dog for daddy!!!" Crap. I tried to impress upon her young mind how this was a secret and that we weren't going to tell daddy about it. She didn't mention it all day, so I thought she'd forgotten... until Saturday morning and we were getting in the car to go down there and she blabbed all about it to Tyler.



There were two dogs we were considering- Daisy here, and a German Shepherd mix-type dog. I was leaning toward the German Shepherd because that's the dog I had for a large chunk of my childhood, and she was a good dog. Plus, she was all sad and whimpered when we left and my maternal instincts cried out for me to take her home and pet her and let her lick the kids faces after they eat lunch. But, Tyler got final say because, after all, it was his present, and he fell hard for those floppy ears and droopy eyes.

The shelter was run by retired old ladies who were not in a hurry and didn't seem to notice that our kids were both DONE with the adoption process 45 minutes before it was over. We only had to sign two papers, but this somehow took an hour... probably because our adoption specialist had to tell us all the possible ways my children will try to torment the dog and possibly get their face bitten off and/or all the things the dog will possible chew up/pee on. I kept saying, "our kids have been around dogs quite a bit, they know not to try to ride them (pull their ears, pull their tails, jump on them, bite them, stick their hands in her mouth)," and "I've had a few dogs, I know that they chew on things/are territorial." It was way more stressful than having a human child. I didn't have to sign any papers for that and no one threatened to make an unannounced stop at my house to make sure everything was in order.

Daisy is a hound dog mix (of what, they wouldn't tell us, but we think she looks a little labrador-y). She's 1.5 years old and was found out by Elephant Head. She's great with the kids and is Lillian's new best friend. She's not quite house broken and peed in our laundry room where we made her sleep and pood all over our loft this morning (after we had taken our outside 2 or 3 times)... so, that will be fun.