Wow, Thursday already? I thought that for this week’s post of randomness, I’d take a look back at this time a year ago, when a certain little fireball burst into my world. 
This is Eli. He’s my dog : )
If you’re new around these parts, you may or may not be able to tell that I don’t usually like to talk too much about my personal life on this blog (judging by yesterday’s post, anyway), but there are certain things I like to keep private, at least when they’re current events. That said, I was very sad for a lot of 2014. Then over that Memorial Day weekend, I made a decision I’d been mulling over for a long time. Like a lot of lonely young professionals in their late twenties, I decided a puppy was what was missing from my life.
Turns out I was right.
Even though I’d grown up with dogs in the house, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for being a single dog mom, but the little dude and I had a blast last summer. Every walk was an adventure full of laughter. My germ-phobe self even mellowed out a lot, thanks to the constant cleanup and barehanded removal of ridiculousness from this curious puppy’s mouth. I think my favorite is the night I caught him with a freaking mouse skeleton in his mouth! Oh. My. Goodness.
From the early-morning and late-night walks to the training classes and bath time, it was hard work, but the work of taking care of Eli was so worth it. Either I was in some sleep-deprived stupor or it really did bring me back to myself. Having my little buddy around filled my crazy dog lady heart with love I didn’t even know I had room for.
Bath time escapee
Unfortunately, come September, my building started to get stricter about dogs, and in the midst of a stressful time, he got really sick and had to be at the animal hospital on dialysis for 5 days. I honestly didn’t know if he was going to make it. It was easily one of the scariest things, most surreal I’ve ever experienced. I felt so helpless because everything was completely out of my hands. It’s amazing how quickly you can become attached to such a tiny little creature that doesn’t even speak your language.
When he finally was well enough to come home, my family and I decided that Eli should go recuperate with them for a little while until he was stronger and things calmed down with the management company in my building. At the same time, my work schedule got super-crazy, so we kept pushing back his return. When I got a noise complaint about his barking when he was more than 25 miles away, I realized that I was dealing with some irrational folks who like to jump to conclusions, and the idea of reintroducing that madness back into my—and Eli’s—daily life seemed kind of awful.
For better or worse, he settled in so well with my folks and their dogs, it started to seem like a dumb idea to bring him back to live in NYC at all when he has an entire house to run around and other dogs to play with all day. 
Dude has the best life ever, basically. He also has no idea he weighs about 70% what his buddies Janie and Satch do. He totally things he’s one of the big kids.
It took me a few months to stop crying every time I left after a visit (I was that gal with the sunglasses on the whole bus ride into port authority, no matter if it had already gotten dark), but now that I see how happy he is and how much love he gets on a daily basis, I’m okay with the way things are right now. Luckily, I get to visit a lot. There are few things that make me happy as saying Hello again when I walk in the door. 
It seems the feeling is mutual.
The past year has been full of surprises, but thanks to this silly little bichon, I’ve learned so much about love and patience and just going with the flow…even if that means trimming a certain someone’s fluffy white beard at 11:30 pm because he just had to pick up a stick that was covered in tar. 
Always an adventure.
Do you have any pets?
This post has been part of another Running with Spoons Thinking Out Loud link party, where randomness is the name of the game. Thanks to Amanda for hosting.
