Well, here she is! Our newest lady of the family...meet Miss Roxy!
Remember the comment I made last summer about our series of family conversations about having (or not having) a pet? Well, fish turned into turtles, which then became a puppy! Ava turned 6 in November and while visiting a pet store to buy a water turtle, the girls pulled out the puppy dog eyes and declared, "We want a puppy, not a turtle!"
All was doomed - no one could talk about anything else for weeks. We took online dog-matching tests, searched for dogs online, visited humane societies and went back and forth on many issues (rescue, breeder...). We finally found the girl for us...at a pet store, no less!
Yes, we broke the cardinal rule and bought our dog at a pet store. Yikes! You should see the looks you get at the vet when you share that statistic in the waiting room! I was very reluctant, but unfortunately it was a battle I was going to lose...decidedly. My husband stopped in the little neighborhood pet store after picking up a few grocery items I asked him to pick up one afternoon. I'm not sure what drew him in, and he isn't either. He was met with a, "What the heck were you doing in there?" when he came home and told us that he had found our puppy.
He brought our two oldest girls to see the puppy. I kept making an excuse for not seeing the puppy thinking this would blow over and we'd resume our "proper" search. The longest week of my life then ensued. Day long conversations with different children, including bedtime begging and prayers for mommy to "let us get this dog." Finally, after watching my husband make every argument and emotional plea in the book, I realized that the rest of my family was in the same rescue boat and I was stubbornly on shore...all by myself.
I began to feel like they knew something that I didn't and that somehow I had missed the signs that they were clearly able to see. Somehow, I realized that my part in all of this was to now have faith in my family. That even if I wasn't feeling the same emotion or attachment to this dog, that I had to trust them that I would.
And what a treat it has been. Not only did we add a beautiful, loving, sweet and mild-mannered member to our family, but I learned a lesson in having faith. Faith is easy when you rely on what you can see or feel, yet faith can be most powerful when you decide to trust what other's know in their hearts and inspire you all the same.
