Welcome Brownie
“We were happy!” I wailed to Mike last Sunday, two days after Brownie, the 9-week-old mini golden-doodle, joined our family. “We were happy! This family was happy without a puppy!”
“I know,” chirped Ax, who for years had been told we would get a family puppy after our beloved Cleo the cat had passed. And so, following a respectful and incredibly peaceful pet-free mourning period, we — okay I — set about getting us an appropriate family pup.
Mike wanted something like a Mastiff, Great Pyrenees, or Belgian Malinois. I wanted a purse-sized white fluffy. So we compromised and got a medium brown fluffy.
Anyway, having run the Covid pet acquisition gauntlet and successfully scored possibly the world’s cutest puppy, we were thrilled.
Ax declared her name was Brownie, because she’s sweet like the dessert. Plus brown. Really more auburn, but I let that go. “So Ax are we brainstorming options on the name or ...?”
“No. Her name is Brownie.”
Alrighty then. Done. I was thinking Valentina or Anastasia or, pandering to Mike, Sugaree or Bertha but nope. Brownie. Okay.
Two days later we were trashed, thrashed, exhausted, and baffled. “What have we done?” I asked myself.
I blamed Mike, who blamed me, and then I blamed Ax, our deceased cat Cleo, my mother, who didn’t give me a puppy, and then Mike again.
Why didn’t anyone tell me how rough this would be???
People did tell me. I didn’t listen. My friend Maybelle specifically told me it was like having a newborn and I should think long and hard about it.
But nope, Brownie is way harder than a newborn. Newborns don’t bark, nip, or have a penchant for eating headsets. They wear diapers. They don’t need to be run.
How had a 7-pound fluff-ball managed to have all of us sobbing with frustration and completely in love with her at the same time? How did I go from being a homeschooling winner with a kid almost completely self-sufficient online and actual time to breathe to being a pup mom so pre-occupied that my own basic needs were getting shunted aside in favor of monitoring Brownie?
Last Sunday I loved her, but regretted her. We maybe all did.
Apparently, this phenomenon is common. Again, I have this feeling that no one told me, really told me, how hard this would be. And yet, they did, or at least tried to. I didn’t listen. I wanted that puppy love, an improvement, excitement, joy. I wanted something bright and fun and new for our cloistered family.
And she is all that. She has great potential to be all that. But holy crap it’s more than any of us bargained for.
And so I turn to gratitude. Gratitude for the luxury of time to spend training this new addition to our family. Gratitude for the lessons she is teaching me and us already about the need to set boundaries even in the face of seemingly constant demands. Gratitude that Mike, Ax, Brownie, and I got through last Sunday night together as a team and re-committed to each other and our shared vision of a joyful, relaxed, rested family that includes Brownie. And we are willing to do the work to get there. It’s a project. It’s a process. I’m gonna keep going.
Ps. Please: If you live in SB and have a dog to playdate in the backyard with me and Brownie please message me.
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