Today I feel complete. Well let’s back up, it wasn’t like I’ve been walking around all this time not feeling complete. I just wasn’t, but didn’t know it yet.
I never wanted a dog of my own before, well that is before HANK. Hank is Erica Patterson’s dog that comes to have sleepovers at the my house from time to time. I noticed every time he left, that I missed him more and more. I also noticed I had a little skip in my step when he was around.
So I said it to myself a lot of times before I said it out loud. I want a dog. It felt good, so I finally said it out loud knowing full well the implications. If I told my husband and boys ages 15 and 14, that I wanted a dog (something the three of them had been talking about forever) I was not going to be able to change my mind.
Sure enough after we discussed it and agreed that we would get a dog in the SPRING, we didn’t talk about much else. What kind? What age? Where would we get this new member of our family? Would I like it? Would I change my mind?
Fast forward to Saturday Feb 2nd (not Spring). We found out that the local animal shelter had a beagle available, the type we had decided we wanted. He had been there for about a month, and they were guessing he was around 4 years old. Everyone but I wanted a puppy so I was pretty excited that he was older. I wanted to go to the shelter by myself first, to check him out so I could make a decision without my boys giving me the “look” everyone is familiar with. I found myself cleaning up the house, trying to make sure everything was perfect. Nesting! When I shut the front door behind me, I knew just as I did when I closed that same door the two times before when I went to the hospital to give birth, that my life was changed forever.
I took one look at him and knew we found our dog! He came out and loved on me in a way that made me feel like there was no need to look any further. He looked at me the way my boys did when we first made eye contact. I could almost hear him say, “Are you my Mother”? The idea of putting him back in his cage until the rest of my family could come meet him, broke my heart. Sure enough after they received the same greeting we knew he was ours! Just like that we became a family of 5, and I was complete. Welcome to the family, “TOBY”!
Authored By: Debbie Aglietti
