I’m a Type A personality with a touch of chaos and impulsivity thrown in for good measure. The joy that a label maker or a freshly laminated sheet of paper brings me can not be described. Making lists is fun to me. A plan. A thoughtfully organized (and likely color coded) sense of direction. Because of this, I decided that, if we are going to bring a new dog into our lives, I needed to make a detailed list of must-have qualities that we are looking for.
I sat down with my notebook and started listing everything that I needed in a dog:
friendly
likes to cuddle
no bigger than 30lbs max
Loves to go running
House broken
Great house manners
Loves children
Silly
Good in the car
Floppy ears a bonus
The list went on and on. I just kept writing quality after quality, demand after demand. Then, all of a sudden, I realized I was crying. Did the thoroughness of my list bring me to tears? No. I was crying because line by line, I was describing Waffles. My requirement for my new dog was that they be an exact replica of my old dog.
I showed the list to my husband and he said, “you know, if this had been our list when we were adopting Waffles, Waffles NEVER would have made the cut.”
Oh my gosh. He was right. It was then that I remembered what Waffles was like when we first met. He was not potty trained, he chewed everything, he took food directly out of my kids’ hands, and he constantly ran away. In fact, we were not his first or his second home. He had been surrendered twice. We were his THIRD home. He had been described as “completely untrainable.” I saw his face and saw intelligence and potential. My husband had asked why I thought Waffles would be any different for us and I had responded, “he probably won’t, but we could be different for him.”
Waffles became Waffles because he was shown love, consistency, and tons of patience. I had opened my heart to him and given him a chance.
I cannot bring Waffles back. I am going to need to love and accept my new dog for the unique little soul that they are. Adopting a dog means welcoming them into your home, showing them love, and seeing the potential that another person may have missed. It’s taking a chance. With that, I tore the list out of my notebook and threw it away.
The Heralding Hound 