Despite me being the oldest and supposedly most responsible child, I have this very inconvenient personality clash. The clash is between my impulsiveness and then the anxiety that usually locks me into a plan so as to find security. This impulsiveness sends me out on quests that I somehow planned out within the span of two minutes and think that somehow there is nothing that could possibly go wrong. Consequently, things do go not quite to plan, my anxiety climbs in the drivers seat and runs me into a ditch where I lie there unable to comprehend a solution… even though there are literally hundreds of them calling to me from the edge of the ditch.
Getting a dog was one of those impulsive things where for some reason my anxiety and the more common sense side of my brain remained on sleep mode until the dog came into the picture. Then I could see the problem clearly, but before I go into that, I should really start from the beginning.
In my planner brain, my husband and I agreed on early in our marriage that despite us both loving animals. We were not getting a dog until we were moved into a house. Our first apartment did not allow any kind of pets, and both of us were working full time. We didn’t even have time to think about a dog.
Life changes though.
We moved to a pet friendly apartment, but I was still at Walmart working eight hour shifts. I remained firm in my position that we were not going to get a dog. Josh talked about getting a lizard for a little bit. A lizard, however, did not require nearly as much attention and work as a dog. A cat would be nice, but I did not like the idea of a litter box. I was slightly allergic to cats and dogs anyways so it would be an absolutely terrible idea for us to get any kind of furry critter in a two bedroom apartment.
I was getting bored and fed up with the retail world though, and it was not long after we moved into our new apartment that I put in my two week notice without a job lined up. (Another impulsive quest for the win!) I knew the basic idea of what kind of job I wanted. At least two people had mentioned the idea of working with animals to me. I had never thought about it before, but I loved animals so I started calling all of the dog boarding and/or grooming places in the area. I knew that with the labor shortage that at least one should be hiring.
By God’s grace, I did find a job at a dog boarding and grooming business. (Yes, I did this despite being slightly allergic to animals. My love for animals is stronger than my allergies.) In the interview, they told me something that my random brain should not have heard… if I took the job, I could bring my dog/dogs to work with me. My future doggo could come and be my work buddy.
I kept telling myself after that however that we just couldn’t afford it. I had looked at the pet amendment for our apartment when we first moved in and was convinced that it was far too expensive for a couple where one of the partners was now working a part time job.
That’s when I made a mistake… I started looking at puppies and dogs on petfinder.com, gooddog.com, and different social media rehoming groups. The planner side of my brain starting churning out a plan. I would save up enough money to buy the very specific kind of breed that I wanted. It would take quite a while to save up for one since the breed I wanted was usually well above $1,500 in a lot of cases. The dog breed was called Samoyed.
I had started putting money away and things were going smoothly. I knew my goal, and I was going to stick to it… that is until something came across my screen that I really couldn’t resist…
Natters Matters 