By the time you’re reading this (assuming you’re a watch live tv and read this blog immediately when it hits your mailbox kind of person), we are currently on our way to get Charlie Murphy from the breeder. I know someone reading this is thinking we should have gotten a rescue instead of encouraging breeding given the number of dogs being euthanized each year. As a novice, I thought it was best for me to learn to train a puppy, have my wife totally fall in love with said puppy, then convince her to allow me to get a second puppy that will possibly be a rescue (as of this writing, I REALLY want a pitbull/pitbull mix). This has been such a great response, but the waiting has been totally uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable Aging
This has been such a great week for me. I celebrated my 47th birthday on August 30th, my niece Mya gave birth to her first daughter, my great-niece, Jael (the best part of having a great-niece/nephew is that I will permanently be great by definition), and my friend Ben’s wife Stephanie gave birth to their first daughter, Olivia. It was so interesting thinking about these new additions.
My first thought was, “Wow, you couldn’t wait a few days, or in the case of my niece, 8 short hours, to have the baby on my birthday?” Millennials, am I right? Then, a very chilling thought crossed my mind, “I’m FORTY-SEVEN years older than these babies. I’m getting really old!” My running joke is that I have early onset O.L.D. Someone will invariably ask what O.L.D. stand for, which I retort, “old”. I’m beginning to accept that I actually have onset OLD. Early has officially gone the way of the Dodo bird.
Uncomfortable Waiting
However, what aging has done is kept my mind off the 7 days, 84 hours, 5,040 minutes (spoken to the 525,600 minutes tune) until Charlie arrives. Admittedly though, I may have read too much information about what can go wrong with the Chuckster. Did you know that unless you get a dog from an (1) officially certified dog breeder with (2) genetically tested, and (3) certified parents, your dog will have, hip dysplasia, renal failure, macular degeneration, COPD, laugh lines, stiff joints when it’s about to rain, and that eerie feeling that someone is watching you but you turn around and no one is there syndrome? Based on this inevitable misfortune, not getting pet insurance warrants you permanent citizenship and a one-way ticket to Idiotville. Sheesh!
As many of you street-pseudo-psychologist have already surmised, waiting can make you stir crazy. Hopefully, this makes me normal. Honestly, it’s sort of makes the eventually amazing experience of owning Sir Charles all the more amazing. Will I be good enough? I don’t know. Will he get a disease? Possibly. Will he need to go to the vet for ingesting something while one of the I’ll-watch-him-so-you-don’t-
