So this happened...

 This is Zoe.

Let me tell you my side of the story. I am not really a "dog" person. NO that doesn't mean I am a "cat" person instead - I'm kind of not much of an animal person at all. Travis put it very concisely when he said, "I just feel bad spending money on an animal when, you know..."

Me: "There are starving children in Africa?"

Him: "There are starving children right here in Kansas City!"

Me: "I know, right???"

Yet here we are.

So it all started when pretty much everyone in our neighborhood got a puppy. Our kids were green with envy, and they've been asking us for a dog since they were born. Their first words, right after "Dada" and "applesauce" were "PLEEEEEEASE CAN I HAVE A PUPPY???"

Up until now, we've been renting, so, easy excuse! "Sorry, we can't! When we have our own house then we can have a dog."

Well our kids did not overlook the fact that we've been living in our own house for a year now. It's all they talk about. Then to top it off, my dear neighbor has been sending me almost daily texts of pictures of puppies that are up for adoption. Oh it was killing me. The turning point was when she sent a picture of these three ridiculously adorable boxer puppies at a shelter in Kansas. I showed it to Travis (it was a Saturday morning) and within the hour he and the kids were in the car driving 40 minutes to look at them. I stayed home and hyperventilated. But during the time they were driving there and then driving home dejected because all three puppies had been adopted before they could get there, I psychoanalyzed myself and came to terms with the idea that maybe I could do this. I was seriously pulling Nolan up a hill in a trailer behind my bike and telling myself, "I can do hard things!" and I wasn't talking about the bike! I decided that it was now or never. Here's why:

A) Nolan is potty training, so I'm already stuck at home paying close attention to the bathroom habits of another creature and sticking to a very strict and short-interval schedule.
B) It's summer, which is the only time to get a puppy or else they won't want to go outside!
C) My kids are old enough to handle some of the work but young enough to still be interested.
D) My kids are home to help [see "B) It's summer"]
E) I'm still at that time of life where I'm raising very young kids, which I think complements raising a puppy as well, but if I wait until I'm out of that stage it would be difficult if not impossible to go back!
F) I know puppies are hard, but I want to be able to train the dog in the right way for us from a young age. Also Nolan is nervous around dogs, but I think if he grew up with one he'd be fine.
G) It's kind of a big ticket life bucket list item to give children a puppy.

So we found this little dog who was being fostered by a woman who is the director of a shelter. She is a 10-week-old maybe dachschund-pinscher mix? No one knows, since she's a rescue. The kids had their hearts set on this tiny little chihuahua mix, but Travis and I were wary that it might not be an ideal "family" dog. When I submitted an application for "Tinka," however, her foster mom wrote back right away that she'd actually had many applicants but really wanted her to go to a home with kids. We were approved almost immediately and picked her up the next day!

Nolan test-drove the doggy bed

Once when I was a senior in high school, I puppy-sat a puppy for a couple days, and I was traumatized for life. He didn't stop crying for pretty much the entire time and was so needy and high-maintenance, and of course I never slept. I warned the kids in advance that our new puppy would probably cry for a few nights and we wouldn't get any sleep, and also that she might bark all the time and would pee all over the house. I'll be honest, I seriously had a full week's worth of nightmares in the nights leading up to this! It sounds dumb and pathetic that this was such a big deal to me, but I honestly prayed desperately that I would be able to do this for my kids.

We were pleasantly surprised that this puppy is so much more easygoing and better trained than typical puppies we've known in the past. When we got home, we discovered that her foster mom had actually pretty much house trained her. She had a few "accidents" the first couple of days while we were all getting used to her schedule and routines, but today she was completely accident free AND was allowed to play equally on carpeted and hardwood areas! Progress, I think! She also didn't have a crate at first, as I had picked the wrong size and had to order a new one, but she made her home in this cubby in our mud room. At night I just covered it with a crate, and she didn't say a thing! I literally have never heard her cry, apart from a couple yelps when her paw was stepped on. She slept all night the first night with no accidents! But I felt bad, realizing a puppy that young probably can't normally go that long without a bathroom break, so now I wake up to take her out around 2 or 3. Again, glad it's summer!

This is not to say that I still didn't spend most of the morning of Day 3 literally curled up in a ball on my closet floor crying. My primary complaints are the smell and the biting. I get that she's a teething puppy, but she is rough enough to bruise my kids sometimes and has even broken skin (NOT okay with me!) And the smell is what put me over the edge. She smells like a dog (yes, with all my very low expectations, this is the one I didn't see coming!) I started to panic, thinking I can't live in a house that smells like this! That's when I was in the closet in hysterics and texting Travis at work. Today even Kate was Googling solutions for smelly dogs (the bath only helped for like 10 minutes!) We got her to a manageable degree of pungentness. Apparently it is supposed to improve as they get a little older?

So I've been holed up in my house voraciously reading my "Everything Dogs for Dummies" book from the library and watching the Dog Whisperer on YouTube. My Google search history is comprised of "How to train puppies not to bite" to "Why does my puppy smell so bad?" and everything in between. The one advantage of me being not-really-a-dog-person is that I am not tempted to spoil her and give in to her cuteness. I am a staunch disciplinarian with her! Those little puppy-dog eyes can't sway me!

I swear she is cuter in person.

The other advantage of having a puppy was one I had dared to hope for but didn't want to set myself up for disappointment. My kids are FINALLY cleaning up after themselves! Because they have to! Or the puppy will eat everything! Muahahaha!!! Another mommy win.

I will tell you how we are faring once our "two week trial period" is up!

In the meantime, welcome, Zoe Sparkles Lundell!