Puppy Love

Buy a pup and your money will buy love unflinching. ~Rudyard Kipling 

Because Andy is awesome and made (and followed through with) a seemingly ridiculous promise to get me a puppy if I wore my seatbelt every time I got in a car, a month ago today Arya came home with us--and I haven't had a moment to write about it until now.

Arya (who is currently in a meat coma, yay!) is the realization of my only lifelong dream: to right the wrong of being cruelly deprived of growing up with a dog.  One could argue that, given my age, it's a bit late to compensate for childhood deprivations, but I disagree.

5am mornings, handling raw meat and fresh poo (yes, dear family, you read all of those correctly), and I couldn't be happier. 

I love: her little face, how happy she is, her incessant need to burrow, her insane love of creating and sprinting through bizarre obstacle courses, the noises she makes (minus the barking, but including the old-man-stretching noise), the commitment she has to trying to get Stubbins to play with her (in spite of receiving constant thwackings for her efforts), the way she breathes and an entire mini-steak vanishes into her skinny belly, the way she piles her toys around her and gets distracted into playing with each of them at random intervals, and the way she tries to pretend she wasn't being naughty when she gets caught doing something she shouldn't.

So far the unflinching love Kipling speaks of is completely unidirectional, but it may just be because of Arya's severe A.D.D.--I guess we'll see.  For now I leave you with more  pictures than you care to see, while I try to sneak a nap :)

 

Day 1

Multitasking Toys

Chewing on wood--an odd favorite

Out hiking (before we knew we weren't supposed to go)

Can I please come up front?

Arya & Andy

Sitting Pretty

Happiest when running (or chewing)

Arya & Andy

PS. Mom and Dad, given the amount of work a puppy requires, you're somewhat forgiven for not letting us have one.  (I still think that having 5 kids to wear out the dog and vice versa still would have benefitted you more than not, though :) )