I guess I should start things off by introducing myself. I’m 26 years old and have the privilege of working from home doing Internet-based work. I’ve had a multitude of pets growing up from dogs to cats to fish and a few things in between. Most of my life I’ve had a dog and at least one cat around.
My husband and I have had two cats basically since we started dating. It started out as one little Norwegian Forest cat stray who wandered up to my parents on the streets of Kendall, FL, and she was just too cute not to take in. Why did the hubby and I end up with her instead of her staying with my parents? Well they were already taking care of Six, our 20 year old six-toed cat who wouldn’t be tolerating a little rugrat running around and trying to play with her tail. But as luck would have it, the sweet little stray (who has accurately been named Princess as she is clearly the princess of our house) was quite the hellion and she terrorized us for months until we finally decided to take action.
We visited the animal shelter in Naples, FL, and fell in love with a Siamese mix who we call Marilyn (Monroe – she’s blonde with blue eyes lol).
So we’ve had the two cats for 5 years now and life has been great with them. They are loving when they want to be and ignore us the rest of the time…which was perfect for our wants and needs and absolutely typical for cats of course. And then something changed…
Friends of ours have a Golden Labrador Retriever and they don’t have the time or energy to give him the loving home he needs. They kept mentioning to us whenever we saw them that we should take the dog because he just makes them nuts….so we started considering their offer and after more than a week of discussion decided to go for it. We’ve talked about having a dog for a loooong time…at least 2 years but we didn’t have the space or time for a dog. Now we live in the country and have lots of open fields around our house in addition to the big house we’re now living in vs. our tiny apartment in the city.
So to make a long story short, we contacted our friends and said that if they really did want to get rid of the dog, we were happy to take him into our home. But, just as we were really warming up to the idea, they informed us that although they don’t really like the dog it belongs to their children and although no one has time or cares much for him, they can’t just give him away. So in a situation like this, all you can do is nod your head and go about your business. We couldn’t dognap the dog (but we did almost think about it) and we respect them keeping the dog because it belongs to their kids and they made the stupid mistake of giving a dog to a small child who can’t and won’t look after it herself.
Anyways, so after this whole ordeal, we realized how much we really did want to have a dog and that something just now seemed to be missing from our lives. So we started researching dogs again and putting even more serious thought into it. We did some tests online and came to the conclusion that a Newfoundland was probably the best dog for us. We’re slightly couch potatoes but love to go rock climbing and geocaching on the weekends so we figured that having a dog who is willing to be active when we are and loves just hanging out otherwise sounds ideal. Sure, Newfs also come with an overage of slobber and fur but when you look into those loving eyes, you know immediately that they are more than worth it.
