Several years ago my husband and I agreed that we would not get another dog. We’ve had several that we loved a lot, but our travel schedule didn’t make a dog’s life happy. Dog’s like schedules, routines, and my weird travel schedules wreaked havoc on the dogs we’ve had in the past. Sigh. There’s nothing worse than loving an animal but knowing you aren’t able to provide the stability they need to thrive. But then…

I ran an international convention last October (The World Fantasy Convention, if anyone is wondering) and my travel schedule leading up to that convention was crazy. But after that convention ended, I knew my schedule would calm down. So I convinced Ted to agree that we could get a dog after the WFC 2020 was finished.

Enter: my sister, Beth. She wanted to give her daughter a puppy for Christmas. Her daughter is allergic to many things, so she had to find a hypo-allergenic puppy. Well, she did. She found a woman in her town who had a litter of 3 Maltese puppies, born Dec 2. The only girl had been promised to someone else, but there were two boys. Beth called me. “So I’m getting one of the boys, but there’s another one. I know you’ve been thinking of getting a dog, so…”

I said to Ted, “I want a puppy.” Ted said, “I don’t want a puppy. I want a fully house-trained dog.” I said, “But there’s this puppy Beth found…” Much discussion happened, and then Ted said, sigh. “Okay. Let’s go look at your puppy.” (Don’t you love a man like that?!?!)

The minute I saw this little tiny squirmy thing, my heart was captured. He was mine!  When we brought him home (4 1/2 weeks!) he weighed 3 pounds. I named him Max, after the Grinch’s dog, because he was little, but accomplished great things.

Max is now a dominant person in my household. He is energetic, and fun-loving, and smart, and wild, and barky (oh my! I didn’t want a barky dog!!!), and absolutely the most adorable puppy you’ve ever seen. At 8 months now he never goes potty in the house (YAY!) but he does bark continuously at anything that moves, which drives both me and Ted nuts. We have covered our front windows with cardboard, which makes my neighbors think I’m running a meth lab in my house, but really it’s just to keep Max from seeing every person walking by, or squirrel, or leaf blowing, or anything that moves in the front yard that makes him bark. It works…sort of.

I’ll be honest, friends. I love this little guy. I mean LOVE, in capital letters. He has squirmed his way into my heart, and I think he’s the smartest, funniest, most awesome little guy ever. If you could meet him, I’m sure you would agree.

So tell me – do you have a pet that you love? How did you get him/her? What about them makes you love them so much?