Just Write {Furbaby}

It was the end of summer after I graduated college. I was lost. I had less than a grand in my checking account, no job lined up, and I was stuck living back home with my parents. I spent the days stressing out over my next step in life and watching all of my friends prepare to head back to school or on to jobs they had lined up. I felt a little bit hopeless and maybe even a tiny bit sorry for myself.

And then I was saved.

I don't remember the specifics of the day. I just remember walking into the pet store to look at the cute animals because I really had nothing better to do with my life at the time (oh, I can't even remember what those days feel like any more!). I slowly wandered, sticking my fingers into a cage for a cat to rub up against them and whistling back at the birdies. The smell of urine and sawdust overwhelmed my senses along with a deep ache in my heart for all of the lonely critters around me.

I peeked down into a bin full of a pile of black and white pups. I started talking to them and they all jumped up with excitement - their tiny bodies quivering at the sound of my voice as tiny paws scratched up the side of the deep white bin towards me. Baby chihuahuas the size of my hand. Their cuteness was almost too much to handle.  I spent a few minutes playing with them - some got bored and went back to the "dog pile," but there was one in particular that just couldn't get enough of me. He jumped higher and wagged his tail just a little bit harder at my presence. I couldn't tear myself away from him. He was mine.

I literally was shaking while I paid for my new pup. My mom is going to kill me! What if this check doesn't clear? I don't even know how to take care of a dog! And as my new BFF, my Billy, pooped on my lap in the car on the way home I thought, what the heck have I gotten myself into?

I will never forget those first few months with Billy, my furbaby. He gave me something to live for and focus on in a time when I was extremely self-consumed and even borderline depressed. He taught me how to be a parent years before I ever had kids. He was my first taste of responsibility and unconditional love.

I write this because he doesn't get the credit he deserves. I don't put much of him up here on this blog and I admit that he has been pushed back to third/fourth place in my life behind my husband and kiddos. But, I still love him just as much, if not more than I did on that first day I brought him home.

He still makes me laugh daily.
He still licks my tears.
He still warms my feet at night.
He'll always be my first baby, my furbaby.


Baby Billy... seriously, how cute is that?