Chloe and Mabel

3 weeks ago, after much debate and research, my wife and I decided to buy another dog, a puppy, a miniature Australian Shepard. The last dog we owned was a miniature Schnauzer named Maggie. If you look at my previous articles, you’ll find my tribute to her memory called “Maggie’s Eyes”. She lives on in both of our hearts. It’s her memory which convinced us that we wanted to and were ready to buy another dog.

Her name was Chloe. She was with us for only 12 days.

We bought Maggie in 2007. Since then, the general process of aging has caught up with us. Now, in our late 70’s, it’s not so much that we’ve slowed down, it’s that we’ve become entrenched in our daily routine, not to mention the wide-open agenda we enjoy so much. We do what we want when we want laced with a lot of nothing at all.

Chloe changed all of that. Literally, from the minute we first brought her home, she dominated our lives. She was about 8 weeks old when she arrived.

First priority; toilet training! That did not go well. I’ll spare you the dirty details. Let’s just say that our consumption of paper towel probably jumped up around 1000%.

Then there was sleep deprivation. Due to our ignorance of training technique, we invited the little darling to share our bed and the little darling took full advantage of it by waking us up every 2 hours. Near the end of Chloe’s stay, I had reached my limit and decided to put her in her little kennel. To our amazement, with just one “No” and a sharp rap on the top of the kennel, Chloe slept through that night and the remainder of her nights with us.

     There was one other element of Chloe’s presence which we totally underestimated; playtime. We bought about a dozen cute toys and Chloe loved them all for about 10 minutes at a time. Try watching a golf tournament while you’re entertaining a puppy.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that, all my references to Chloe are in the past tense. She’s no longer with us.

I’m guessing that somewhere around day six, the excitement, joy, and glow, of puppy presence was wearing thin. Somewhere around day 9, it was gone.

On day 12, Chloe was gone.

The original owner was understanding and kind enough to take Chloe back and refund all of our $1500.

 Whew!

Enter Mabel.

Mable, formerly known as Chloe, found a loving home the day after Chloe was returned.

Mabel’s new owner is delighted. Mabel found a loving home, and we got our life back.