When you fall in love... common sense takes a vacation

My baby. ©Teresa Shumaker

During the three years we lived in Northern California, Matt was constantly asking for us to get a dog.

But, we lived in a tiny apartment and both worked full time. I hated the idea of having to leave a dog cooped up all day. In addition, my 12 year old cat Sylvia is very particular, and I didn't want to introduce a new animal into "her space" and have her take off, or send a new pet to the hospital.

However, I had promised Matt that once we moved and got a new place, it would not be "Sylvia's space" and it would be a good time to introduce a new member of the family.

While we were in the process of moving, we stayed with his parents while we looked for a place. About the middle of our stay, we stopped by an animal shelter – just to take a look.

That is when we found this handsome fella, Sam. And after three years of lectures  and listing reasons to wait to adopt a dog, I couldn't leave the shelter without him.

Sam and Sylvia. ©Teresa Shumaker

We had to call his parents to make sure they were ok with it — which the were... they are rather amazing and just as crazy as us. We then had two weeks of chaos with five humans, four dogs and one cat all under the same roof. To make it even more interesting, the four of us slept in the guest room together at night, and Sylvia, completely unhappy about the whole prospect, would slink around me to check him out.

We had one terrible sleepless night where Sylvia decided the only safe spots on the bed was on top of our heads, and she would hop from one to the other as she explored the room. She had impeccable timing too, leaping onto our skulls just as we would doze off. And if we reacted too fast, our reward was claws in the face as she dashed off in a panic.

To my surprise, it took her less than a week to get used to him, and a few more weeks to get used to him and the new place. Now, every morning she has no problem screaming at me while standing over my head on the bed — waking everyone up — to inform me that she is hungry.