Happy 2nd Birthday, Cherry

Today is my dog’s 2nd birthday. “Cherry”, our beagle-pug, was adopted in early 2022, but her birthday is in January from what we can determine in her veterinary records. I wrote about her last year, but haven’t provided a lot of updates.

The truth is, adopting a puppy was quite difficult. Before we had children, we had adopted dogs, but much older, calmer dogs. A puppy is far different, and the first year was pretty chaotic, amidst other family and parenting challenges. There are times where, frankly, I regretted adopting a puppy.

And yet, we are now celebrating her second year. Cherry has calmed down significantly, her puppy habits, such as nipping and eating everything off the ground, are over, and more importantly, we’ve learned to communicate enough with her so that when she’s hungry or bored, we can easily determine what she wants. Thus, Cherry gets less frustrated, and so do we.

She has her moments: she is pretty clingey, and barks really loud at seemingly trivial things, but her behavior overall has markedly improved over the last year. We have also settled into a nice pattern together.

Most importantly, the kids really like her. My youngest was utterly terrified of the dog for the first few months, and would do his best to avoid her, but now he constantly plays with her, and is happy to have her in the house (sadly, he is slightly allergic, which we never anticipated). He is also comfortable meeting new dogs too, which was a surprising benefit. My eldest who was the most vocal about adopting a puppy, handles her very well, and can take care of her in our absence, so we have some freedom to run errands, and take a break if needed.

In short, Cherry has become an essential member of the family, as we originally hoped. It took longer than expected, but in the end it has had a pretty positive outcome.

Which brings me to my point.

I found this Peanuts comic strip online,¹ and wanted to share it here. It’s easy to think dogs are stupid and annoying, since they can be pretty obnoxious, obtuse, and demanding at times. And yet, we can learn a lot about ourselves caring for dogs (or anyone) and that can teach some important lessons. Cherry was pretty frustrating as a puppy, but I am glad we didn’t give up, and stuck with it. It taught me some important lessons about humility and forbearance (easy to conceive, hard to practice in real life), and the kids learned some valuable lessons about caring for others.

So, did Cherry make our lives better? Yes, I think so.

And so, today I wanted to celebrate her life as a 2-year old puppy and say thanks, and happy birthday!

Edit: birthday photo

¹ to be honest, I am not 100% sure I have permission to use this, but I feel it makes an important point, so I’ll risk it anyway.