When my boyfriend went to pick
out a puppy from Target’s litter he was pretty unprepared. I had told him the night before that the 5
hour road trip we had planned for puppy picking in March, was now not happening
and in fact, he was going to pick our dog the very next day, in December. Surprise!
Oh, and by the way, make sure that you can see both parents in good
health, that the facility is clean, the puppies are getting good socialization
and that the breeder herself doesn’t seem shady. Oh, and I, the person you love
and is pretty much putting you on the spot to do this, isn’t so concerned with
which puppy it is as long as we walk away from this with a puppy.
Simple, right?... Simple
RIGHT?!
We had been together long
enough for him to know that this was par for the course with me when it came to
animals.
It's hard to believe now, after everything that's happened, but Target was the puppy I wanted least when I first looked at the pictures of his litter. My parents had two Old English Sheepdogs before I was born and one of them was deaf. My mom had told me that deafness was common in white sheepdogs, but she had taught her sign language and she did just fine. I like to think that part of me remembered that fact about deafness in white dogs and hesitated in case that fact also applied to white border collies (which, in fact it does). Perhaps, closer to the truth though, is that I saw that crisp, snowy fur, thought of all of the reasons I don't wear white pants or have white carpet and thought,
"He would be impossible to keep clean!"
I didn't mention any of this discord to my boyfriend at the time. I had managed to get him on board my crazy puppy train, this was going to be his decision. Plus, somewhere in the back of my mind I was almost 100% certain that he would choose a standard, black and white, model border collie.
The next day when he picked me up from the train station after work and after puppy picking, his excitement was rocketing off of the inside of the car. He had arrived at the breeders house, introduced himself and met a chaotic pile of puppies. Eight puppies wrestled in the breeder's kitchen, their mom watching closely from nearby. During the melee, a chubby, determined puppy tumbled out of the bunch, ambled over to my boyfriend and sat down on his feet. He told me he was the chubbiest of the bunch, a real "pot roast" (a nickname that stuck with him for months until he worked off his puppy fat)
As my boyfriend tells me this story in all his speedy excitement, it starts to dawn on me, despite my certainty that he wouldn't choose the white puppy, it had never occurred to me that the white puppy, may choose him! And he had!
On the road to the breeder's house to meet "my puppy" I considered my options. But, it didn't take me long to realize that I couldn't do or say anything. In my absence, at my request, my puppy and my partner had chosen each other and to this day it still remains the best decision that they have made for me.
That night, after officially meeting Target and putting down our deposit, all I could think to myself was,
"Touché little white puppy, touché"
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