You know what? These last 12 months or so haven’t been great for lots of people, and while we’ve been spared the worst we still want to look out for something good to hold on to.
The rest of the family have always wanted a dog.
Now I love dogs, but after growing up on a farm I was certain that I would not want to restrict any dog of ours to the narrow horizons and confined behaviours of town and our less-than-large section in the suburbs. Our place is unfenced, and we also have chickens to look after.
And then there’s all the work to train and amuse and feed and exercise and toilet and keep healthy; the cost to us and the planet; the logistics of moving it about town with us and finding places for it on holiday (or pet-friendly places to stay). It all seemed too much…
…but I lost that battle…
…and now my whataboutisms melt when faced with this little creature:
This is Éibhneas (a lovely Scottish Gaelic name meaning “Joy”) who we could call “Eve-ness” to approximate the correct pronunciation but who we just call “Evie”.
Today I’ve been working from home and Evie is bored. She’s been playing with her toys but what she really wants is for me to stop with all the zoom calls and endless mechanical keyboard clacks of fury and play with her instead. That look on her face… is hard to resist.
She’s a 14 week-old Tibetan Terrier, and for extra goodness her sister Pipi lives with R.’s sister’s family on the other side of town. So… in theory we can help each other out with dogsitting / holidays but in practice we have found the two girls just playfight all day long and it is impossible to work from home with the two of them in the house.
She’s been with us for about a month or so and yeah, she’s changed up things quite a lot in our household. It’s taking a bit of getting used to! While nowhere near as disruptive to a settled existence as a new infant human there’s definitely some similarities.
But I guess soon things will settle down (sooner than with an infant human I’m hoping) and we’ll find a new normal with our most recent family member.
In the meantime she brings the cute. Lots and lots of it.
